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Chapter 2. Tutorial: Deploying an application by using the web console

This tutorial guides you through deploying services to stand up an application called national-parks-app on OpenShift Container Platform that displays a map of national parks across the world. You will use the OpenShift Container Platform web console to complete this tutorial.

To complete this tutorial, you will perform the following steps:

  1. Create a project for the application.

    This step allows your application to be isolated from other cluster user’s workloads.

  2. Grant view permissions.

    This step grants view permissions to interact with the OpenShift API to help discover services and other resources running within the project.

  3. Deploy the front-end application.

    This step deploys the parksmap front-end application, exposes it externally, and scales it up to two instances.

  4. Deploy the back-end application.

    This step deploys the nationalparks back-end application and exposes it externally.

  5. Deploy the database application.

    This step deploys the mongodb-nationalparks MongoDB database, loads data into the database, and sets up the necessary credentials to access the database.

After you complete these steps, you can view the national parks application in a web browser.

2.1. Prerequisites

Before you start this tutorial, ensure that you have the following required prerequisites:

  • You have access to a test OpenShift Container Platform cluster.

    If your organization does not have a cluster to test on, you can request access to the Developer Sandbox to get a trial of OpenShift Container Platform.

  • You have the appropriate permissions, such as the cluster-admin cluster role, to create a project and applications within it.

    If you do not have the required permissions, contact your cluster administrator. You need the self-provisioner role to create a project and the admin role on the project to modify resources in that project.

    If you are using Developer Sandbox, a project is created for you with the required permissions.

  • You have logged in to the OpenShift Container Platform web console.

2.2. Creating a project

A project enables a community of users to organize and manage their content in isolation. Projects are OpenShift Container Platform extensions to Kubernetes namespaces. Projects have additional features that enable user self-provisioning. Each project has its own set of objects, policies, constraints, and service accounts.

Cluster administrators can allow developers to create their own projects. In most cases, you automatically have access to your own projects. Administrators can grant access to other projects as needed.

This procedure creates a new project called user-getting-started. You will use this project throughout the rest of this tutorial.

Important

If you are using Developer Sandbox to complete this tutorial, skip this procedure. A project has already been created for you.

Prerequisites

  • You have logged in to the OpenShift Container Platform web console.

Procedure

  1. Navigate to Home Projects.
  2. Click Create Project.
  3. In the Name field, enter user-getting-started.
  4. Click Create.

2.3. Granting view permissions

OpenShift Container Platform automatically creates several service accounts in every project. The default service account takes responsibility for running the pods. OpenShift Container Platform uses and injects this service account into every pod that launches.

By default, the default service account has limited permissions to interact with the OpenShift API.

As a requirement of the application, you must assign the view role to the default service account to allow it to communicate with the OpenShift API to learn about pods, services, and resources within the project.

Prerequisites

  • You have cluster-admin or project-level admin privileges.

Procedure

  1. Navigate to User Management RoleBindings.
  2. Click Create binding.
  3. In the Name field, enter sa-user-account.

  4. In the Namespace field, search for and select user-getting-started.

    Important

    If you are using a different project, select the name of your project.

  5. In the Role name field, search for and select view.
  6. Under Subject, select ServiceAccount.

  7. In the Subject namespace field, search for and select user-getting-started.

    Important

    If you are using a different project, select the name of your project.

  8. In the Subject name field, enter default.
  9. Click Create.

2.4. Deploying the front-end application

The simplest way to deploy an application in OpenShift Container Platform is to run a provided container image.

The following procedure deploys parksmap, which is the front-end component of the national-parks-app application. The web application displays an interactive map of the locations of national parks across the world.

Procedure

  1. From the Quick create ( fa plus circle ) menu in the upper right corner, click Container images.
  2. Select Image name from external registry and enter quay.io/openshiftroadshow/parksmap:latest.
  3. Scroll to the General section.
  4. In the Application name field, enter national-parks-app.
  5. In the Name field, ensure that the value is parksmap.
  6. Scroll to the Deploy section.
  7. In the Resource type field, ensure that Deployment is selected.

  8. In the Advanced options section, ensure that Create a route is selected.

    By default, services running on OpenShift Container Platform are not accessible externally. You must select this option to create a route so that external clients can access your service.

