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Overview

This document provides a comprehensive guide for deploying the GoFast application onto new servers using Kubernetes. The deployment strategy involves building Docker images, pushing them to the GitHub Container Registry (GHCR), and then deploying these images to a Kubernetes cluster. This guide explains how to set up two separate systems:
  • Production (live for users, called release)
  • Staging (for testing, called release-candidate)
You’ll need to follow this guide’s steps twice: once for release and once for release-candidate. Each will use different settings. The ultimate aim is to establish a fully automated CI/CD pipeline leveraging GitHub Actions. This pipeline will automatically build, test, and deploy the GoFast application based on the type of GitHub Release created:
  • Creating a Release (e.g., v1.0.0) in the GitHub repository triggers a deployment to the release (production) environment.
  • Creating a Pre-release (e.g., v1.0.0-rc.1) triggers a deployment to the release-candidate (staging) environment.
The guide is structured into two main phases: setting up the Kubernetes cluster and configuring the GitHub Actions CI/CD pipeline. Important: Run all commands from the kube directory.

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Prerequisites

Ensure the following tools are installed: You’ll need a server with root access, accessible via SSH:
  • Production/Staging server (e.g. 12.34.56.78)
Set up domains/subdomains:
  • User Service (e.g. user.gofast.live)
  • Admin Service (e.g. admin.gofast.live)
  • Client Service (e.g. client.gofast.live)
  • Monitoring (e.g. grafana.gofast.live)
These domains should resolve to the corresponding server IP addresses: 
user.gofast.live -> 12.34.56.78
admin.gofast.live -> 12.34.56.78
client.gofast.live -> 12.34.56.78
grafana.gofast.live -> 12.34.56.78
Include AAAA records if using IPv6.

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Configure Environment Variables

You have two options to set the environment variables:
  1. Fill in the .env file with your secrets.
  2. Pass the secrets as environment variables when running the scripts (preferred).
GITHUB_CLIENT_ID=your_id \
GITHUB_CLIENT_SECRET=your_secret \
... (other variables) \
sh setup.sh

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Setup Kubernetes Cluster

  1. Run the setup script:
sh setup.sh
This script will:
  • Install K3s on the server.
  • Configure the Kubernetes cluster and set up the kubeconfig file.
  • Install Helm and the necessary charts.
  • Create the necessary Kubernetes secrets.
  • Set up the PostgreSQL database (CloudNativePG) with an automated backup system.
  • Set up Monitoring using:
    • OpenTelemetry Auto Instrumentation for Go
    • Opentelemetry Collector
    • Victoriametrics
    • Victorialogs
    • Tempo
    • Grafana with pre-configured datasources and dashboards.
  • Set up the PubSub service.
  • Set up the CronJob service.
  • Deploy the User, Admin, and Client services and their respective Ingress resources.

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Important Note

The deployment will fail, because we didn’t build the images yet. The CI/CD pipeline will handle this automatically in the next step.

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Setup GitHub Actions CI/CD

  1. In your GitHub repository, navigate to Settings > Environments and click ‘New environment’ to create two environments:
    • release for production environment
    • release-candidate for staging environment
  2. Make sure you are using the correct context: 
kubectl config use-context YOUR_CONTEXT
  1. Copy the kubeconfig file:
cat $HOME/.kube/config
  1. Paste the kubeconfig file into the KUBE_CONFIG secret.
  2. Save these secrets and GitHub environment variables in the GitHub repository:
    • DB_NAME, DB_USER, DB_PASSWORD
    • PRIVATE_KEY_PEM and PUBLIC_KEY_PEM (generated using scripts/keys.sh)
  3. Modify the .github/workflows/release.yml to match your environments and services.
  4. Ensure the image names used when running kube/setup.sh match those defined in the .github/workflows/release.yml file.

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Deploy

With the setup complete, the CI/CD pipeline will automatically build the images and deploy them to the Kubernetes cluster. To trigger a deployment, create a new Release or Pre-release in your GitHub repository, as detailed in the Overview.

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Framework Specific Instructions

For the Next.js and Vue.js clients, we need to update the build environment variables.
  • NEXT_PUBLIC_CLIENT_URL
  • NEXT_PUBLIC_USER_URL
  • VITE_CLIENT_URL
  • VITE_USER_URL

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Google Cloud SQL Setup

  1. Go to the Google Cloud Console, IAM & Admin > Service Accounts, and create a service account with the Cloud SQL Client role.
  2. Create and download the service account key, save it as kube/gcp-sa-key.json. Add the key to your GitHub repository secrets as GCP_SA_KEY.
  3. Enable the Cloud SQL Admin API.
  4. Go to Cloud SQL > Instances, create a new instance, and select PostgreSQL as the database type.
  5. Create a PostgreSQL database and user. Save the database name, user, and password as DB_NAME, DB_USER, and DB_PASSWORD respectively.
  6. Copy the SQL instance connection name (e.g. project-id:region:instance-name) as CLOUD_SQL_CONNECTION_NAME.
  • kube/setup.sh - Uncomment the Google Cloud SQL secrets and comment the CloudNativePG secrets.
  • kube/config/service-user.yaml - Uncomment the Google SQL Proxy configuration.
  • .github/workflows/migration.yml - Uncomment the Google Cloud SQL section and comment the CloudNativePG section.