This repository serves as a starting point for managing multi-tenant clusters with Git and Flux v2.
Platform Admin
- Has cluster admin access to the fleet of clusters
- Has maintainer access to the fleet Git repository
- Manages cluster wide resources (CRDs, controllers, cluster roles, etc)
- Onboards the tenant’s main
GitRepository
andKustomization
- Manages tenants by assigning namespaces, service accounts and role binding to the tenant's apps
Tenant
- Has admin access to the namespaces assigned to them by the platform admin
- Has maintainer access to the tenant Git repository and apps repositories
- Manages app deployments with
GitRepositories
andKustomizations
- Manages app releases with
HelmRepositories
andHelmReleases
The platform admin repository contains the following top directories:
- clusters dir contains the Flux configuration per cluster
- infrastructure dir contains common infra tools such as admission controllers, CRDs and cluster-wide polices
- tenants dir contains namespaces, service accounts, role bindings and Flux custom resources for registering tenant repositories
├── clusters
│ ├── production
│ └── staging
├── infrastructure
│ ├── kyverno
│ └── kyverno-policies
└── tenants
├── base
├── production
└── staging
A tenant repository contains the following top directories:
- base dir contains
HelmRepository
andHelmRelease
manifests - staging dir contains
HelmRelease
Kustomize patches for deploying pre-releases on the staging cluster - production dir contains
HelmRelease
Kustomize patches for deploying stable releases on the production cluster
├── base
│ ├── kustomization.yaml
│ ├── podinfo-release.yaml
│ └── podinfo-repository.yaml
├── production
│ ├── kustomization.yaml
│ └── podinfo-values.yaml
└── staging
├── kustomization.yaml
└── podinfo-values.yaml
The Flux CLI offers commands to generate the Kubernetes manifests needed to define tenants.
Assuming a platform admin wants to create a tenant named dev-team
with access to the apps
namespace.
Create the tenant base directory:
mkdir -p ./tenants/base/dev-team
Generate the namespace, service account and role binding for the dev-team:
flux create tenant dev-team --with-namespace=apps \
--export > ./tenants/base/dev-team/rbac.yaml
Create the sync manifests for the tenant Git repository:
flux create source git dev-team \
--namespace=apps \
--url=https://github.com/<org>/<dev-team> \
--branch=main \
--export > ./tenants/base/dev-team/sync.yaml
flux create kustomization dev-team \
--namespace=apps \
--service-account=dev-team \
--source=GitRepository/dev-team \
--path="./" \
--export >> ./tenants/base/dev-team/sync.yaml
Create the base kustomization.yaml
file:
cd ./tenants/base/dev-team/ && kustomize create --autodetect
Create the staging overlay and set the path to the staging dir inside the tenant repository:
cat << EOF | tee ./tenants/staging/dev-team-patch.yaml
apiVersion: kustomize.toolkit.fluxcd.io/v1beta1
kind: Kustomization
metadata:
name: dev-team
namespace: apps
spec:
path: ./staging
EOF
cat << EOF | tee ./tenants/staging/kustomization.yaml
apiVersion: kustomize.config.k8s.io/v1beta1
kind: Kustomization
resources:
- ../base/dev-team
patchesStrategicMerge:
- dev-team-patch.yaml
EOF
With the above configuration, the Flux instance running on the staging cluster will clone the
dev-team's repository, and it will reconcile the ./staging
directory from the tenant's repo
using the dev-team
service account. Since that service account is restricted to the apps
namespace,
the dev-team repository must contain Kubernetes objects scoped to the apps
namespace only.
To enforce tenant isolation, cluster admins must configure Flux to reconcile
the Kustomization
and HelmRelease
kinds by impersonating a service account
from the namespace where these objects are created. In order to make the
spec.ServiceAccountName
field mandatory, you should use a validation webhook, for example
Kyverno or OPA Gatekeeper.
On cluster bootstrap, you need to configure Flux to deploy the validation webhook and its policies before
reconciling the tenants repositories.
Inside the clusters
dir we define in which order the infrastructure items,
and the tenant workloads are going to be reconciled on the staging and production clusters:
./clusters/
├── production
│ ├── infrastructure.yaml
│ └── tenants.yaml
└── staging
├── infrastructure.yaml
└── tenants.yaml
First we setup the reconciliation of custom resource definitions and their controllers. For this example we'll use Kyverno:
apiVersion: kustomize.toolkit.fluxcd.io/v1beta1
kind: Kustomization
metadata:
name: kyverno
namespace: flux-system
spec:
interval: 10m
sourceRef:
kind: GitRepository
name: flux-system
path: ./infrastructure/kyverno
prune: true
validation: client
healthChecks:
- apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
name: kyverno
namespace: kyverno
Then we setup cluster policies (Kyverno custom resources) to enforce tenant isolation:
apiVersion: kustomize.toolkit.fluxcd.io/v1beta1
kind: Kustomization
metadata:
name: kyverno-policies
namespace: flux-system
spec:
dependsOn:
- name: kyverno
interval: 5m
sourceRef:
kind: GitRepository
name: flux-system
path: ./infrastructure/kyverno-policies
prune: true
validation: client
With dependsOn
we tell Flux to install Kyverno before deploying the cluster policies.
And finally we setup the reconciliation for the tenants workloads with:
apiVersion: kustomize.toolkit.fluxcd.io/v1beta1
kind: Kustomization
metadata:
name: tenants
namespace: flux-system
spec:
dependsOn:
- name: kyverno-policies
interval: 5m
sourceRef:
kind: GitRepository
name: flux-system
path: ./tenants/staging
prune: true
validation: client
With the above configuration, we ensure that the Kyverno validation webhook will reject Kustomizations
and
HelmReleases
that don't specify a service account name when deployed in a tenant's namespace.
