Deploy DronaHQ with Kubernetes (K8s)

You can deploy self-hosted DronaHQ on Kubernetes following the instructions in this guide.

Requirements

To deploy DronaHQ on Kubernetes, you need:

A DronaHQ license key, which you can obtain from DronaHQ Self-Hosted Portal.
A domain you own, to which you can add a DNS record.
A Kubernetes cluster. To create a cluster, see documentation on Google Cloud Platform, AWS, and Azure.
A working installation of kubectl. To install kubectl, see documentation on Google Cloud Platform, AWS, and Azure.
You can also deploy Kubernetes Cluster on local VMs.

Cluster size

The cluster must have at least one node with 2x vCPUs and 4 GB of memory. Use the following command to retrieve the capacity of your nodes.

$ kubectl describe nodes

In the Capacity section, verify the cpu and memory values meet the above requirements.

Capacity:
    cpu: 2
    ephemeral-storage: 20134592Ki
    hugepages-1Gi: 0
    hugepages-2Mi: 0
    memory: 3944424Ki
    pods: 17
Allocatable:
    cpu: 1930m
    ephemeral-storage: 17482298133
    hugepages-1Gi: 0
    hugepages-2Mi: 0
    memory: 3389416Ki
    pods: 17

Cluster storage class

If you want to mount volumes, ensure the volume supplied by your cloud provider can be mounted to multiple nodes. To identify your cluster's storage class, run the command

$ kubectl get storageclass

Reference your cloud provider's documentation to verify that this storage class supports the ReadWriteMany access mode.

1. Clone manifests

DronaHQ's Kubernetes deployment is configured using a set of manifests. To retrieve a copy of the manifests, download the dronahq-self-hosted repository to your local machine. Open the kubernetes directory in an IDE to follow along the steps below.

curl -L -O https://license.dronahq.com/self-hosted/master.zip && unzip master.zip
cd master/kubernetes

2. Configure version

In dronahq-webapp.yaml, change the image tag to indicate the version of DronaHQ to install. The following example specifies the image tag to install version 2.2.7.

image: dronahq/self-hosted:2.2.7

3. Configure secrets

Copy the dronahq-secrets.template.yaml file to a new file named dronahq-secrets.yaml. This file sets the configuration options for your deployment, and stores them as Kubernetes secrets.

cp dronahq-secrets.template.yaml dronahq-secrets.yaml

Set the configuration options for your instance. Note that values in this file need to be encoded in base64.

Use simple echo command to convert your text to base64 encoded string
echo -n 'super-secret-password' | base64

By default, user name for databases is set to dronahq, you can change it using environment variables.

Set the following values in dronahq-secrets.yaml:

Setting	Description
license_key	base64 encoded dronahq license key.
mysql_host	base64 encoded mysql server address or domain name
mysql_password	base64 encoded mysql password for selected user
mongodb_host	base64 encoded mongodb server address or domain name
mongodb_password	base64 encoded mongodb password for selected user
aws_s3_region	base64 encoded s3 bucket name you want to use
aws_s3_access_key_id	base64 encoded access key id to use selected bucket
aws_s3_access_key_secret	base64 encoded secret key pair for selected access key
aws_s3_bucket_name	base64 encoded aws s3 bucket name

4. Install DronaHQ

After updating the configuration, install DronaHQ. Run the following commands in sequence.

kubectl apply -f ./dronahq-secrets.yaml
kubectl apply -f ./dronahq-webapp.yaml
kubectl apply -f ./load-balancer.yaml

After installing DronaHQ, verify you have pod for the webapp.

$ kubectl get pods

NAME                                     READY   STATUS    RESTARTS      AGE
webapp-63452e7643-si4g5                  1/1     Running   1 (2h ago)    8h

Once the pod is running, verify the installation by port forwarding to localhost.

kubectl port-forward webapp-63452e7643-si4g5 8080:8080

You can then access DronaHQ at http://localhost:8080/.

Additional steps

You need to externalize your database to a remote host. DronaHQ strongly recommends you to configure SSL, and keep up-to-date with the latest version of DronaHQ. Setting environment variables is often necessary to configure self-hosted features.

Externalize database

By default, the DronaHQ Kubernetes installation uses remotely hosted managed database instances of MySQL and MongoDB to make it more maintainable, scalable and reliable.

Learn how to make your external databases DronaHQ ready.

