end-to-end-demo-gce.md

End-to-End Demo deployed to Google Compute Engine

This guide complements End-to-End Demo by providing instructions for deploying the demo to Google Compute Engine. This guide is comprehensive and should get you to an instance running the End-to-End Demo that you may explore.

You will need a Google account and you must have enabled billing in order to pay for the machine type used here.

Environment variables

The following environment variables will be used in the remainder of this guide:

PROJECT=[[YOUR-PROJECT]]
BILLING=[[YOUR-BILLING]]
INSTANCE="akri"      # Or your preferred instance name
TYPE="e2-standard-2" # Or your preferred machine type
ZONE="us-west1-c"    # Or your preferred zone

You may list your billing accounts using gcloud alpha billing accounts list, you will need a value from the column ACCOUNT_ID. Alternatively, if you know you have only one billing account, you may:

BILLING=$(gcloud alpha billing accounts list --format="value(name)")

Optional: Create Google Cloud Platform (GCP) project

If you wish to use an existing Google Cloud Platform (GCP) project, then you should skip this step.

gcloud projects create ${PROJECT}
gcloud beta billing projects link ${PROJECT} \
--billing-account=${BILLING}

gcloud services enable compute.googleapis.com \
--project=${PROJECT}

Install

NOTE You will be billed while this instance is running.

The creation of the Compute Engine instance uses a startup script (link). The script combines all the steps described in the End-to-End Demo.

gcloud compute instances create ${INSTANCE} \
--machine-type=${TYPE} \
--preemptible \
--tags=microk8s,akri,end-to-end-demo \
--image-family=ubuntu-minimal-2004-lts \
--image-project=ubuntu-os-cloud \
--zone=${ZONE} \
--project=${PROJECT} \
--metadata-from-file=startup-script=./scripts/end_to_end_microk8s_demo.sh

NOTE Ensure the startup-script points to the location of the file. If you git cloned akri, the startup script is in the scripts directory.

Optional: Check

You may ssh in to the instance and check the state of the startup script.

gcloud compute ssh ${INSTANCE} \
--zone=${ZONE} \
--project=${PROJECT}

Then, either:

sudo journalctl --unit=google-startup-scripts.service --follow

Or:

tail -f `var/log/syslog`

The script is complete when the following log line appears:

INFO startup-script: service/akri-video-streaming-app created

Access the End-to-End Demo

We need to determine the NodePort of the akri-video-streaming-app service now running on Kubernetes. You can either ssh in to the instance and then run the command to determine the NodePort. Or, you may combine the steps:

COMMAND="\
  sudo microk8s.kubectl get service/akri-video-streaming-app \
  --output=jsonpath='{.spec.ports[?(@.name==\"http\")].nodePort}'"
NODEPORT=$(\
  gcloud compute ssh ${INSTANCE} \
  --zone=${ZONE} \
  --project=${PROJECT} \
  --command="${COMMAND}") && echo ${NODEPORT}

The kubectl command gets the akri-video-stream-app service as JSON and filters the output to determine the NodePort (${NODEPORT}) that's been assigned.

The gcloud compute ssh command runs the kubectl commands against the instance.

Then you can use ssh port-forwarding to forward one of your host's (!) local ports (${HOSTPORT}) to the Kubernetes' service's NodePort ({NODEPORT}):

HOSTPORT=8888

gcloud compute ssh ${INSTANCE} \
--zone=${ZONE} \
--project=${PROJECT} \
--ssh-flag="-L ${HOSTPORT}:localhost:${NODEPORT}

NOTE HOSTPORT can be the same as NODEPORT if this is available on your host.

The port-forwarding only works while the ssh session is running. So, while the previous command is running in one shell, browse the demo's HTTP endpoint:

http://localhost:${HOSTPORT}/

NOTE You'll need to manually replace ${HOSTPORT} with the value (e.g. 8888).

NOTE The terminating / is important.

Tidy-Up

The simplest way to tidy-up is to delete the Compute Engine instance:

gcloud compute instances delete ${INSTANCE} \
--zone=${ZONE} \
--project=${PROJECT}

If you wish to delete the entire Google Cloud Platform project:

gcloud projects delete ${PROJECT}

WARNING Both these commands are irrevocable.