MiniConstellation

With constellation mini, you can deploy and test Constellation locally without a cloud subscription.

The command uses virtualization to create a local cluster with one control-plane and one worker node.

:::info

Since MiniConstellation is running on your local system, common cloud features, such as load-balancing, attaching persistent storage, or autoscaling, are unavailable.

:::

Prerequisites

Constellation CLI
An x86-64 CPU with at least 4 cores
- Recommended are 6 cores or more
Hardware virtualization enabled in the BIOS/UEFI (often referred to as Intel VT-x or AMD-V/SVM)
At least 4 GB RAM
- Recommend are 6 GB or more
20 GB of free disk space
A Linux operating system
KVM kernel module enabled
Docker

xsltproc

Install on Ubuntu:
```
sudo apt install xsltproc
```
Install on Fedora
```
sudo dnf install xsltproc
```

(Optional) virsh to observe and access your nodes

Create your cluster

Setting up your MiniConstellation cluster is as easy as running the following command:

constellation mini up

This will configure your current directory as the workspace for this cluster. All constellation commands concerning this cluster need to be issued from this directory.

The command will create your cluster and initialize it. Depending on your system, this may take up to 10 minutes. The output should look like the following:

$ constellation mini up
Downloading image to ./constellation.qcow2
Done.

Creating cluster in QEMU ...
Cluster successfully created.
Connect to the VMs by executing:
        virsh -c qemu+tcp://localhost:16599/system

Your Constellation master secret was successfully written to ./constellation-mastersecret.json
Initializing cluster ...
Your Constellation cluster was successfully initialized.

Constellation cluster identifier  hmrRaTJEKHk6zlM6wcTCGxZ+7HAA16ec4T9CmKs12uQ=
Kubernetes configuration          constellation-admin.conf

You can now connect to your cluster by executing:
        export KUBECONFIG="$PWD/constellation-admin.conf"

Configure kubectl to connect to your local Constellation cluster:

export KUBECONFIG="$PWD/constellation-admin.conf"

It may take a couple of minutes for all cluster resources to be available. You can check on the state of your cluster by running the following:

kubectl get nodes

If your cluster is running as expected the output should look like the following:

$ kubectl get nodes
NAME              STATUS   ROLES                  AGE     VERSION
control-plane-0   Ready    control-plane,master   2m59s   v1.23.9
worker-0          Ready    <none>                 32s     v1.23.9

Deploy a sample application

Deploy the emojivoto app

kubectl apply -k github.com/BuoyantIO/emojivoto/kustomize/deployment

Expose the frontend service locally

kubectl wait --for=condition=available --timeout=60s -n emojivoto --all deployments
kubectl -n emojivoto port-forward svc/web-svc 8080:80 &
curl http://localhost:8080
kill %1

Terminate your cluster

Once you are done, you can clean up the created resources using the following command:

constellation mini down

This will destroy your cluster and clean up your workspace. The VM image and cluster configuration file (constellation-conf.yaml) will be kept and may be reused to create new clusters.

Troubleshooting

VMs have no internet access

iptables rules may prevent your VMs from accessing the internet. Make sure your rules aren't dropping forwarded packages.

List your rules:

sudo iptables -S

The output may look similar to the following:

-P INPUT ACCEPT
-P FORWARD DROP
-P OUTPUT ACCEPT
-N DOCKER
-N DOCKER-ISOLATION-STAGE-1
-N DOCKER-ISOLATION-STAGE-2
-N DOCKER-USER

If your FORWARD chain is set to DROP, you need to update your rules:

sudo iptables -P FORWARD ACCEPT

4.2 KiB Raw Blame History