Nginx Operator

A Helm based Nginx Operator

Helm based operators are quite easy to build and are preferred to deploy a stateless application using operator pattern.

How to generate boilerplate code for Helm based operator and build nginx operator

# initialize the project
operator-sdk init --domain charolia.io --plugins helm

# Create a simple nginx API using Helm’s built-in chart boilerplate
operator-sdk create api --group nginx --version v1alpha1 --kind Nginx

Configure the operator’s image registry

-IMG ?= controller:latest
+IMG ?= $(IMAGE_TAG_BASE):$(VERSION)

Build and push your operator’s image

make docker-build docker-push

Make sure to login to redhat registry

docker login registry.redhat.io
Username: ankitcharolia
Password: ******
Login Succeeded

Create a kubernetes secret for docker config json

$ kubectl create secret generic regcred --from-file=.dockerconfigjson=/home/acharolia/.docker/config.json --type=kubernetes.io/dockerconfigjson (-n nginx-operator-system)
secret/regcred created

NOTE: Use docker config json as a secret to pull the image from redhat registry

spec:
  template:
    spec:
      imagePullSecrets:
      - name: regcred

Run the Operator

make deploy

NOTE: This deployments the CRDs to the Kubernetes Cluster.

$ kubectl get crd | grep nginx
nginxes.nginx.charolia.io                            2023-09-13T19:50:54Z

Create a Nginx CR

kubectl apply -f config/samples/nginx_v1alpha1_nginx.yaml

Clean up the resources:

kubectl delete -f config/samples/demo_v1alpha1_nginx.yaml

Note: Make sure the above custom resource has been deleted before proceeding to run make undeploy, as helm-operator’s controller adds finalizers to the custom resources. Otherwise your cluster may have dangling custom resource objects that cannot be deleted.

make undeploy