Installing on Kubernetes
IBM™ UrbanCode Velocity is designed as a containerized application and can be installed in a Kubernetes cluster, which is a supported platform for production instances of IBM UrbanCode Velocity.
See the Software Product Compatibility Reports (SPCR) for the latest system requirements documentation for IBM UrbanCode Velocity. MongoDB storage requirements are found on SPCR and on this page.
Because of extensive variability of Kubernetes environments and versions, careful consideration and planning should be performed in preparation for installing IBM UrbanCode Velocity for your enterprise use.
Running the IBM UrbanCode Velocity installer produces a Helm chart customized for your environment that is then applied to the Kubernetes instance for creating the Kubernetes resources. Complete product installation requires a separately administered and installed MongoDB database for data persistence.
Secure values stored in a JSON file are automatically added to the home directory of the user during Helm Chart Configuration. The directory is hidden and should not be modified or removed by the user. Because the values are located in the user's home directory, future upgrades must be performed by the user of the original installation. The encryption key encrypts the secure values in the JSON file. If a user uses the default encryption key when installing the product, future upgrades should proceed normally. If a non-default encryption key is provided for the initial installation, the user must also provide that encryption key for future upgrades. The values stored in the hidden directory are accessed by the installer on any future upgrades, and changes to the secure values will prevent upgraded instances from accessing existing data.
Prerequisites
-
Consult software product compatibility report for the system requirements and ensure you have identified the required environment for installation of IBM UrbanCode Velocity. See Software Product Compatibility Reports (SPCR).
-
Kubernetes Cluster-level permissions: IBM UrbanCode Velocity's Helm chart require cluster-level permissions to create a few
CustomResourceDefinitions
. To get permissions for authorization, consult your Kubernetes administator to help complete the final Helm chart installation phase. See cluster-level permissions FAQs. - MongoDB:
It is the customer's responsibility to provide enterprise database
administration of the MongoDB database in production scenarios.
Consult the system
requirements for further details.
IBM UrbanCode Velocity supports MongoDB Enterprise and Community Edition. Install the MongoDB database for the required
environment.
For Kubernetes installation, we recommend Bitnami's MongoDB image. We recommend to allocate a dedicated resource for MongoDB database for the better performance of IBM UrbanCode Velocity.
Below are sample commands for installing Bitnami's MongoDB version 4.2,
helm repo add bitnami https://charts.bitnami.com/bitnami
helm install velocity-mongo\ --set persistence.enabled=true\ --set auth.rootPassword=<CUSTOM_ROOT_PASSWORD>\ --set image.tag=4.2\ bitnami/mongodb
Note: See Bitnami documentation for complete configuration details.Note: Ensure the MongoDB user you plan to use for authorization has full permission privileges.helm repo add bitnami https://charts.bitnami.com/bitnami
- (Optional) Ingress Controller: Enable ingress
controller for accessing the server outside the Kubernetes cluster. Verify
the default installation of ingress controller on cluster of Kubernetes
platform.
We recommend Bitnami's Nginx Ingress controller image for IBM UrbanCode Velocity installation.
Below are sample commands for installing Bitnami's Nginx Ingress controller
helm repo add bitnami https://charts.bitnami.com/bitnami
helm install velocity-ingress\ bitnami/nginx-ingress-controller
Note: See Bitnami documentation for complete configuration details. - Download the installation file for your environment and
access key to authorize the configuration and installation. You can download
the installation file from the following location,
- IBM Fix Central
Login and navigate to the IBM UrbanCode Velocity product and select the required version. Download IBM UrbanCode Velocity installer and access key.
Note: IBM UrbanCode Velocity does not perform malware scanning on the installed files. It is recommended that end users implement malware scanning as appropriate for their environment before installing and running the IBM UrbanCode Velocity in their environment. - IBM Fix Central
Helm chart generation
The Helm chart generation is a phase to run IBM UrbanCode Velocity installer and generate the customized Helm chart to run on your Kubernetes cluster.
Copy the IBM UrbanCode Velocity installer and access key to a directory where you want to run the executable file and generate the Helm chart. As mentioned earlier, we strongly recommend to store the details of the installation directory and the user performs installation for the future upgrades.
Download the file that needs for your environment.
- Linux: velocity-ibm-install-<version>-linux
- Windows: velocity-ibm-install-<version>-win.exe
- Mac OS: velocity-ibm-install-<version>-macos
sudo chmod +x
.Run the installed executable file and respond to the prompts as described in the following steps:
-
At the Please enter your IBM UrbanCode Velocity access key prompt, enter the randomly generated access key.
-
At the Do you accept the license? [Y,n] prompt, enter Y to accept the license, Otherwise, the installer will immediately terminate.
-
At the Enter your encryption key or leave blank to use the default. Key must be at least 8 characters prompt, enter your encryption key or leave blank to use the default encryption key.Note: The encryption key must be at least 8 characters. Save the encryption key to use for further upgrades.
-
At the Choose the platform prompt, select
Helm
. -
At the Enter the location where the IBM UrbanCode Velocity files will be installed prompt, enter the location where you want to install the product files.
