Rancher microfrontend extensions by ftorchia

Description

Rancher UI Extensions allow users, developers, partners, and customers to extend and enhance the Rancher UI. Extensions are Helm charts that can only be installed once into a cluster. The charts contain a UI built package that is downloaded and linked to the Host UI at runtime; this means that the extension pkg needs to be implemented using the same technology and have the same APIs as Rancher UI.

Goals

We want to create a new type of Rancher extension, based on microfrontend pattern. The extension is served in a docker container in the k8s clusters and embedded in the host UI; this would guarantee us to be able to create extensions unrelated to the rancher UI architecture, in any technology.

Non Goals

We want to apply the microfrontend pattern to the product-level extensions; we don't want to apply it to cluster-level extensions.

Resources

rancher-extension-microfrontend, Rancher extensions

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Longhorn UI Extension (POC) by yiya.chen

Description

The goal is to create a Longhorn UI extension within Rancher using existing resources.
Longhorn’s UI is built using React, while Rancher’s UI extensions are built using Vue. Developers will explore different approaches to integrate and extend Longhorn’s UI within Rancher’s Vue-based ecosystem, aiming to create a seamless, functional UI extension.

Goals

• Build a Longhorn UI extension (look and feel)
• Support theme switching to align with Rancher’s UI

Results

• https://github.com/a110605/longhorn-hackday
• https://github.com/a110605/longhorn-ui/tree/darkmode
• https://github.com/houhoucoop/hackweek/tree/main/hackweek24

Resources

• Longhorn UI: https://github.com/longhorn/longhorn-ui
• Rancher UI Extension: https://extensions.rancher.io/extensions/next/home
• darkreader: https://www.npmjs.com/package/darkreader
• veaury: https://github.com/gloriasoft/veaury
• module federation: https://webpack.js.org/concepts/module-federation/

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Enabling Rancher as an OIDC Provider by rcabello

Description

Kubernetes supports OpenID Connect (OIDC) natively as an authentication mechanism, enabling token-based user authentication. This can be configured through flags in the Kubernetes API server or by using AuthenticationConfiguration.

The purpose of this project is to enable Rancher to function as an OIDC provider, allowing Rancher's local cluster to act as an OIDC identity provider for downstream clusters. This setup will allow users to authenticate directly with downstream clusters without relying on Rancher’s proxy and impersonation mechanisms.

Rancher will continue to support all authentication providers. When a user attempts to log in via the Rancher OIDC provider, they will be redirected to the authentication provider configured in Rancher.

This approach also facilitates integration with third-party tools (e.g StackState)

Goals

• Implement Rancher as an OIDC provider using the ORY Fosite library, focusing only on the essential functionality required for basic integration.
• Enable downstream clusters to authenticate using JWT tokens issued by Rancher.
• Configure StackState to authenticate using Rancher as an OIDC provider.

Resources

https://github.com/ory/fosite

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Integrate Backstage with Rancher Manager by nwmacd

Description

Backstage (backstage.io) is an open-source, CNCF project that allows you to create your own developer portal. There are many plugins for Backstage.

This could be a great compliment to Rancher Manager.

Goals

Learn and experiment with Backstage and look at how this could be integrated with Rancher Manager. Goal is to have some kind of integration completed in this Hack week.

Progress

Screen shot of home page at the end of Hackweek:

Day One

• Got Backstage running locally, understanding configuration with HTTPs.
• Got Backstage embedded in an IFRAME inside of Rancher
• Added content into the software catalog (see: https://backstage.io/docs/features/techdocs/getting-started/)
• Understood more about the entity model

Day Two

• Connected Backstage to the Rancher local cluster and configured the Kubernetes plugin.
• Created Rancher theme to make the light theme more consistent with Rancher

Days Three and Day Four

• Created two backend plugins for Backstage:

  1. Catalog Entity Provider - this imports users from Rancher into Backstage
  2. Auth Provider - uses the proxied sign-in pattern to check the Rancher session cookie, to user that to authenticate the user with Rancher and then log them into Backstage by connecting this to the imported User entity from the catalog entity provider plugin.

• With this in place, you can single-sign-on between Rancher and Backstage when it is deployed within Rancher. Note this is only when running locally for development at present

Day Five

• Start to build out a production deployment for all of the above
• Made some progress, but hit issues with the authentication and proxying when running proxied within Rancher, which needs further investigation

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Introducing "Bottles": A Proof of Concept for Multi-Version CRD Management in Kubernetes by aruiz

Description

As we delve deeper into the complexities of managing multiple CRD versions within a single Kubernetes cluster, I want to introduce "Bottles" - a proof of concept that aims to address these challenges.

Bottles propose a novel approach to isolating and deploying different CRD versions in a self-contained environment. This would allow for greater flexibility and efficiency in managing diverse workloads.

Goals

• Evaluate Feasibility: determine if this approach is technically viable, as well as identifying possible obstacles and limitations.
• Reuse existing technology: leverage existing products whenever possible, e.g. build on top of Kubewarden as admission controller.
• Focus on Rancher's use case: the ultimate goal is to be able to use this approach to solve Rancher users' needs.

Resources

Core concepts:

• ConfigMaps: Bottles could be defined and configured using ConfigMaps.
• Admission Controller: An admission controller will detect "bootled" CRDs being installed and replace the resource name used to store them.
• Aggregated API Server: By analyzing the author of a request, the aggregated API server will determine the correct bottle and route the request accordingly, making it transparent for the user.

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Multi-pod, autoscalable Elixir application in Kubernetes using K8s resources by socon

Description

Elixir / Erlang use their own solutions to create clusters that work together. Kubernetes provide its own orchestration. Due to the nature of the BEAM, it looks a very promising technology for applications that run in Kubernetes and requite to be always on, specifically if they are created as web pages using Phoenix.

