Mirantis Container Platform

This project aims to test the Mirantis Container Platform solution composed of:

• MKE: Mirantis Kubernetes Engine
• MCR: Mirantis Container Runtime
• MSR: Mirantis Secure Registry

As a reminder, this solution is based on the former Docker EE (Enterprise Edition) solution that Mirantis acquired in 2019. This container platform is also the only one able to manage both Swarm and Kubernetes container orchestration.

Even if Kubernetes become the de facto standard for enterprise container orchestration, Swarm is not already dead and remains relevant for simple use cases. We can still find some good feedback on it like this one.

Create lab on AWS

For this lab we will provision resources on AWS with Terraform.

    

Follow this guide to provision lab resources on AWS

Install Mirantis Kubernetes engine

Now that the infrastructure is provisioned, we can start the installation of Mirantis components. First, check the Mirantis official documentation to understand the process.

Install the launchpad CLI from the latest release.

Check that the launchpad.yaml file is present in the root directory of the project. Terraform generated it during provisioning using a template.

Look at the content of the file to see what's in it and make sure it matches your environment. Otherwise, go back to the provisioning guide to adapt the configuration and update infrastructure.

Then start the installation using launchpad:

$ launchpad apply

If everything goes well you must have something like that at the end of the execution:

INFO Cluster is now configured.                   
INFO MKE cluster admin UI: https://ec2-52-17-170-180.eu-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com/ 
INFO MSR cluster admin UI: https://ec2-52-215-236-184.eu-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com/ 
INFO You can download the admin client bundle with the command 'launchpad client-config' 

If you get some error at this step, you have to resolve it before moving on.

Access the MKE web console using the credentials you configured in the launchpad.yaml file. If you have a license you can configure it at this step, otherwise select the Skip for now option.

Access the MSR web console:

Check the MKE cluster nodes in Shared resources > Nodes:

Notes: Nodes are shared resources because they are used both for Swarm and Kubernetes orchestration.

Chek also that the MSR registry is well integrated with MKE in Admin Settings > Mirantis Secure Registry:

Notes: The column type indicates the type of orchestration supported on the node. Manager nodes are always of Mixed type. But we can choose between Swarm, Kubernetes or Mixed for worker nodes.