envsubst (a dependency of our helm charts)
eksctl or an already running Kubernetes cluster.
1. Install a Kubernetes Cluster
NOTE: if you already have a Kubernetes cluster up and running, move to step 2. Just verify you can connect to the cluster with a command like kubectl get nodes
For this deployment, we'll use to automatically provision a Kubernetes cluster for us. The eksctl will use our preconfigured AWS credentials to create master nodes and worker nodes to our specifications, and will leave us off with kubectl setup to manipulate the cluster.
The regions, node type/size, etc can all be tuned to your use case, the values given are simply examples.
Cluster provisioning usually takes between 10 and 15 minutes. When it is complete, you will see the follwing output:
When your cluster is ready, run the following to test that your kubectl configuration is correct:
2. Clone the Grey Matter Helm Charts Repo
Though Helm is not the only way to install Grey Matter into Kubernetes, it does make some things very easy and reduces a large number of individual configurations to a few charts. For this step, we'll clone the public git repository that holds Grey Matter and cd into the resulting directory.
NOTE: this tutorial is using a release candidate, so only a specific branch is being pulled. The entire repository can be cloned if desired.
3. Setup Credentials
Before running this step, determine whether or not you wish to install . If so, determine whether or not you will use S3 for backing. If you do want to configure Grey Matter Data with S3, follow the guide. You will need the AWS credentials from here.
To set up credentials, we need to create a credentials.yaml file that holds some secret information like usernames and passwords. The helm-charts repository contains some convenience scripts to make this easier.
Run:
and follow the prompts. The email and password you are prompted for should match your credentials to access the Decipher Nexus at . If you have decided to install Grey Matter Data persisting to S3, indicate that when prompted, and provide the access credentials, region, and bucket name.
Note that if your credentials are not valid, you will see the following response:
4. Configurations
To see the default configurations, check the global.yaml file from the root directory of your cloned repo. In general for this tutorial, you should use the default options, but there are a couple of things to note.
If you would like to install a Grey Matter Data that is external and reachable from the dashboard, set global.data.external.enabled to true.
If you are installing data and set up your , set global.data.external.uses3 to true.
You can set global.environment to eks instead of kubernetes for reference, but we will also override this value with a flag during the installation steps in .
5. Install Grey Matter component Charts
Grey Matter is made up of a handful of components, each handling different pieces of the overall platform. Please follow each installation step in order.
Add the charts to your local Helm repository, install the credentials file, and install the Spire server.
Watch the Spire server pod.
Watch it until the READY status is 2/2, then proceed to the next step.
6. Accessing the dashboard
NOTE: for easy setup, access to this deployment was provisioned with quickstart SSL certificates. They can be found in the helm chart repository at ./certs. For access to the dashboard via the public access point, import the ./certs/quickstart.p12 file into your browser of choice - the password is password.
An will be created automatically when we specified the flag --set=global.environment=eks during installation. The ELB is accessible through the randomly created URL attached to the edge service:
You will need to use this value for EXTERNAL-IP in the .
Visit the url (e.g. https://a2832d300724811eaac960a7ca83e992-749721369.us-east-1.elb.amazonaws.com:10808/) in the browser to access the Intelligence 360 Application
7. Configure the CLI
If you intend to move onto into your installation, or otherwise modify/explore the Grey Matter configurations, you will need to .
For this installation, the configurations will be as follows. Fill in the value of the edge service's external IP from the for <EDGE-EXTERNAL-IP>, and the path to your helm-charts directory in <path/to/helm-charts>:
Run these in your terminal, and you should be able to use the CLI, greymatter list cluster.
You have now successfully installed Grey Matter!
If you're ready to shut down your cluster:
Delete the Grey Matter Installation
Delete The EKS Cluster
NOTE: this deletion actually takes longer than the output would indicate to terminate all resources. Attempting to create a new cluster with the same name will fail for some time until all resources are purged from AWS.