Install the Flux CLI and fork this repository on your personal GitHub account and export your GitHub access token, username and repo name:
export GITHUB_TOKEN=<your-token>
export GITHUB_USER=<your-username>
export GITHUB_REPO=<repository-name>
Verify that your staging cluster satisfies the prerequisites with:
flux check --pre
Set the kubectl context to your staging cluster and bootstrap Flux:
flux bootstrap github \
--context=staging \
--owner=${GITHUB_USER} \
--repository=${GITHUB_REPO} \
--branch=main \
--personal \
--path=clusters/staging
The bootstrap command commits the manifests for the Flux components in clusters/staging/flux-system
dir
and creates a deploy key with read-only access on GitHub, so it can pull changes inside the cluster.
Wait for the staging cluster reconciliation to finish:
$ watch flux get kustomization
NAME READY MESSAGE
flux-system True Applied revision: main/616001c38e7bc81b00ef2c65ac8cfd58140155b8
kyverno Unknown Reconciliation in progress
kyverno-policies False Dependency 'flux-system/kyverno' is not ready
tenants False Dependency 'flux-system/kyverno-policies' is not ready
Verify that the tenant Git repository has been cloned:
$ flux -n apps get sources git
NAME READY MESSAGE
dev-team True Fetched revision: dev-team/ca8ec25405cc03f2f374d2f35f9299d84ced01e4
Verify that the tenant Helm repository index has been downloaded:
$ flux -n apps get sources helm
NAME READY MESSAGE
podinfo True Fetched revision: 2020-10-28T10:09:58.648748663Z
Wait for the demo app to be installed:
$ watch flux -n apps get helmreleases
NAME READY MESSAGE REVISION SUSPENDED
podinfo True Release reconciliation succeeded 5.0.3 False
You can configure Flux to connect to a tenant repository using SSH or token-based authentication. The tenant credentials will be stored in the platform admin repository as a Kubernetes secret.
In order to store credentials safely in a Git repository, you can use Mozilla's SOPS CLI to encrypt Kubernetes secrets with OpenPGP or KMS.
brew install gnupg sops
Generate a GPG key for Flux without specifying a passphrase and retrieve the GPG key ID:
$ gpg --full-generate-key
Email address: fluxcdbot@users.noreply.github.com
$ gpg --list-secret-keys fluxcdbot@users.noreply.github.com
sec rsa3072 2020-09-06 [SC]
1F3D1CED2F865F5E59CA564553241F147E7C5FA4
Create a Kubernetes secret in the flux-system
namespace with the GPG private key:
gpg --export-secret-keys \
--armor 1F3D1CED2F865F5E59CA564553241F147E7C5FA4 |
kubectl create secret generic sops-gpg \
--namespace=flux-system \
--from-file=sops.asc=/dev/stdin
You should store the GPG private key in a safe place for disaster recovery, in case you need to rebuild the cluster from scratch. The GPG public key can be shared with the platform team, so anyone with write access to the platform repository can encrypt secrets.
Generate a Kubernetes secret with the SSH and known host keys:
flux -n apps create secret git dev-team-auth \
--url=ssh://git@github.com/<org>/<dev-team> \
--export > ./tenants/base/dev-team/auth.yaml
Print the SSH public key and add it as a read-only deploy key to the dev-team repository:
yq read git-auth.yaml 'data."identity.pub"' | base64 --decode
Generate a Kubernetes secret with basic auth credentials:
flux -n apps create secret git dev-team-auth \
--url=https://github.com/<org>/<dev-team> \
--username=$GITHUB_USERNAME \
--password=$GITHUB_TOKEN \
--export > ./tenants/base/dev-team/auth.yaml
The GitHub token must have read-only access to the dev-team repository.
Encrypt the dev-team-auth
secret's data field with sops:
sops --encrypt \
--pgp=1F3D1CED2F865F5E59CA564553241F147E7C5FA4 \
--encrypted-regex '^(data|stringData)$' \
--in-place ./tenants/base/dev-team/auth.yaml
Create the sync manifests for the tenant Git repository referencing the git-auth
secret:
flux create source git dev-team \
--namespace=apps \
--url=https://github.com/<org>/<dev-team> \
--branch=main \
--secret-ref=dev-team-auth \
--export > ./tenants/base/dev-team/sync.yaml
flux create kustomization dev-team \
--namespace=apps \
--service-account=dev-team \
--source=GitRepository/dev-team \
--path="./" \
--export >> ./tenants/base/dev-team/sync.yaml
Create the base kustomization.yaml file:
cd ./tenants/base/dev-team/ && kustomize create --autodetect
Configure Flux to decrypt secrets using the sops-gpg
key:
flux create kustomization tenants \
--depends-on=kyverno-policies \
--source=flux-system \
--path="./tenants/staging" \
--prune=true \
--interval=5m \
--validation=client \
--decryption-provider=sops \
--decryption-secret=sops-gpg \
--export > ./clusters/staging/tenants.yaml
With the above configuration, the Flux instance running on the staging cluster will:
- create the tenant namespace, service account and role binding
- decrypt the tenant Git credentials using the GPG private key
- create the tenant Git credentials Kubernetes secret in the tenant namespace
- clone the tenant repository using the supplied credentials
- apply the
./staging
directory from the tenant's repo using the tenant's service account
Any change to the Kubernetes manifests or to the repository structure should be validated in CI before a pull request is merged into the main branch and synced on the cluster.
This repository contains the following GitHub CI workflows: