Tectonic Services

Tectonic Services are the applications that are installed into your cluster. These include:

Optional Additional Services

Installing with kubectl

All Tectonic Services run on Kubernetes and are installed with kubectl. We'll use it to install all of the included services, then configure your Tectonic license, and finally configure the Tectonic Console so your users can access it.

If you didn't configure kubectl during cluster installation, follow this guide.

Install Services

Before installing services, make sure you created the tectonic-system namespace from the second step of the deployer guide.

Download the Tectonic Services template and submit it to the cluster:

$ kubectl create -f tectonic-services.yml
replicationcontrollers/tectonic-manager

The Tectonic Services are run within a separate namespace, tectonic-system, in order to group them together and keep them out of your way. You're encouraged to use namespaces for your company's teams, projects or deployment environments.

Install your Tectonic License

Next, we need to install your license in order to complete the installation of the Tectonic Services. You can find your license in your Tectonic account.

The license is stored within the cluster as a Secret, which is a secure way to expose sensitive data to applications in Kubernetes. Your Tectonic License should be pre-formatted as a Secret and should look similar to:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
  name: tectonic-license
  namespace: tectonic-system
type: Opaque
data:
  license: 5SiztAC4BPJo28fhFUy6hjYSQBbyW7Sn2sQg4P7xPA...

Once you've obtained your license, place it in a file called tectonic-license.yml (template) on your local machine.

Now all we need to do is submit the Secret into the cluster:

$ kubectl create -f tectonic-license.yml
secrets/tectonic-license

Install your Tectonic Pull Secret

Kubernetes supports a special type of secret, called a Pull Secret, that is used for pulling containers from a private Docker registry. Tectonic uses this to pull down the containers that run the Tectonic Services.

You can find a pre-generated Pull Secret in your Tectonic account. It should looks similar to:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
  name: tectonic-pull-secret
  namespace: tectonic-system
type: kubernetes.io/dockercfg
data:
  .dockercfg: OVXRFVkVSUyIsCiAgImVtYWlsIjogIiIKIH0KfQ...

Once you've obtained your pull secret, place it in a file called tectonic-pull-secret.yml (template) on your local machine.

Now, like before we submit the Secret into the cluster:

$ kubectl create -f tectonic-pull-secret.yml
secrets/tectonic-pull-secret

Check Your Work

With the license and pull secret in place, the Tectonic Services will be downloaded and configured. This process can take a few minutes to complete.

You can check the if the Tectonic Services were correctly deployed by running:

$ kubectl --namespace=tectonic-system get pods
NAME                             READY     STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
tectonic-console-y84qu           1/1       Running   0          5s
tectonic-manager-a7d9a           1/1       Running   0          7s
tectonic-support-nbyxs           1/1       Running   0          4s

Once the pods reach Running status, everything should be configured properly.

Exposing Tectonic Services to Web Browsers

By default, the Tectonic Services are not exposed outside the cluster. For example, we observed the pod running the Tectonic Console, but we don't have a convenient way to access it. To do this, we can create a Kubernetes Service that exposes the Console, as well as the Identity service it depends on. This step requires careful consideration because it exposes the services directly to the open network.

There are two main ways of configuring a service to expose it outside of the cluster, the NodePort and the LoadBalancer.

Using a NodePort

A feature of a Kubernetes service is a NodePort, which is a mechanism to expose the service on a specific port on every machine in the cluster. You would then browse to the specific port on any machine to load the Console. In addition, using a NodePort will allow any machine in the cluster to function as a backend for a load balancer.

This service definition (template) will expose the Tectonic Console on port 32000, using NodePort:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: tectonic-console-public
  namespace: tectonic-system
spec:
  type: NodePort
  ports:
    - port: 80
      nodePort: 32000
      protocol: TCP
      name: tectonic-console-expose
  selector:
    tectonic-app: console
    tectonic-component: ui

The next definition exposes the Identity Worker on NodePort 30556:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: tectonic-identity
  namespace: tectonic-system
  labels:
    tectonic-app: identity
spec:
  selector:
    tectonic-app: identity
    tectonic-component: worker
  type: NodePort
  ports:
  - protocol: TCP
    port: 5556
    nodePort: 30556

Now, create the service. You'll see a warning about exposing the service to the network:

$ kubectl --namespace=tectonic-system create -f https://tectonic.com/docs/latest/deployer/files/tectonic-console-public.yml
You have exposed your service on an external port on all nodes in your
cluster.  If you want to expose this service to the external internet, you may
need to set up firewall rules for the service port(s) (tcp:32000) to serve traffic.

See http://releases.k8s.io/HEAD/docs/user-guide/services-firewalls.md for more details.
services/tectonic-console-public

Now you should be able to navigate to https://<host>:32000 where "host" is any node in the cluster.

Using a LoadBalancer

If you are using a Kubernetes deployment on Google or AWS and have configured your cloud credentials as a Secret, using the service type "LoadBalancer" will create a new cloud load balancer and expose the service through it. Example (template):

apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: tectonic-console-cloud
  namespace: tectonic-system
spec:
  type: LoadBalancer
  ports:
    - port: 80
      protocol: TCP
      name: tectonic-console-expose
  selector:
    tectonic-app: console
    tectonic-component: ui

$ kubectl --namespace=tectonic-system create -f https://tectonic.com/docs/latest/deployer/files/tectonic-console-cloud.yml
services/tectonic-console-cloud

If you haven't configured your cloud credentials, the service will still be created, but the cloud load balancer won't be created.