Once your external databases are ready, update its credentials in Kubernetes environment files as follows.

Encrypt your passwords.

echo -n <password> | base64

In dronahq-secrets.yaml, set the value of mysql_password and mongodb_password as the base64 encoded password.
(optional) In dronahq-webapp.yaml, set the MySQL and MongoDB credentials to the credentials of your managed database instance. You do not need to specify host and password, since that value is pulled from the secret you already configured.

- name: MYSQL_USER
  value: <mysql-user>
- name: MYSQL_PORT
  value: <mysql-port>
- name: MONGODB_USER
  value: <mongodb-user>
- name: MONGODB_PORT
  value: <mongodb-port>

Apply changes to the two manifests.

kubectl apply -f dronahq-secrets.yaml
kubectl apply -f dronahq-webapp.yaml

Update DronaHQ

Back up your database. If you use a managed database service, your database provider may have a feature to take snapshots or otherwise back up your database.
Identify the appropriate release version on Docker Hub. See DronaHQ's self-hosted release notes to learn about version-specific features.
Take database updates for selected version from DronaHQ. Get inside directory external-database and run db-update.sh file. This is interactive shell and will help you get database updates for selected version.
In dronahq-webapp.yaml, change the image tag to indicate the version of DronaHQ to install. The following example specifies the image tag to install version 2.2.7.

image: dronahq/self-hosted:2.2.7

Apply changes to the manifest.

kubectl apply -f dronahq-webapp.yaml

Verify that your pods is running.

$ kubectl get pods

NAME                        READY   STATUS      RESTARTS    AGE
webapp-63452e7643-si4g5     1/1     Running     1 (8h ago)  8h

Add environment variables

Environment variables provide ways to configure a DronaHQ instance.

Add the environment variable to dronahq-webapp.yaml. This example sets the SECURE_HTTP variable, but this pattern applies to other environment variables as well.

env:
    - name: SECURE_HTTP
      value: true

Apply the changes to the manifest.

kubectl apply -f dronahq-webapp.yaml

Verify that your pod is running.

$ kubectl get pods

NAME                        READY   STATUS      RESTARTS    AGE
webapp-63452e7643-si4g5     1/1     Running     1 (8h ago)  8h

Mount volumes

There are several use cases which require the use of volumes. For example, when configuring a gRPC resource, you need to mount a volume containing the protos files to the DronaHQ deployment. Follow these instructions to create a persistent volume and copy files from your local machine to the volume.

1. Set security context

In a later step, you use kubectl cp to copy files from your local machine to the Kubernetes cluster, which requires the pod to run with root privileges. Modify your deployment so the pods run as root by adding the securityContext in your dronahq-webapp.yaml file:

spec:
    securityContext:
        runAsUser: 0
        fsGroup: 2000

Apply changes to the manifest.

kubectl apply -f dronahq-webapp.yaml

Verify that your pods is in a ready state before continuing.

$ kubectl get pods

NAME                                     READY   STATUS    RESTARTS      AGE
webapp-63452e7643-si4g5                     1/1     Running   1 (8h ago)   8h

2. Copy files

Next, copy the protos files from your local machine to the PVC. Ensure you local machine has a folder named protos and run the following command. Replace webapp-63452e7643-si4g5 with the name of your main DronaHQ container, retrieved from kubectl get pods.

kubectl cp protos/ webapp-63452e7643-si4g5:/dronahq_backend/pv-data/protos

3. Set directory path

If you're configuring gRPC, specify the location of the protos directory. In dronahq-webapp.yaml, set the PROTO_DIRECTORY_PATH environment variable.

env:
    - name: PROTO_DIRECTORY_PATH
      value: "/dronahq_backend/pv-data/protos"

4. Reset security context

Reset the security context of your deployment by removing the securityContext field, or by defining a non-root user.

Apply changes to the manifest.

kubectl apply -f dronahq-webapp.yaml

Deploy DronaHQ with Kubernetes (K8s)

Requirements​

Cluster size​

Cluster storage class​

1. Clone manifests​

2. Configure version​

3. Configure secrets​

4. Install DronaHQ​

Additional steps​

Externalize database​

Once your external databases are ready, update its credentials in Kubernetes environment files as follows.​

Update DronaHQ​

Add environment variables​

Mount volumes​

1. Set security context​

2. Copy files​

3. Set directory path​

4. Reset security context​