Getting Started with Deployment

This tutorial assumes that you have completed the first step (run locally)

💡 tye will use your current credentials for pushing Docker images and accessing kubernetes clusters. If you have configured kubectl with a context already, that's what tye deploy is going to use!

Before we deploy, make sure you have the following ready...

1. Installing docker based on your operating system.

2. A container registry. Docker by default will create a container registry on DockerHub. You could also use Azure Container Registry or another container registry of your choice, like a local registry for testing.

3. A Kubernetes Cluster. There are many different options here, including:

   • Azure Kubernetes Service
   • Kubernetes in Docker Desktop, however it does take up quite a bit of memory on your machine, so use with caution.
   • Minikube
   • K3s, a lightweight single-binary certified Kubernetes distribution from Rancher.
   • Another Kubernetes provider of your choice.

⚠️ If you choose a container registry provided by a cloud provider (other than Dockerhub), you will likely have to take some steps to configure your kubernetes cluster to allow access. Follow the instructions provided by your cloud provider.

Deploying the application

Now that we have our application running locally, let's deploy the application. In this example, we will deploy to Kubernetes by using tye deploy.

1. Deploy to Kubernetes

   Deploy the application by running:

   tye deploy --interactive

   Enter the Container Registry (ex: 'example.azurecr.io' for Azure or 'example' for dockerhub):

   You will be prompted to enter your container registry. This is needed to tag images, and to push them to a location accessible by kubernetes.

   💡 Under the hood tye uses kubectl to execute deployments. In cases where you don't have kubectl installed or it's current context is invalid tye deploy will fail with the following error: "Drats! 'deploy' failed: Cannot apply manifests because kubectl is not installed."

   If you are using dockerhub, the registry name will be your dockerhub username. If you use a standalone container registry (for instance from your cloud provider), the registry name will look like a hostname, eg: example.azurecr.io.

   tye deploy does many different things to deploy an application to Kubernetes. It will:

   • Create a docker image for each project in your application.
   • Push each docker image to your container registry.
   • Generate a Kubernetes Deployment and Service for each project.
   • Apply the generated Deployment and Service to your current Kubernetes context.

2. Test it out!

   You should now see two pods running after deploying.

   kubectl get pods

   NAME                                             READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
   backend-ccfcd756f-xk2q9                          1/1     Running   0          85m
   frontend-84bbdf4f7d-6r5zp                        1/1     Running   0          85m

   You'll have two services in addition to the built-in kubernetes service.

   kubectl get service

   NAME         TYPE        CLUSTER-IP    EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)   AGE
   backend      ClusterIP   10.0.147.87   <none>        80/TCP    11s
   frontend     ClusterIP   10.0.20.168   <none>        80/TCP    14s
   kubernetes   ClusterIP   10.0.0.1      <none>        443/TCP   3d5h

   You can visit the frontend application by port forwarding to the frontend service.

   kubectl port-forward svc/frontend 5000:80

   Now navigate to http://localhost:5000 to view the frontend application running on Kubernetes. You should see the list of weather forecasts just like when you were running locally.

   💡 Currently tye does not provide a way to expose pods/services to the public internet. We'll add features related to Ingress in future releases.

   ⚠️ Currently tye does not automatically enable TLS within the cluster, and so communication takes place over HTTP instead of HTTPS. This is typical way to deploy services in kubernetes - we may look to enable TLS as an option or by default in the future.

Exploring tye.yaml

Tye has a optional configuration file (tye.yaml) to allow customizing settings. If you want to use tye deploy as part of a CI/CD system, it's expected that you'll have a tye.yaml.

1. Scaffolding tye.yaml

   Run the tye init command in the microservices directory to generate a default tye.yaml

   tye init

   The contents of tye.yaml should look like:

   # tye application configuration file
   # read all about it at https://github.com/dotnet/tye
   #
   # when you've given us a try, we'd love to know what you think:
   #    <survey link>
   #
   name: microservice
   services:
   - name: frontend
     project: frontend/frontend.csproj
   - name: backend
     project: backend/backend.csproj

   The top level scope (like the name node) is where global settings are applied.

   tye.yaml lists all of the application's services under the services node. This is the place for per-service configuration.

   See schema for more details about tye.yaml.

   💡 We provide a json-schema for tye.yaml and some editors support json-schema for completion and validation of yaml files. See json-schema for instructions.

2. Adding a container registry to tye.yaml

   Based on what container registry you configured, add the following line in the tye.yaml file:

   registry: <registry_name>

   If you are using dockerhub, the registry_name will your dockerhub username. If you use a standalone container registry (for instance from your cloud provider), the registry_name will look like a hostname, eg: example.azurecr.io.

   Now it's possible to use tye deploy without --interactive since the registry is stored as part of configuration.

   ❓ This step may not make much sense if you're using tye.yaml to store a personal Dockerhub username. A more typical use case would be storing the name of a private registry for use in a CI/CD system.

Undeploying the application

After deploying and playing around with the application, you may want to remove all resources associated from the Kubernetes cluster. You can remove resources by running:

tye undeploy

This will remove all deployed resources. If you'd like to see what resources would be deleted, you can run:

tye undeploy --what-if

Next Steps

Now that you are able to deploy an application to Kubernetes, learn how to add a non-project dependency to tye with the next step (add Redis).