  9. Click the Labels hyperlink.

    The application code requires certain labels to be set.

  10. Add the following labels to the text area and press Enter after each key/value pair:

    • app=national-parks-app
    • component=parksmap
    • role=frontend
  11. Click Create.

You are redirected to the Topology page where you can see the parksmap deployment in the national-parks-app application.

2.4.1. Viewing pod details

OpenShift Container Platform uses the Kubernetes concept of a pod, which is one or more containers deployed together on one host, and the smallest compute unit that can be defined, deployed, and managed. Pods are the rough equivalent of a machine instance, physical or virtual, to a container.

The Overview panel enables you to access many features of the parksmap deployment. The Details and Resources tabs enable you to scale application pods and check the status of builds, services, and routes.

Prerequisites

  • You have deployed the parksmap front-end application.

Procedure

  1. Navigate to Workloads Topology.

  2. Click the parksmap deployment in the national-parks-app application.

    Figure 2.1. Parksmap deployment

    Topology view of parksmap deployment

    This opens an overview panel with the following tabs:

    • Details: View details about your deployment, edit certain settings, and scale your deployment.
    • Resources: View details for the pods, services, and routes associated with your deployment.
    • Observe: View metrics and events for your deployment.
  3. To view the logs for a pod, select the Resources tab and click View logs next to the parksmap pod.

2.4.2. Scaling up the application

In Kubernetes, a Deployment object defines how an application deploys. In most cases when you deploy an application, OpenShift Container Platform creates the Pod, Service, ReplicaSet, and Deployment resources for you.

When you deploy the parksmap image, a deployment resource is created. In this example, only one pod is deployed. You might want to scale up your application to keep up with user demand or to ensure that your application is always running even if one pod is down.

The following procedure scales the parksmap deployment to use two instances.

Prerequisites

  • You have deployed the parksmap front-end application.

Procedure

  1. Navigate to Workloads Topology and click the parksmap deployment.
  2. Select the Details tab.

  3. Use the up arrow to scale the pod to two instances.

    Figure 2.2. Scaling application

    Scaling pod to two instances
Tip

You can use the down arrow to scale your deployment back down to one pod instance.

2.5. Deploying the back-end application

The following procedure deploys nationalparks, which is the back-end component for the national-parks-app application. The Python application performs 2D geo-spatial queries against a MongoDB database to locate and return map coordinates of all national parks in the world.

Prerequisites

  • You have deployed the parksmap front-end application.

Procedure

  1. From the Quick create ( fa plus circle ) menu in the upper right corner, click Import from Git.

  2. In the Git Repo URL field, enter https://github.com/openshift-roadshow/nationalparks-py.git.

    A builder image is automatically detected, but the import strategy defaults to Dockerfile instead of Python.

  3. Change the import strategy:

    1. Click Edit Import Strategy.
    2. Select Builder Image.
    3. Select Python.
  4. Scroll to the General section.
  5. In the Application field, ensure that the value is national-parks-app.
  6. In the Name field, enter nationalparks.
  7. Scroll to the Deploy section.
  8. In the Resource type field, ensure that Deployment is selected.

  9. In the Advanced options section, ensure that Create a route is selected.

    By default, services running on OpenShift Container Platform are not accessible externally. You must select this option to create a route so that external clients can access your service.

  10. Click the Labels hyperlink.

    The application code requires certain labels to be set.

  11. Add the following labels to the text area and press Enter after each key/value pair:

    • app=national-parks-app
    • component=nationalparks
    • role=backend
    • type=parksmap-backend
  12. Click Create.

You are redirected to the Topology page where you can see the nationalparks deployment in the national-parks-app application.

Verification

  1. Navigate to Workloads Topology.
  2. Click the nationalparks deployment in the national-parks-app application.

  3. Click the Resources tab.

    Wait for the build to complete successfully.

2.6. Deploying the database application

The following procedure deploys mongodb-nationalparks, which is a MongoDB database that will hold the national park location information.

Prerequisites

  • You have deployed the parksmap front-end application.
  • You have deployed the nationalparks back-end application.

