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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Cluster API Provider for Harvester by rcase

Project Description

The Cluster API "infrastructure provider" for Harvester, also named CAPHV, makes it possible to use Harvester with Cluster API. This enables people and organisations to create Kubernetes clusters running on VMs created by Harvester using a declarative spec.

The project has been bootstrapped in HackWeek 23, and its code is available here.

Work done in HackWeek 2023

• Have a early working version of the provider available on Rancher Sandbox : *DONE *
• Demonstrated the created cluster can be imported using Rancher Turtles: DONE
• Stretch goal - demonstrate using the new provider with CAPRKE2: DONE and the templates are available on the repo

Goals for HackWeek 2024

• Add support for ClusterClass
• Add e2e testing
• Add more Unit Tests
• Improve Status Conditions to reflect current state of Infrastructure
• Improve CI (some bugs for release creation)
• Testing with newer Harvester version (v1.3.X and v1.4.X)
• Due to the length and complexity of the templates, maybe package some of them as Helm Charts.
• Other improvement suggestions are welcome!

DONE in HackWeek 24:

• Add more Unit Tests
• Improve Status Conditions for some phases
• Add cloud provider config generation
• Testing with Harvester v1.3.2
• Template improvements
• Issues creation

Thanks to @isim and Dominic Giebert for their contributions!

Resources

Looking for help from anyone interested in Cluster API (CAPI) or who wants to learn more about Harvester.

This will be an infrastructure provider for Cluster API. Some background reading for the CAPI aspect:

• Cluster infrastructure provider contract
• Machine infrastructure provider contract
• Provider implementers guide

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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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A CLI for Harvester by mohamed.belgaied

[comment]: # Harvester does not officially come with a CLI tool, the user is supposed to interact with Harvester mostly through the UI [comment]: # Though it is theoretically possible to use kubectl to interact with Harvester, the manipulation of Kubevirt YAML objects is absolutely not user friendly. [comment]: # Inspired by tools like multipass from Canonical to easily and rapidly create one of multiple VMs, I began the development of Harvester CLI. Currently, it works but Harvester CLI needs some love to be up-to-date with Harvester v1.0.2 and needs some bug fixes and improvements as well.

Project Description

Harvester CLI is a command line interface tool written in Go, designed to simplify interfacing with a Harvester cluster as a user. It is especially useful for testing purposes as you can easily and rapidly create VMs in Harvester by providing a simple command such as: harvester vm create my-vm --count 5 to create 5 VMs named my-vm-01 to my-vm-05.

Harvester CLI is functional but needs a number of improvements: up-to-date functionality with Harvester v1.0.2 (some minor issues right now), modifying the default behaviour to create an opensuse VM instead of an ubuntu VM, solve some bugs, etc.

Github Repo for Harvester CLI: https://github.com/belgaied2/harvester-cli

Done in previous Hackweeks

• Create a Github actions pipeline to automatically integrate Harvester CLI to Homebrew repositories: DONE
• Automatically package Harvester CLI for OpenSUSE / Redhat RPMs or DEBs: DONE

Goal for this Hackweek

The goal for this Hackweek is to bring Harvester CLI up-to-speed with latest Harvester versions (v1.3.X and v1.4.X), and improve the code quality as well as implement some simple features and bug fixes.

Some nice additions might be: * Improve handling of namespaced objects * Add features, such as network management or Load Balancer creation ? * Add more unit tests and, why not, e2e tests * Improve CI * Improve the overall code quality * Test the program and create issues for it

Issue list is here: https://github.com/belgaied2/harvester-cli/issues

Resources

The project is written in Go, and using client-go the Kubernetes Go Client libraries to communicate with the Harvester API (which is Kubernetes in fact). Welcome contributions are:

• Testing it and creating issues
• Documentation
• Go code improvement

What you might learn

Harvester CLI might be interesting to you if you want to learn more about:

• GitHub Actions
• Harvester as a SUSE Product
• Go programming language
• Kubernetes API

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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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