Deployment

• Installing BCX chart on Kubernetes
  • Preparation
  • Installation
• Chart Requirements
• Chart Values
• Environment variables

All Kaa services, including BCX, are distributed as Helm charts. You can run these charts using Kubernetes.

Installing BCX chart on Kubernetes

Preparation

These steps should be done once for your entire Kaa cluster in Kubernetes.

1. Install Kubernetes.

2. Install Helm client and Tiller server.

3. Create a Kaa license secret (remember to put in your Kaa license key file contents and password):

    export HISTCONTROL=ignorespace # Prevent saving your key password in the shell history; note the leading space in the next line
     cat << EOF > /tmp/kaa-licence.yaml
    apiVersion: v1
    data:
      file: < your licence key file contents, base64-encoded >
      password: < your licence key password >
    kind: Secret
    metadata:
      name: license
      type: Opaque
    EOF
    kubectl create -f /tmp/kaa-licence.yaml
   

4. Specify the image pull secret for the official KaaIoT docker registry. To define this secret, use your KaaID credentials:

    export HISTCONTROL=ignorespace  # Prevent saving your credentials in the shell history; note the leading space in the next line
     export KAAID_EMAIL=<your KaaID email, eg. bob@example.com> KAAID_PASSWORD=<your KaaID password>
    kubectl create secret docker-registry kaaid --docker-server=dev-hub.kaaiot.net --docker-username=$KAAID_EMAIL --docker-email=$KAAID_EMAIL --docker-password=$KAAID_PASSWORD
   

5. If you want to enable API security in your Kaa cluster (recommended), you should create an auth server backend secret for the service to be able to request PAT tokens.

    export HISTCONTROL=ignorespace # Prevent saving your client ID amd secret in the shell history; note the leading space in the next line
     cat << EOF > /tmp/keycloak-backend-secret.yaml
    apiVersion: v1
    data:
      client-id: < your client-id, base64-encoded >
      client-secret: < your client-secret, base64-encoded >
    kind: Secret
    metadata:
      name: "keycloak-backend"
      labels:
        app.kubernetes.io/name: "kaa-name"
        helm.sh/chart: "kaa-chart-version"
        app.kubernetes.io/instance: "kaa-instance-name"
        app.kubernetes.io/managed-by: "release-service-name"
    EOF
    kubectl create -f /tmp/keycloak-backend-secret.yaml
   

6. Add the KaaIoT Helm repository:

    helm repo add kaa-museum https://museum.kaaiot.net/
   

Installation

Once you have completed the preparation steps, everything is ready for deploying BCX on your Kubernetes cluster. To deploy the service, run the following command (observe the reference to the previously created license secret):

helm install --set global.license.secretName=license kaa-museum/bcx --name kaa-bcx

Check that pods are running:

kubectl get pods

Once the service initialization is complete, you should observe the output similar to the below:

NAME                                          READY   STATUS             RESTARTS   AGE
...
kaa-bcx                                       1/1     Running            0          2m
...

Chart Requirements

Chart Values

The keys with no description are standard Kubernetes values. Refer to the official Kubernetes documentation for more information on these.

Environment variables

The table below summarizes the variables supported by the BCX Docker image and provides default values along with descriptions.

Some of the listed above settings can also be controlled via the configuration options. When set, environment variables take precedence over corresponding configuration file settings.