Disclaimer

WARNING: This is not a supported deployment option for GHES, and may or may not work with the latest version of GHES, Kubernetes, or any of the required components.

Deploying GitHub Enterprise Server on Kubernetes (experiment)

Steps for deploying GitHub Enterprise Server on Kubernetes with KubeVirt.

IMPORTANT: See disclaimer above.

Requirements

At a minimum the GitHub Enterprise Server VM requires 16GB of memory, 250GB of storage, and must be run in a host machine (or virtual machine) that supports hardware virtualization.

These are firm requirements even for running a basic test/evaluation with a single user.

Create a Kubernetes cluster

The first step is getting a Kubernetes cluster up and running. There are different options for where this cluster runs, but the best options are locally using Minikube or on Azure Kubernetes Service.

Pick one of the following options:

Other attempts were made to deploy via AWS EKS and Packet were abandoned due to technical limitions (lack of hardware virtualization support) and problems unrelated to GHES.

Once you have a Kubernetes cluster up, continue with the steps below.

Deploy KubeVirt and CDI

Two technologies are required on top of Kubernetes:

Deploy CDI

export CDI_VERSION=$(curl -s https://github.com/kubevirt/containerized-data-importer/releases/latest | grep -o "v[0-9]\.[0-9]*\.[0-9]*")

export CDI_DOWNLOAD_URL=https://github.com/kubevirt/containerized-data-importer/releases/download/$CDI_VERSION

kubectl create -f ${CDI_DOWNLOAD_URL}/cdi-operator.yaml
kubectl create -f ${CDI_DOWNLOAD_URL}/cdi-operator-cr.yaml

Deploy Kubevirt

Deploy the operator

export KUBEVIRT_VERSION="v0.18.0"
export KUBEVIRT_DOWNLOAD_URL=https://github.com/kubevirt/kubevirt/releases/download/${KUBEVIRT_VERSION}/

kubectl create -f ${KUBEVIRT_DOWNLOAD_URL}/kubevirt-operator.yaml

Create the configmap / enable data volumes feature gate

You need to create a kubevirt-config configmap that enables the DataVolumes feature gate (this is required for using data volumes).

kubectl create configmap kubevirt-config -n kubevirt --from-literal feature-gates=DataVolumes

Deploy KubeVirt

kubectl create -f ${KUBEVIRT_DOWNLOAD_URL}/kubevirt-cr.yaml

Verify that kubevirt is up and operational:

kubectl get pods -n kubevirt

Once all pods have stared and are operational, proceed to the next step.

Deploy the GitHub Enterprise Server VM

Create the data volumes

Two persistent data volumes are needed for the GHES VM:

To create these two data volumes:

export GHES_DOWNLOAD_URL=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/willsmythe/ghes-kubevirt/master

For Minikube

kubectl apply -f ${GHES_DOWNLOAD_URL}/ghes-vm-data-volumes.yml

On Azure AKS

kubectl apply -f ${GHES_DOWNLOAD_URL}/azure/ghes-vm-data-volumes-premium.yml

(this creates the volumes on managed premimum SSD drives versus standard SSD)

Check that the persistent volumes have been created and the import (for root) has completed before creating the VM resource:

kubectl describe dv ghes-data-dv
kubectl describe dv ghes-root-dv

Note: creating ghes-root-dv will take 5-10 minutes.

Create the VM resource

kubectl apply -f ${GHES_DOWNLOAD_URL}/ghes-vm.yml

Check the status of the VMI:

kubectl get vmi ghes-vm

Or for more details including events:

kubectl describe vmi ghes-vm

Connect to the VM

To VNC to the VM you first need to install virtctl:

curl -L -o virtctl \
    https://github.com/kubevirt/kubevirt/releases/download/${KUBEVIRT_VERSION}/virtctl-${KUBEVIRT_VERSION}-darwin-amd64

chmod +x virtctl

To open a VNC session to the VM:

./virtctl vnc ghes-vm

virtctl only supports a handful of VNC clients. If it does not find one, the command will fail. One workaround is to create a remote-viewer.bat (see example) or remote-viewer shell script and add it to your $PATH. Your script should take the single argument (vnc://ipaddress:port), adapt it, and launch your preferred VNC program.

Configure the instance

Before you can access the GitHub Enteprise Server setup wizard (to finish the setup process), you need to enable access to certain TCP ports.

Enable access to the VM

This exposes certain ports on the VM (80, 443, 8443):

kubectl apply -f ${GHES_DOWNLOAD_URL}/ghes-vm-services.yml

Check the status of the external IP address:

kubectl get service ghes-vm-http-service

Run the setup experience

Once an external IP address has been established for the ghes-vm-http-service service, navigate to the GitHub Enterprise Server setup wizard:

http://{publicIP}/setup

This may take a minute, and you may be prompted about SSL cert problems.

Cleanup

To stop the VM:

./virtctl stop ghes-vm

This doesn’t delete any data volumes, which means you can restart the VM and pick back up with all of your data:

./virtctl start ghes-vm

Once you are done, the easist way to cleanup the VM and all other resources is to simply delete the Kubernetes cluster you created. For example, on Minikube you can run: minikube delete -p kubevirt.

Troubleshooting