Use Online Boutique with Kustomize

This page contains instructions on deploying variations of the Online Boutique sample application using Kustomize. Each variations is designed as a Kustomize component, so multiple variations can be composed together in the deployment.

What is Kustomize?

Kustomize is a Kubernetes configuration management tool that allows users to customize their manifest configurations without duplication. Its commands are built into kubectl as apply -k. More information on Kustomize can be found on the official Kustomize website.

Prerequisites

Optionally, install the kustomize binary to avoid manually editing a kustomization.yaml file. Online Boutique's instructions will often use kustomize edit (like kustomize edit add component components/some-component), but you can skip these commands and instead add components manually to the /kustomize/kustomization.yaml file.

You need to have a Kubernetes cluster where you will deploy the Online Boutique's Kubernetes manifests. To set up a GKE (Google Kubernetes Engine) cluster, you can follow the instruction in the root /README.md.

Deploy Online Boutique with Kustomize

1. From the root folder of this repository, navigate to the kustomize/ directory.

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   cd kustomize/
   

2. See what the default Kustomize configuration defined by kustomize/kustomization.yaml will generate (without actually deploying them yet).

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   kubectl kustomize .
   

3. Apply the default Kustomize configuration (kustomize/kustomization.yaml).

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   kubectl apply -k .
   

4. Wait for all Pods to show STATUS of Running.

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   kubectl get pods
   

   The output should be similar to the following:

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   NAME                                     READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
   adservice-76bdd69666-ckc5j               1/1     Running   0          2m58s
   cartservice-66d497c6b7-dp5jr             1/1     Running   0          2m59s
   checkoutservice-666c784bd6-4jd22         1/1     Running   0          3m1s
   currencyservice-5d5d496984-4jmd7         1/1     Running   0          2m59s
   emailservice-667457d9d6-75jcq            1/1     Running   0          3m2s
   frontend-6b8d69b9fb-wjqdg                1/1     Running   0          3m1s
   loadgenerator-665b5cd444-gwqdq           1/1     Running   0          3m
   paymentservice-68596d6dd6-bf6bv          1/1     Running   0          3m
   productcatalogservice-557d474574-888kr   1/1     Running   0          3m
   recommendationservice-69c56b74d4-7z8r5   1/1     Running   0          3m1s
   shippingservice-6ccc89f8fd-v686r         1/1     Running   0          2m58s
   

   Note: It may take 2-3 minutes before the changes are reflected on the deployment.

5. Access the web frontend in a browser using the frontend's EXTERNAL_IP.

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   kubectl get service frontend-external | awk '{print $4}'
   

   Note: you may see <pending> while GCP provisions the load balancer. If this happens, wait a few minutes and re-run the command.

Deploy Online Boutique variations with Kustomize

Here is the list of the variations available as Kustomize components that you could leverage:

• Change to the Cymbal Shops Branding
  • Changes all Online Boutique-related branding to Google Cloud's fictitious company — Cymbal Shops. The code adds/enables an environment variable CYMBAL_BRANDING in the frontend service.
• Integrate with Google Cloud Operations
  • Enables Monitoring (Stats), Tracing, and Profiler for various services within Online Boutique. The code adds the appropriare environment variables (ENABLE_STATS, ENABLE_TRACING, DISABLE_PROFILER) for each YAML config file.
• Integrate with Memorystore (Redis)
  • The default Online Boutique deployment uses the in-cluster redis database for storing the contents of its shopping cart. The Memorystore deployment variation overrides the default database with its own Memorystore (Redis) database. These changes directly affect cartservice.
• Integrate with Spanner
  • The default Online Boutique deployment uses the in-cluster redis database for storing the contents of its shopping cart. The Spanner deployment variation overrides the default database with its own Spanner database. These changes directly affect cartservice.
• Integrate with AlloyDB
  • The default Online Boutique deployment uses the in-cluster redis database for storing the contents of its shopping cart. The AlloyDB deployment variation overrides the default database with its own AlloyDB database. These changes directly affect cartservice.
• Secure with Network Policies
  • Deploy fine granular NetworkPolicies for Online Boutique.
• Update the registry name of the container images
• Update the image tag of the container images
• Add an image tag suffix to the container images
• Do not expose the frontend publicly
• Set the frontend to manage only one single shared session
• Configure Istio service mesh resources

Select variations

To customize Online Boutique with its variations, you need to update the default kustomize/kustomization.yaml file. You could do that manually, use sed, or use the kustomize edit command like illustrated below.

Use kustomize edit to select variations

Here is an example with the Cymbal Shops Branding variation, from the kustomize/ folder, run the command below:

kustomize edit add component components/cymbal-branding

You could now combine it with other variations, like for example with the Google Cloud Operations variation:

kustomize edit add component components/google-cloud-operations

Deploy selected variations

Like explained earlier, you can locally render these manifests by running kubectl kustomize . as well as deploying them by running kubectl apply -k ..

So for example, the associated kustomization.yaml could look like:

apiVersion: kustomize.config.k8s.io/v1beta1
kind: Kustomization
resources:
- base
components:
- components/cymbal-branding
- components/google-cloud-operations

Use remote Kustomize targets

Kustomize allows you to reference public remote resources so the kustomization.yaml could look like:

apiVersion: kustomize.config.k8s.io/v1beta1
kind: Kustomization
resources:
- github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/microservices-demo/kustomize/base
components:
- github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/microservices-demo/kustomize/components/cymbal-branding
- github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/microservices-demo/kustomize/components/google-cloud-operations

Learn more about Kustomize remote targets.