Procedure

  1. From the Quick create ( fa plus circle ) menu in the upper right corner, click Container images.
  2. Select Image name from external registry and enter registry.redhat.io/rhmap47/mongodb.
  3. In the Runtime icon field, search for and select mongodb.
  4. Scroll to the General section.
  5. In the Application name field, enter national-parks-app.
  6. In the Name field, enter mongodb-nationalparks.
  7. Scroll to the Deploy section.
  8. In the Resource type field, ensure that Deployment is selected.
  9. Click Show advanced Deployment option.

  10. Under Environment variables (runtime only), add the following names and values:

    Table 2.1. Environment variable names and values
    NameValue

    MONGODB_USER

    mongodb

    MONGODB_PASSWORD

    mongodb

    MONGODB_DATABASE

    mongodb

    MONGODB_ADMIN_PASSWORD

    mongodb

    Tip

    Click Add value to add each additional environment variable.

  11. In the Advanced options section, clear Create a route.

    The database application does not need to be accessed externally, so a route is not required.

  12. Click Create.

You are redirected to the Topology page where you can see the mongodb-nationalparks deployment in the national-parks-app application.

2.6.1. Providing access to the database by creating a secret

The nationalparks application needs information, such as the database name, username, and passwords, to access the MongoDB database. However, because this information is sensitive, you should not store it directly in the pod.

You can use a secret to store sensitive information, and share that secret with workloads.

Secret objects provide a mechanism to hold sensitive information such as passwords, OpenShift Container Platform client configuration files, and private source repository credentials. Secrets decouple sensitive content from the pods. You can mount secrets into containers by using a volume plugin or by passing the secret in as an environment variable. The system can then use secrets to provide the pod with the sensitive information.

The following procedure creates the nationalparks-mongodb-parameters secret and mounts it to the nationalparks workload.

Prerequisites

  • You have deployed the nationalparks back-end application.
  • You have deployed the mongodb-nationalparks database application.

Procedure

  1. Navigate to Workloads Secrets.
  2. Click Create Key/value secret.
  3. In the Secret name field, enter nationalparks-mongodb-parameters.

  4. Enter the following values for Key and Value:

    Table 2.2. Secret keys and values
    KeyValue

    DATABASE_SERVICE_NAME

    mongodb-nationalparks

    MONGODB_USER

    mongodb

    MONGODB_PASSWORD

    mongodb

    MONGODB_DATABASE

    mongodb

    MONGODB_ADMIN_PASSWORD

    mongodb

    Tip

    Click Add key/value to add each additional key/value pair.

  5. Click Create.
  6. Click Add Secret to workload.
  7. From the Add this secret to workload list, select nationalparks.
  8. Click Save.

This change in configuration triggers a new rollout of the nationalparks deployment with the environment variables properly injected.

2.6.2. Loading data into the database

After you have deployed the mongodb-nationalparks database, you can load the national park location information into the database.

Prerequisites

  • You have deployed the nationalparks back-end application.
  • You have deployed the mongodb-nationalparks database application.

Procedure

  1. Navigate to Workloads Topology.
  2. Click the nationalparks deployment and select the Resources tab.
  3. Copy the Location URL from your route.

  4. Paste the URL into your web browser and add the following at the end of the URL: 

    /ws/data/load
    Copy to Clipboard

    For example: 

    https://nationalparks-user-getting-started.apps.cluster.example.com/ws/data/load
    Copy to Clipboard

    Example output

    Items inserted in database: 2893
    Copy to Clipboard

2.7. Viewing the application in a web browser

After you have deployed the necessary applications and loaded data into the database, you are now ready view the national parks application through a browser.

You can access the application by opening the URL for the front-end application.

Prerequisites

  • You have deployed the parksmap front-end application.
  • You have deployed the nationalparks back-end application.
  • You have deployed the mongodb-nationalparks database application.
  • You have loaded the data into the mongodb-nationalparks database.

Procedure

  1. Navigate to Workloads Topology.

  2. Click the Open URL link from the parksmap deployment.

    Figure 2.3. National parks across the world

    Opening the URL for the parksmap deployment

  3. Verify that your web browser displays a map of the national parks across the world.

    Figure 2.4. National parks across the world

    Map of the national parks across the world

    If you allow the application to access your location, the map will center on your location.

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