Bootstrapping a Kubernetes cluster is easy, rolling it out to nearly 200 engineering teams and operating it at scale is a challenge. In this talk, we are presenting our approach to Kubernetes provisioning on AWS, operations and developer experience for our growing Zalando Technology department. We will highlight in the context of Kubernetes: AWS service integrations, our IAM/OAuth infrastructure, cluster autoscaling, continuous delivery and general developer experience. The talk will cover our most important learnings and we will openly share failure stories. Presented on 2017-09-28 at AWS Tech Community Days in Cologne.

1. AWS TECH COMMUNITY DAYS
2017-09-28
HENNING JACOBS
@try_except_
Kubernetes on AWS
@ZalandoTech

2. 2
ZALANDO
15 markets
6 fulfillment centers
21 million active customers
3.6 billion € net sales 2016
200 million visits per month
13,000 employees in Europe

3. 3
ZALANDO TECHNOLOGY
HOME-BREWED,
CUTTING-EDGE
& SCALABLE
technology solutions
1,800
employees from
tech locations
+ HQs in Berlin6
77
nations
help our brand to
WIN ONLINE

4. 4
ZALANDO TECH’S
INFRASTRUCTURE

5. 5
FOUR ERAS AT ZALANDO TECH
ZOMCATPHP STUPS KUBERNETES
2010 2015 2016
Data center
WAR
AWS
Docker
Cloud Formation
Low level (AWS API)
AWS
Docker
Kubernetes manifest
High abstraction level
Data center
PHP files

6. 6
LARGE SCALE?

8. 8
KUBERNETES:
ARCHITECTURE

9. 9
KUBERNETES ON AWS: CONTEXT
200 engineering teams
30 prod. clusters
AWS/STUPS
Dockerized apps
No manual operations
Reliability
Autoscaling
Seamless migration

10. 10
ISOLATED AWS ACCOUNTS
Internet
*.abc.example.org *.xyz.example.org
Product ABC Product XYZ
EC2
LBLB

11. 11
KUBERNETES ON AWS

12. 12
DEPLOYMENT

13. 13
DEPLOYMENT CONFIGURATION
.
├── deploy/apply
│ ├── deployment.yaml # K8s Deployment
│ ├── credentials.yaml # K8s TPR
│ ├── ingress.yaml # K8s Ingress
│ └── service.yaml # K8s Service
└── delivery.yaml # pipeline config

14. 14
INGRESS.YAML
apiVersion: extensions/v1beta1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
name: "..."
spec:
rules:
# DNS name your application should be exposed on
- host: "myapp.foo.example.org"
http:
paths:
- backend:
serviceName: "myapp"
servicePort: 80

15. 15
CONTINUOUS DELIVERY PLATFORM

16. 16
CDP: APPLY

17. 17
CDP: OPTIONAL APPROVAL

18. 18
AWS INTEGRATION

19. 19
CLOUD FORMATION VIA CI/CD
.
├── deploy/apply
│ ├── deployment.yaml # K8s Deployment
│ ├── cf-iam-role.yaml # AWS IAM Role
│ ├── cf-rds.yaml # AWS RDS Database
│ ├── kube-ingress.yaml # K8s Ingress
│ ├── kube-secret.yaml # K8s Secret
│ └── kube-service.yaml # K8s Service
└── delivery.yaml # CI/CD config

20. 20
ASSIGNING AWS IAM ROLE TO POD
kind: Deployment
spec:
template:
metadata:
annotations:
# annotation for kube2iam
iam.amazonaws.com/role: "app-myapp-role"
spec:
containers:
- name: ...
...
https://github.com/jtblin/kube2iam
⇒ AWS SDKs just work as expected

21. 21
OAUTH / IAM
INTEGRATION

22. 22
SERVICE TO SERVICE AUTHNZ
Kubernetes Cluster
https://resource-server.example.org/protected
HTTP/1.1 401 Unauthorized
{
"message": "Authorization required"
}

23. 23
CREDENTIAL PROVIDER

24. 24
USING THE OAUTH CREDENTIALS
#!/bin/bash
secret=$(cat /creds/mytok-token-secret)
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $secret"
https://resource-server.example.org/protected

25. 25
CHALLENGES

26. 26
1. Getting Started
2. Stability
3. Onboarding
4. User Experience
CHALLENGES

