timothyb89 / do-updater

A dynamic DNS client for low-cost Kubernetes clusters on DigitalOcean.

do-updater

A dynamic DNS client for Kubernetes on DigitalOcean.

This utility allows you to maintain DNS records for Kubernetes nodes on DigitalOcean without using a (relatively speaking) expensive load balancer.

Why?

A regular Kubernetes LoadBalancer on DOKS is backed by a $10 USD/month DigitalOcean loadbalancer. This could well be a significant portion of your entire cluster cost for a small project using a couple of their cheapest $10/m nodes.

Alternatively, you can allow clients to connect directly to your DOKS nodes and let e.g. ingress-nginx route traffic to your services. This obviously loses out on HA guarantees, but realistically small personal projects on tiny clusters neither need nor benefit from this.

Unfortunately, static IPs on DigitalOcean also cost extra, even though your nodes come with one for free. do-updater solves this by automatically maintaining DNS records for your nodes via DigitalOcean's DNS API.

Usage

Install on your cluster using Helm. First, clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/timothyb89/do-updater
cd do-updater

Then, create a namespace and a secret containing a DigitalOcean API key:

kubectl create namespace do-updater
kubectl -n do-updater create secret generic do-updater --from-literal=key=supersecret

Next, create some minimal values in values.yaml:

image:
  tag: v1.0.1

domain: example.com
dropletTag: k8s
record:
  kind: A
  ttl: 1800
  name: '*'
apiKey:
  secretName: do-updater
  secretKey: key

Lastly, install the service:

helm install -n do-updater do-updater ./chart -f values.yaml