Ubuntu Virtual Machine for NGINX Microservices March 2022 Labs

Preface

Since I didn't have access to the lab environment in UDF, I decided to setup and run my own environment in VMware Workstation, so that I can run the Microservices March Labs at my own pace. This guide should help anyone to setup their own Ubuntu VM to run the labs in your environment. I won't cover the installation of the Ubuntu OS itself. One hint: on my Ubuntu host I disabled swap.

Additionally consider these setup instructions for CoreDNS and NGINX from the devcentral github repo.

Software and Versions used

Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
Docker 20.10.13
kubectl 1.23.4
Helm 3.8.1
Minikube v1.25.2

Step 1: Install Docker

Set up the repository

Update the apt package index and install packages to allow apt to use a repository over HTTPS:

daniel@ubuntu:~$ sudo apt update
daniel@ubuntu:~$ sudo apt-get install \
 ca-certificates \
 curl \
 gnupg \
 lsb-release

Add Docker’s official GPG key:

daniel@ubuntu:~$ curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/docker-archive-keyring.gpg

Use the following command to set up the stable repository.

daniel@ubuntu:~$  echo \
"deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/docker-archive-keyring.gpg] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu \
$(lsb_release -cs) stable" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list > /dev/null

Install Docker Engine

Update the apt package index, and install the latest version of Docker Engine and containerd:

daniel@ubuntu:~$ sudo apt update
daniel@ubuntu:~$ sudo apt install docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io

Add your user to the 'docker' group.

daniel@ubuntu:~$ sudo usermod -aG docker $USER && newgrp docker

Step 2: Install kubectl using native package management

Download the Google Cloud public signing key.

daniel@ubuntu:~$ sudo curl -fsSLo /usr/share/keyrings/kubernetes-archive-keyring.gpg https://packages.cloud.google.com/apt/doc/apt-key.gpg

Add the Kubernetes apt repository.

daniel@ubuntu:~$ echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/kubernetes-archive-keyring.gpg] https://apt.kubernetes.io/ kubernetes-xenial main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/kubernetes.list

Update apt package index with the new repository and install kubectl.

daniel@ubuntu:~$ sudo apt update
daniel@ubuntu:~$ sudo install kubectl

Step 3: Install Helm from script

Download and run the installer script to install Helm

daniel@ubuntu:~$ curl -fsSL -o get_helm.sh https://raw.githubusercontent.com/helm/helm/main/scripts/get-helm-3
daniel@ubuntu:~$ chmod 700 get_helm.sh
daniel@ubuntu:~$ ./get_helm.sh

Step 4: Install Minikube

Download Minikube as a static binary

daniel@ubuntu:~$ curl -Lo minikube https://storage.googleapis.com/minikube/releases/latest/minikube-linux-amd64 \
&& chmod +x minikube
daniel@ubuntu:~$ sudo cp minikube /usr/local/bin && rm minikube

Move the Minikube binary to your /usr/local/bin location.

daniel@ubuntu:~$ sudo cp minikube /usr/local/bin && rm minikube

Step 5: Start your local minikube cluster

minikube start --memory=4G

From here on you can follow the lab guides.

Problems observed

The lab guide mentions a couple of times that you can run commands like:

minikube service podinfo and this will display a chart like the one below and it would open the service in your browser.

$ minikube service podinfo
|-----------|---------|-------------|---------------------------|
| NAMESPACE |  NAME   | TARGET PORT |            URL            |
|-----------|---------|-------------|---------------------------|
| default   | podinfo |          80 | http://192.168.49.2:31190 |
|-----------|---------|-------------|---------------------------|
🏃  Starting tunnel for service podinfo.
|-----------|---------|-------------|------------------------|
| NAMESPACE |  NAME   | TARGET PORT |          URL           |
|-----------|---------|-------------|------------------------|
| default   | podinfo |             | http://127.0.0.1:51546 |
|-----------|---------|-------------|------------------------|
🎉  Opening service default/podinfo in default browser...

I could not get this working. However, what worked out for me was the following:

daniel@ubuntu:~$ minikube service --all
😿  service default/kubernetes has no node port
|-----------|------------|--------------|---------------------------|
| NAMESPACE |    NAME    | TARGET PORT  |            URL            |
|-----------|------------|--------------|---------------------------|
| default   | kubernetes | No node port |
| default   | podinfo    |           80 | http://192.168.49.2:30009 |
|-----------|------------|--------------|---------------------------|