27. 27
CHALLENGE 1:
GETTING STARTED

28. 28
GETTING STARTED
https://github.com/hjacobs/kubernetes-on-aws-users

29. 29
GETTING STARTED
https://github.com/hjacobs/kubernetes-on-aws-users

30. 30
CLUSTER PROVISIONING

31. 31
CLUSTER PROVISIONING
• Two Cloud Formation stacks
• Master & worker ASGs + etcd
• Nodes w/ Container Linux
• K8s manifests applied separately
• kube-system Deployments
• DaemonSets

32. 32
GETTING STARTED
Goal: use Kubernetes API as primary interface for AWS
• Mate, External DNS
• Kubernetes Ingress Controller for AWS
• kube2iam
⇒ we wrote new components
to achieve our goal

33. 33
INGRESS CONTROLLER
https://github.com/zalando-incubator/kube-ingress-aws-controller / https://github.com/kubernetes-incubator/external-dns

34. 34
GETTING STARTED
Other questions we asked ourselves..
• Single AZ vs. Multi AZ?
• Federation?
• Overlay network?
• Authnz?

35. 35
GETTING STARTED
Other questions we asked ourselves..
• Single AZ vs. Multi AZ? ⇒ Multi AZ
• Federation? ⇒ No, not ready yet
• Overlay network? ⇒ Flannel, “rock solid”
• Authnz? ⇒ OAuth, webhook

36. 36
CHALLENGE 2:
STABILITY

37. 37
CLUSTER
UPDATES

38. 38
STABILITY: AWS RATE LIMITS
• Ran into the same trap twice (Mate & Ingress Ctrl)
• Kubernetes core causes many calls (e.g. EBS)
• Monitoring (ZMON) needs to poll AWS
⇒ One of our biggest pain points with AWS
(and all workarounds are hard and/or ugly)

39. 39
STABILITY: LIMIT RANGE
kubectl describe limitrange
Name: limits
Namespace: default
Type Resource Min Max Default Req Default Limit Max Limit/Request Ratio
---- -------- --- --- ----------- ------------- -----------------------
Container memory - 64Gi 100Mi 1Gi -
Container cpu - 16 100m 3 -
http://kubernetes-on-aws.readthedocs.io/en/latest/admin-guide/kubernetes-in-production.html#resources
⇒ Mitigate errors on OSI layer 8 ;-)

41. Recommended: The 5 Whys
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_Whys

42. ON CALL

43. 43
CHALLENGE 3:
ONBOARDING

44. 44
ONBOARDING
• Many new concepts to grasp vs. 200 teams
• Kubernetes Training (2h)
• Documentation
• Recorded Friday Demos
• Support Channels (chat, mail)

45. 45
CHALLENGE 4:
USER EXPERIENCE

46. 46
USER EXPERIENCE
• Continuous Delivery Platform (delivery.yaml)
• Juggling with K8s and CF YAMLs
• Inconsistent state, troubleshooting

47. 47
KUBERNETES
VS.
AWS ECS

48. 48
AWS API
Tasks, Services
Static AWS API
Blox
Operating worker nodes
Vendor community/support
AWS only
WHY NOT ECS?
Declarative API (fast & no rate limits)
High level abstractions (Ingress, CronJob)
Extensible API (e.g. TPR)
Batteries included (DaemonSet, StatefulSet)
Operating etcd, master & worker nodes
Huge community
Run anywhere
⟺
⟺
⟺
⟺
⟺
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⟺
disclaimer: incomplete and opinionated ;-)

49. https://github.com/hjacobs/kube-ops-view

50. 50
LINKS
Running Kubernetes in Production on AWS
http://kubernetes-on-aws.readthedocs.io/en/latest/admin-guide/kubernetes-in-production.html
Kube AWS Ingress Controller
https://github.com/zalando-incubator/kube-ingress-aws-controller
External DNS
https://github.com/kubernetes-incubator/external-dns
PostgreSQL Operator
https://github.com/zalando-incubator/postgres-operator
Zalando Cluster Configuration
https://github.com/zalando-incubator/kubernetes-on-aws
List of Organizations using Kubernetes on AWS
https://github.com/hjacobs/kubernetes-on-aws-users

51. QUESTIONS?
HENNING JACOBS
DEDICATED OWNER
DEVELOPER PRODUCTIVITY
henning@zalando.de
@try_except_
Illustrations by @01k