Whack-a-pod

This is a demo that can be used to show how resilient services running on Kubernetes can be. Main app shows a giant sign that flashes in various random colors. Those colors come a Kubernetes powered microservice. If the service goes down, the sign turns red. Your goal is to try and knock the service down by killing the Kubernetes pods that run the service. You can do that by whacking the pods wich are respresented as moles.

There is also a less busy verison of the game available at /next.html. This version has an advanced mode that allows someone to do a more visual explanation of the mechanics.

The advanced version allows you to track the pod that is serving the color service and to simulate creating and destroying nodes.

Getting Started

The current directions assume you are using Google Cloud Platform to take advantage of Container Engine to build a manage your Kubernetes cluster. There is nothing preventing this app from running on a Kubernetes cluster hosted elsewhere, but the directions for setup assume Container Engine. If there is significant interest in these directions, I'll be happy to publish them (or better yet, accept a pull request.)

Create and configure GCP project

Create Project in Cloud Console
Navigate to Compute Engine (to activate Compute Engine service)
Navigate to the API Library and activate Container Builder API

Create Configs

Make a copy of /Samples.properties, renamed to /Makefile.properties
Alter value for PROJECT to your project id
Alter ZONE and REGION if you want to run this demo in a particular area.
Alter CLUSTER if you want to call your cluster something other than whack-a-pod.
Set INGRESSNAME if you need to use something other than the default.
Set DOCKERREPO if you need to use something other Google Container Registry.
Open a terminal in /.
Run make config to create your ingress file.
This should create the following file:
1. /apps/ingress/ingress.yaml

I use this application to show off Google Cloud Platform, so I tend set it up multiple times, once per region or datacenter. Therefore, I rename the INGRESSNAME and CLUSTER a bunch. If you only have one cluster, you don't have to fiddle with these.

Build Infrastructure

Open a terminal in /infrastructure/.
Run make build. make build will do the following:
1. Create Kubernetes Cluster
2. Create 1 static ip addresse for use in the app

If you get the error ResponseError: code=503, message=Project projectname is not fully initialized with the default service accounts. Please try again later. You need to navigfate to Compute Engine in Google Cloud console to activate Compute Engine service.

Build Application

Open a terminal in root of whack_a_pod location.
Run make build
Run make deploy
When process finishes Browse to the the IP address value for the ingress.
To get that address: gcloud compute addresses describe #INGRESSNAME# --global

Run demo

There are two skins to the game.

Carnival version:
- http://[gamehost]/
Google Cloud Next branded version:
- http://[gamehost]/next.html
- http://[gamehost]/advanced.html

The advanced version of the game is a great demo for teaching some of the fundamentals of Kubernetes. It allows you to cordon and uncordon nodes of the Kubernetes cluster to simulate Node failure. In addition it shows which Pod of the Replica Set is actually answering calls for the service.

Clean Up

Open a terminal in /.
Run make clean
Open a terminal in /infrastructure/.
Run make clean

Minikube

Whack a Pod can run on Minikube. Its performance isn't stellar, but the game versions of it run just as well a it does on a flaky conference wifi.

Prerequisite

Install minikube
Directions
Enable ingress
minikube addons enable ingress
Install xhyve driver (Mac OS])
Directions

Docker Repository

You can use the Container Registry based commands in the Makefiles to build and host your Docker images.

Open a terminal in root of whack_a_pod location.
Run make build
Make images publicly available by following these directions

This still requires a Google Cloud Platform Project. If you would like to build them some other way, you can, nothing restricts you from doing so. Just make sure you set $(DOCKERREPO) to the right value in Makefile.properties.

Running on Minikube

Open a terminal in root of whack_a_pod location.
Run minikube start --vm-driver=xhyve
Run make deploy.minikube
Run kubectl describe ingress to get the IP address of the ingress.
Create an entry in /etc/hosts pointing IP address to minikube.wap.

Clean Minikube

Run make clean.minikube
Run minikube stop

Running on any Kubernetes (generic)

This method is for generic usage and can be run on any Kubernetes installation. There are few differences:

It will push built images to repo DOCKERREPO defined in Makefile.properties
It's agnostic of any loadbalancer in front of ingress so you can use NodePort type for ingress service
It works with RBAC model - proper serviceaccount and role bindings are created
It will deploy all objects in current namespace

Open a terminal in root of whack_a_pod location.
Build application with make build.generic OR skip building by setting DOCKERREPO to cloudowski and use prebuilt images availabe on dockerhub
Run make deploy.generic
Define name whackapod.example.com in your /etc/hosts pointing to IP address of your load balancer in front of ingress controller or one of nodes IP (when using NodePort)
Open your browser at http://whackapod.example.com/

Clean generic deployment

Run make clean.generic

Architecture

There are three Kubernetes services that make up the whole application:

Game Game contains all of the front end clients for the game, both the carnival version and the Google Cloud Next version.
Admin Admin contains all of the logic for managing the whole application. This is the application the front end calls to get a list of the pods running the color api, it also has calls to create and delete deployments, delete pods, and drain and uncordon nodes.
Api Api contains two service calls: color and color-complete. Color is a random hexidecimal RGB color value. Color-complete is the same as color, but also sends the pod name of the pod that answered the service call.

"This is not an official Google Project."

guilhermesteves / whack_a_pod