Learn how to eliminate any dependencies on your CI/CD build nodes and don’t bother yourself with multiple versions of your toolchain and any corresponding constraints. Walk away with knowledge and best practices that will help you to optimize your builds and deployments with containerized pipelines! Use containerized GitLab CI/CD pipelines and Kaniko to move your build and deployment workloads into your Kubernetes cluster. Build your apps and infrastructure without any external dependencies and constraints. If you are building a Go project, deploying an app to Kubernetes or just building your infrastructure. It doesn’t matter, anything is possible! Join Nico on a deep dive into the secrets of building hassle-free containerized build and deployment pipelines with GitLab CI/CD, Kubernetes and Kaniko.

1. How Containerized Pipelines and Kubernetes
Can Boost Your CI/CD
GitLab London Meetup, April 2020

2. Nico Meisenzahl
• Senior Cloud & DevOps Consultant at white duck
• GitLab Hero, Microsoft MVP & Docker Community
Leader
• loves Kubernetes, DevOps and Cloud
© white duck GmbH 2020
Phone: +49 8031 230159 0
Email: nico.meisenzahl@whiteduck.de
Twitter: @nmeisenzahl
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicomeisenzahl
Blog: https://meisenzahl.org

3. Agenda
• GitLab and Kubernetes
• containerized pipeline – why?
• pipeline workload on Kubernetes with GitLab CI/CD
• container image builds on Kubernetes with Kaniko
© white duck GmbH 2020

4. GitLab & Kubernetes
A perfect fit!
• Gitlab hosted on Kubernetes
• monitoring & tracing stack
• functions and serverless apps
• containerized pipelines
© white duck GmbH 2020

5. Containerized Pipelines – Why?
• for the same reasons why you should use containers
• isolation
• dependencies
• scalability
• immutability
• example: your new project needs version X all others still require Y
• you can include any kind of build / deploy dependency
• NodeJS, .NET Core, Go, Terraform, Ansible… you name it
© white duck GmbH 2020

6. docker run
• running Docker on build hosts is a familiar pattern
• but: docker run pipeline jobs have some issues
• containers are immutable
• you will end up managing caching and artifacts on your own
• (and we're not even talking about building containers)
© white duck GmbH 2020

7. GitLab Runner Kubernetes executor
• a Gitlab Runner that is aware of Kubernetes
• integrates your CI/CD with Kubernetes
• runs itself within your Kubernetes Cluster (as pod)
• schedules pipeline jobs as pods
• allows you to share your compute and scale your pipelines
• easy deployment
• one-click
• production ready Helm deployment
© white duck GmbH 2020

8. Cloning, Caching and Artifacts
• GitLab Runner Kubernetes executor runs service containers within
the pipeline job pod to handle cloning, caching and artifacts
• every pipeline job contains out of these stages
• prepare → creates pod with build and service containers
• pre-build → clones repo, restore cache, download artifacts
• build → user build steps
• post-build → creates caches and upload artifacts
© white duck GmbH 2020

9. Advanced topics
• supports advanced configurations like
• resource limits for build jobs
• CI services for build dependencies
• node selectors for runners
• …
© white duck GmbH 2020

10. Demo: GitLab Runner Kubernetes executor
• GitLab Kubernetes Integration
• GitLab Runner Kubernetes executor deployment
© white duck GmbH 2020

11. Pipeline job image
• contains everything a single pipeline job needs
• binaries, libraries, tools, ...
• provide all external dependencies
• use a pipeline to build/rebuild it periodically (security fixes!)
• you should define fix versions for your dependencies
• use caching to speed up your builds
© white duck GmbH 2020

12. Pipeline job image
© white duck GmbH 2020

13. Demo
• containerized deploy pipeline
• https://gitlab.com/gitlab-commit-demo/containerized-appdeploy-sample
© white duck GmbH 2020

14. Container Image builds on Kubernetes
• you may used Docker-in-Docker to build containers in containers
• DinD has some issues
• exposing Docker socket
• mounting /var/lib/docker
• privileged mode
• those might be acceptable on a build host but not in a Kubernetes
cluster
© white duck GmbH 2020

15. Image builds with Kaniko
• image builds without the need of any privileges or dependencies
• runs in a container (gcr.io/kaniko-project/executor)
• easy to use
• you should think about caching to speed up your pipeline
• layer caching (layers get pushed pushed to a registry)
• base image caching (GitLab cache)
© white duck GmbH 2020

16. Image builds on Kubernetes with Kaniko
© white duck GmbH 2020

17. Demo
• containerized image builds on Kubernetes with Kaniko
• https://gitlab.com/gitlab-commit-demo/containerized-jobimage-sample
© white duck GmbH 2020

18. Questions?
Slides: https://www.slideshare.net/nmeisenzahl
Demos: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-commit-demo
Nico Meisenzahl (Senior Cloud & DevOps Consultant)
Phone: +49 8031 230159 0
Email: nico.meisenzahl@whiteduck.de
Twitter: @nmeisenzahl
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicomeisenzahl
Blog: https://meisenzahl.org
© white duck GmbH 2020