Helm Chart

Quick start guide for Deploying Asserts on a Kubernetes Cluster

Helm charts and source code can be found in our public github helm-charts repo.

Architecture

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Prerequisites

• Kubernetes 1.17+

• Helm 3.2.0+

• PV provisioner support in the underlying infrastructure

• A Prometheus compatible endpoint with kube-state-metrics and node-exporter

Installing the Chart

helm repo add asserts https://asserts.github.io/helm-charts
helm repo update
helm upgrade asserts asserts/asserts \
    --install \
    --namespace asserts \
    --create-namespace

Enabling AWS Integration

AWS Integration is enabled by activating the AWS Exporter. This is done by setting the helm value server.awsExporterEnabled to true. For e.g.

helm repo add asserts https://asserts.github.io/helm-charts
helm repo update
helm upgrade asserts asserts/asserts \
    --install \
    --namespace asserts \
    --create-namespace
    -f values.yaml

where values.yaml looks like

server:
    awsExporterEnabled: true

Please note that for AWS Integration to work, the nodes on which Asserts is installed must have some AWS IAM role assigned. Enabling the AWS exporter does not trigger any AWS processing yet. For Asserts to observe an AWS Account, you will need to add the AWS Account

eBPF Probe

Asserts uses metric label information to build the Entity Graph; it will use labels from service meshes (Istio, Linkerd) or from the Asserts eBPF Probe. By default, the probe is not enabled; it can be enabled via a values file or from the Helm command line.

helm upgrade asserts asserts/asserts \
    --upgrade \
    --namespace asserts \
    --create-namespace \
    --set ebpfProbe.enabled=true

There any many other configuration options, such as PagerDuty and Slack integrations. These can be configured with a values file. View all install configuration options here.

Verify and Access

When Asserts is spinning up for the first time, it usually takes about 3-4 minutes but could take longer depending on the hardware resources allocated (e.g. a kind/k3d cluster).

Once all containers are initialized and running:

kubectl get pods -l app.kubernetes.io/instance=asserts -n asserts -w

You can then login to the asserts-ui by running:

kubectl port-forward -n asserts deployment/asserts-ui 8080 -n asserts

And opening your browser to http://localhost:8080, where you will be directed to the Asserts Registration page. There you can acquire a license.

Acquire a License

You can now view the deployed frontend!

Once there, you can request a trial license.

Configuring a Prometheus DataSource

Configure your Prometheus DataSource which Asserts will connect to and query by following these instructions. Once you're connected, you can see the data and start observing!

Upgrading the Chart

helm repo update
helm upgrade --install asserts asserts/asserts -n asserts

Sizing Values

The default Helm chart values in the values.yaml file are configured to allow you to quickly get Asserts up and running. Here are some sample values files for sizing resources according to the total number of raw metrics at the source Prometheus endpoints:

small: Up to 1 million metrics

medium: 1 to 5 million metrics

large: Over 5 million metrics

Uninstalling the Chart

To uninstall Asserts and its dependencies, run the following command:

helm uninstall asserts -n asserts

The previous command removes all the Kubernetes components but PVCs associated with the chart and deletes the release.

To delete the PVCs associated with asserts:

kubectl delete pvc -l app.kubernetes.io/instance=asserts -n asserts

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