Deploy NGINX with Hello World

One of the simplest use cases for Kubernetes is running a web server. We will walk through the steps needed to set up an NGINX web server on OpenShift that serves a static html file. This example assumes that you have an allocation on the cluster.

First make sure that you are in the correct project:

oc project <YOUR_PROJECT>

In the next part of this we will be creating a few objects needed to run NGINX. The objects will be saved into a file and then added to the cluster with the command:

oc create -f <FILENAME>

The first object we wish to create is our BuildConfig. This is the object that defines how we build our NGINX image.

Before we create the BuildConfig we should give it a way to access two files before they are pulled into the build pod. The files are my index.html and my nginx.conf file. You can get them into your build pod however you wish, for simplicity I chose to add them to a public git repository and wget them. The index.html and nginx.conf file are defined respectively as:

<h1>Hello, World!</h1>
user nginx;
worker_processes auto;
error_log /tmp/error.log;
pid /tmp/nginx.pid;

# Load dynamic modules. See /usr/share/nginx/README.dynamic.
include /usr/share/nginx/modules/*.conf;

events {
    worker_connections 1024;
}

http {
    log_format  main  '$remote_addr - $remote_user [$time_local] "$request" '
                      '$status $body_bytes_sent "$http_referer" '
                      '"$http_user_agent" "$http_x_forwarded_for"';

    access_log  /tmp/access.log  main;

    client_body_temp_path /tmp/nginx 1 2;
    proxy_temp_path /tmp/nginx-proxy;
    fastcgi_temp_path /tmp/nginx-fastcgi;
    uwsgi_temp_path /tmp/nginx-uwsgi;
    scgi_temp_path /tmp/nginx-scgi;

    sendfile            on;
    tcp_nopush          on;
    tcp_nodelay         on;
    keepalive_timeout   65;
    types_hash_max_size 2048;

    include             /etc/nginx/mime.types;
    default_type        application/octet-stream;

    # Load modular configuration files from the /etc/nginx/conf.d directory.
    # See http://nginx.org/en/docs/ngx_core_module.html#include
    # for more information.
    include /etc/nginx/conf.d/*.conf;

    server {
        listen       8080 default_server;
        listen       [::]:8080 default_server;
        server_name  _;
        root         /usr/share/nginx/html;

        # Load configuration files for the default server block.
        include /etc/nginx/default.d/*.conf;

        location / {
        }

        error_page 404 /404.html;
            location = /40x.html {
        }

        error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html;
            location = /50x.html {
        }
    }
}

Note

The NGINX configuration file is completely standard except I changed the listen port to be from 80 to 8080 since the server will be running as a non-root user. The Route that we will add later on will redirect traffic coming in on port 80 to our server running on port 8080.

The BuildConfig, the following should be placed inside a buildconfig.yaml file:

apiVersion: build.openshift.io/v1
kind: BuildConfig
metadata:
    name: nginx-hello-world
spec:
  runPolicy: Serial
  source:
    dockerfile: |
      FROM rockylinux:latest
      RUN yum install -y epel-release && \
          yum install -y nginx

      COPY index.html /usr/share/nginx/html
      COPY nginx.conf /etc/nginx/nginx.conf

      CMD /usr/sbin/nginx -g 'daemon off;'

  strategy:
    type: Docker
    dockerStrategy:
      noCache: false
  output:
    to:
      kind: ImageStreamTag
      name: "nginx-hello-world:latest"

We create the BuildConfig object with:

oc create -f buildconfig.yaml

We now need to create an ImageStream with the same name as our build. This will create a place for our BuildConfig to push the image to and our Deployment to pull the image from during a deployment.

oc create imagestream nginx-hello-world

We can now start a build to get our NGINX image:

oc start-build nginx-hello-world --from-dir=./ --follow

This should spin up a build pod that produces a nginx-hello-world image while also tailing the logs. Once the build completes then we should have an image pushed to our ImageStream:

oc get imagestream nginx-hello-world
NAME                DOCKER REPO                                                         TAGS      UPDATED
nginx-hello-world   image-registry.openshift-image-registry.svc:5000/YOUR_NAMESPACE/nginx-hello-world   latest    3 minutes ago

If all goes well it is time to create the Deployment. The following should be placed inside a deployment.yaml file:

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: nginx-hello-world
  labels:
    app: nginx-hello-world
spec:
  replicas: 3
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: nginx-hello-world
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: nginx-hello-world
    spec:
      containers:
        - name: nginx
          image: "image-registry.openshift-image-registry:5000/YOUR_NAMESPACE/nginx-hello-world"
          terminationMessagePath: /dev/termination-log
          terminationMessagePolicy: File
          tty: true
          stdin: true
          serviceAccount: default
      terminationGracePeriodSeconds: 5

Note

In the Deployment make sure to change the YOUR_NAMESPACE string.

Create the Deployment object:

oc create -f deployment.yaml

View the deployment:

oc get deployment nginx-hello-world
NAME                DESIRED   CURRENT   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   AGE
nginx-hello-world   3         3         3            3           9s

Note

You should see Desired: 3 and Current: 3

After the deployment has been created it will spin up a pod running NGINX but we need to get traffic from outside the cluster to the pod so that we can display the hello world.

The Service object will create a Cluster IP address that will direct traffic to any pod in our deployment that is considered by the cluster to be ready. The following should be placed inside a service.yaml file:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  labels:
    app: nginx-hello-world
  name: nginx-hello-world
spec:
  ports:
  - name: nginx
    port: 80
    protocol: TCP
    targetPort: 8080
  selector:
    app: nginx-hello-world
  sessionAffinity: None
  type: ClusterIP

Create the Service object:

oc create -f service.yaml

The Route object will set up the cluster load balancers to accept traffic for a specified hostname and direct the traffic to the service which will in turn direct the traffic to any pod into our deployment that is considered by the cluster to be ready.

If you do not set a hostname on the route, one will be automatically chosen. We will use this mechanism for this demo but you can choose any hostname as long as it ends with apps.CLUSTER.ccs.ornl.gov where CLUSTER is one marble or onyx.

The following should be placed inside a route.yaml file:

apiVersion: route.openshift.io/v1
kind: Route
metadata:
  name: nginx-hello-world
spec:
  # hostname: foo.apps.CLUSTER.ccs.ornl.gov
  port:
    targetPort: nginx
  tls:
    insecureEdgeTerminationPolicy: Redirect
    termination: edge
  to:
    kind: Service
    name: nginx-hello-world
    weight: 100
  wildcardPolicy: None

Create the Route object:

oc create -f route.yaml

We need to get the route so that we can see the generated hostname.

oc get route nginx-hello-world
NAME                HOST/PORT                                             PATH      SERVICES            PORT      TERMINATION     WILDCARD
nginx-hello-world   nginx-hello-world-test.apps.granite.ccs.ornl.gov                nginx-hello-world   nginx     edge/Redirect   None

Now if you access the hostname that you set up with the route from a browser you should see the text “Hello World”.

Once you are finished you can remove the resources that were created for this demo:

oc delete buildconfig nginx-hello-world
oc delete imagestream nginx-hello-world
oc delete deployment nginx-hello-world
oc delete service nginx-hello-world
oc delete route nginx-hello-world