Files are copied to the specified directory in a subdirectory named
product_version_number
. -
At the What version of MongoDB are you using? prompt, select the version of the MongoDB that you want to use as database for IBM UrbanCode Velocity installation.
-
At the Enter the initial password for the admin user prompt, enter your admin password.
-
At the Please enter the hostname where you will run IBM UrbanCode Velocity prompt, enter the host name where users can access the Web UI.
The host name must resolve to a name on your DNS server, or in the server's hosts file. On Linux, the file location is etc/hosts; on Windows, the location is C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts.Note: You cannot use localhost as the hostname. If you do not have any host names defined, for testing purposes you can use127.0.0.1.nip.io
. This location will redirect back to127.0.0.1
, which is typically used by localhost. -
At the Enter the desired port where IBM UrbanCode Velocity will run prompt, enter the port number for the Web UI.
-
(Applicable for Offline only) At the Choose how to receive offline Docker images for IBM UrbanCode Velocity prompt, specify the remote registry where the images will be uploaded.Note: If your remote registry requires authorization, follow the silent install directions in the advanced usage section.
Completion of the installer will generate a Helm chart that you will run on your Kubernetes cluster's master node in the next steps.
Helm chart installation
-
Copy the generated Helm chart to the master Kubernetes node.
-
Optional At this point, we recommend customizing Helm chart as necessary for advanced configuration, such as SSL certificate, node affinity or resource limit configuration. For additional directions, see Advanced Usage section.
-
Run the following command to install IBM UrbanCode Velocity:
helm install velocity ./velocity-<version>-helm.tgz\ --set license=accept\ --set access.key=access_key\ --set mongo.url=mongodb url
After running the command, Kubernetes displays the installation status. Installation is completed when the status of all containers is running. To refresh the status of container, run
kubectl get pods
command. - In browser, navigate to
IBM UrbanCode Velocity at theURL, you specified in the helm chart.
The default username is admin and the default password is what you specified in installer.
Advanced usage
Required Helm parameters
Parameter | Comments | |
---|---|---|
license | Specify accept to agree to the IBM License
Agreement. |
|
access.key | Specify the product access key obtained from Fix Central. | |
Mongo.url | username | The user ID to authenticate with the MongoDB database. For
example, mongo . |
password | The password to authenticate with the MongoDB database. For
example, mongo . |
|
authSource | If you connect to an authenticated MongoDB database, you can
use authSource to specify the database where authenticated users
are defined. For example, if the admin user is defined in the
admin database, you can use
authSource=admin . |
|
port | The port number for the MongoDB database. Use the value shown
in the example, which is 27017 . |
|
service_name | The MongoDB URL or the MongoDB service name if it is running
within the Kubernetes cluster. For example,
velocity-mongo . |
|
database_name | The name of the database to be used by
IBM UrbanCode Velocity. For example, velocity . |
--set mongo.url=mongodb://mongo:mongo@velocity-mongo:27017
Optional Helm parameters
You can use the optional helm parameters to perform advanced
functionality and silent installs. To identify optional parameters run the
helm show values velocity-<version>-helm.tgz
Parameter | Description | Comments |
---|---|---|
loglevel | The level of Log4j messages to display in the log file. | Possible values are ALL, DEBUG, INFO, WARN, ERROR, FATAL, OFF. The default value is ALL. |
SSL certificates
If your organization required an SSL certificate, create an SSL certificate and key.
Store the SSL certificate and key in
velocity-custom-tls-secret.yaml
file.
-
Generate a public key and a private certificate: For Linux operating system, you can use OpenSSL to generate the certificate and key. For Windows operating system, use Git to get OpenSSL. Git installs a copy in Program Files\Git\usr\bin directory. The following example creates a certificate with name certificate.pem.
-
With the SSL certificate and key available, run the following command:
kubectl create secret tls velocity-custom-tls --key <key.pem>\ --cert certificate.crt
- Run
kubectl apply -f velocity-custom-tls-secret.yaml
command to apply to IBM UrbanCode Velocity installation.
After the successful process, the following message is displayed.
secret/velocity-custom-tls created
Node allocation
-
Node 1: Inter-service communication media like RabbitMQ with dedicated memory to save your data.
-
Node 2: Value stream metrics calculations such as cycle time, lead time, throughput, and deployment frequency.
-
Node 3: Plugin to fetch new data for keeping IBM UrbanCode Velocity in sync with different tool chains.
-
Node 4: MongoDB deployment (provided and managed by the user) which is shared by all services and for better performance in handling heavy workload.
The four node distribution is to ensure resource-intensive actions not impact UI and API which may cause performance issues. You can add the “workload-class” labels (background, transactional, and external) to any one node. On startup. Kubernetes will automatically schedule each service across the available nodes in a way to minimize resource competition and maximize performance.
We recommend allocating the node properly improves performance and provides stability to the application, Proper node allocations support 30% increase in the performance and stability across the value streams, pipeline, and release functional areas.
Resource limits
To enforce limits on Argo resources, modify the executor parameter in the velocity/templates/workflow-controller-configmap.yaml
data:
config: |
containerRuntimeExecutor: kubelet
namespace: velocity
executor:
resources:
limits:
cpu: 1
memory: 2Gi
requests:
cpu: 50m
memory: 512Mi