Goals

• Investigate and provide solutions that work in Phoenix LiveView using Kubernetes resources, so a multi-pod application can be used
• Provide an end to end example that creates and deploy a container from source code.

Resources

https://github.com/dwyl/phoenix-liveview-counter-tutorial https://github.com/propedeutica/elixir-k8s-counter

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Install Uyuni on Kubernetes in cloud-native way by cbosdonnat

Description

For now installing Uyuni on Kubernetes requires running mgradm on a cluster node... which is not what users would do in the Kubernetes world. The idea is to implement an installation based only on helm charts and probably an operator.

Goals

Install Uyuni from Rancher UI.

Resources

• mgradm code: https://github.com/uyuni-project/uyuni-tools
• Uyuni operator: https://github.com/cbosdo/uyuni-operator

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Introducing "Bottles": A Proof of Concept for Multi-Version CRD Management in Kubernetes by aruiz

Description

As we delve deeper into the complexities of managing multiple CRD versions within a single Kubernetes cluster, I want to introduce "Bottles" - a proof of concept that aims to address these challenges.

Bottles propose a novel approach to isolating and deploying different CRD versions in a self-contained environment. This would allow for greater flexibility and efficiency in managing diverse workloads.

Goals

• Evaluate Feasibility: determine if this approach is technically viable, as well as identifying possible obstacles and limitations.
• Reuse existing technology: leverage existing products whenever possible, e.g. build on top of Kubewarden as admission controller.
• Focus on Rancher's use case: the ultimate goal is to be able to use this approach to solve Rancher users' needs.

Resources

Core concepts:

• ConfigMaps: Bottles could be defined and configured using ConfigMaps.
• Admission Controller: An admission controller will detect "bootled" CRDs being installed and replace the resource name used to store them.
• Aggregated API Server: By analyzing the author of a request, the aggregated API server will determine the correct bottle and route the request accordingly, making it transparent for the user.

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Learn enough Golang and hack on CoreDNS by jkuzilek

Description

I'm implementing a split-horizon DNS for my home Kubernetes cluster to be able to access my internal (and external) services over the local network through public domains. I managed to make a PoC with the k8s_gateway plugin for CoreDNS. However, I soon found out it responds with IPs for all Gateways assigned to HTTPRoutes, publishing public IPs as well as the internal Loadbalancer ones.

To remedy this issue, a simple filtering mechanism has to be implemented.

Goals

• Learn an acceptable amount of Golang
• Implement GatewayClass (and IngressClass) filtering for k8s_gateway
• Deploy on homelab cluster
• Profit?

Resources

• https://github.com/ori-edge/k8s_gateway/issues/36
• https://github.com/coredns/coredns/issues/2465#issuecomment-593910983

EDIT: Feature mostly complete. An unfinished PR lies here. Successfully tested working on homelab cluster.

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SUSE AI Meets the Game Board by moio

Use tabletopgames.ai’s open source TAG and PyTAG frameworks to apply Statistical Forward Planning and Deep Reinforcement Learning to two board games of our own design. On an all-green, all-open source, all-AWS stack!

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Results: Infrastructure Achievements

We successfully built and automated a containerized stack to support our AI experiments. This included:

• a Fully-Automated, One-Command, GPU-accelerated Kubernetes setup: we created an OpenTofu based script, tofu-tag, to deploy SUSE's RKE2 Kubernetes running on CUDA-enabled nodes in AWS, powered by openSUSE with GPU drivers and gpu-operator
• Containerization of the TAG and PyTAG frameworks: TAG (Tabletop AI Games) and PyTAG were patched for seamless deployment in containerized environments. We automated the container image creation process with GitHub Actions. Our forks (PRs upstream upcoming):
  • https://github.com/moio/TabletopGames/tree/hackweek24
  • https://github.com/moio/PyTAG/tree/hackweek24

./deploy.sh and voilà - Kubernetes running PyTAG (k9s, above) with GPU acceleration (nvtop, below)

Results: Game Design Insights

Our project focused on modeling and analyzing two card games of our own design within the TAG framework:

• Game Modeling: We implemented models for Dario's "Bamboo" and Silvio's "Totoro" and "R3" games, enabling AI agents to play thousands of games ...in minutes!
• AI-driven optimization: By analyzing statistical data on moves, strategies, and outcomes, we iteratively tweaked the game mechanics and rules to achieve better balance and player engagement.
• Advanced analytics: Leveraging AI agents with Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) and random action selection, we compared performance metrics to identify optimal strategies and uncover opportunities for game refinement .
  • more about Bamboo on Dario's site
  • more about R3 on Silvio's site (italian, translation coming)
  • more about Totoro on Silvio's site

A family picture of our card games in progress. From the top: Bamboo, Totoro, R3

Results: Learning, Collaboration, and Innovation

Beyond technical accomplishments, the project showcased innovative approaches to coding, learning, and teamwork:

• "Trio programming" with AI assistance: Our "trio programming" approach—two developers and GitHub Copilot—was a standout success, especially in handling slightly-repetitive but not-quite-exactly-copypaste tasks. Java as a language tends to be verbose and we found it to be fitting particularly well.
• AI tools for reporting and documentation: We extensively used AI chatbots to streamline writing and reporting. (Including writing this report! ...but this note was added manually during edit!)
• GPU compute expertise: Overcoming challenges with CUDA drivers and cloud infrastructure deepened our understanding of GPU-accelerated workloads in the open-source ecosystem.
• Game design as a learning platform: By blending AI techniques with creative game design, we learned not only about AI strategies but also about making games fun, engaging, and balanced.

Last but not least we had a lot of fun! ...and this was definitely not a chatbot generated line!

The Context: AI + Board Games

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