Self-Serve Kubernetes Clusters in Wayfinder

To get your application running on Wayfinder, you need a cluster. A cluster represents a dedicated, isolated Kubernetes cluster available for your workspace. It can be hosted in AWS, Google Cloud, or Microsoft Azure. Once you are in a Wayfinder workspace, you can access a cluster and create one.

This topic contains information on accessing existing clusters and creating new clusters, followed by information on more advanced cluster settings.

See also: Managing Multi-tenant Clusters

CLI quick reference

This page shows how to manage clusters and namespaces, generally using the UI. Here is a quick reference to the equivalent CLI commands:

Task	Command
List clusters	wf get clusters
Access a cluster	wf access cluster CLUSTER-NAME See also Access a cluster
Create a cluster	wf create cluster CLUSTER-NAME See also Create a cluster using the CLI
Create a namespace	wf create namespace
Delete a cluster	wf delete cluster CLUSTER-NAME
Delete a namespace	wf delete namespace NAMESPACE-NAME

Access a cluster

Important

You must assume a role to access a cluster for any purpose. Role assumption is time-limited to one hour by default. After an hour you must re-assume the role, as described below, to continue working with your cluster. For more information, see Assuming Roles.

If you have one or more clusters available to your workspace, you can get kubectl access to them using the wf access cluster command.

wf access cluster does two operations (which you can also run separately):

• Sets your kubectl context to access a cluster that your workspace owns—see wf kubeconfig
• Performs a role assumption to grant you temporary permissions on that cluster—see wf assume and Assume a Role

You can provide all details directly, or run the command with no parameters to be prompted for details.

To access a cluster:

1. Run the following command:

   wf access cluster CLUSTER NAMESPACE --role ROLE

   For example:

   $ wf access cluster eks-dev project-namespace --role cluster.viewer
   ◉ Waiting for role to be applied
   ✔ Access to cluster eks-dev with role cluster.viewer granted until: 30 Apr 21 19:48 BST
   ✔ Current kubectl context set to devs.eks-dev

2. Use kubectl to access your cluster. For example:

   $ kubectl get pods -n project-namespace
   No resources found in project-namespace namespace.

Create a cluster

To create a cluster, you will need to have access to a cloud allocated to your workspace by your Wayfinder administrator.

Refer to the "Overview of creating a self-service cluster" section for details on how to create a cluster.

Services included in each cluster via a cluster plan.

Refer to the "Wayfinder's Default Cluster Plans" section for details on pre-provisioned services included when using Wayfinder's default cluster plans.

If you're using multi-tenant clusters

For details on multi-tenancy in Wayfinder, see Managing Multi-tenant Clusters.

Make a cluster ephemeral (temporary)

Ephemeral clusters are deleted after a set time. You can make a cluster ephemeral when creating it, or afterward.

Refer to the "Self-Service Cluster Provisioning Details" section for details on setting a cluster as long-lived or ephemeral.

Manage clusters

Namespaces

When developers create a new environment and choose to use existing infrastructure, then Wayfinder will automatically create a new namespace on an existing cluster. This will keep different environments isolated from each other when developers deploy their applications into that environment.

Edit cluster settings

To edit cluster settings in Wayfinder's web interface

1. Select Admin > Kubernetes > Clusters, and then click the name of the cluster you want to edit.
2. Click the Settings tab for this cluster, and then click the Edit button.
3. Make your changes, and then click Save.

Manage cluster labels

Labels are key:value pairs in Kubernetes. You can use cluster labels in user access policies to constrain the policies to include/exclude clusters with specific labels.

For more information on these use cases, see:

• Creating Access Policies

• Refer to the "Cluster Plan Details" section for adding labels to a cluster when provisioned.

note

All clusters have the internal labels which are automatically added by Wayfinder. You can use these as well as your own labels to filter clusters as needed.

Create spot/preemptible node pools

Spot or preemptible VMs provide a cost-saving way to run workloads that can tolerate interruption, because spot instances are not guaranteed to be available from the cloud provider. For example, they are appropriate for use with batch processing jobs, or fault-tolerant testing environments.

Refer to the "Compute Template NodePools" section for details about spot/preemptible node pools property and the "Self-Service Cluster Provisioning Compute Details" for instructions on how to customisable compute templates for provisioining clusters with spot/preemptible enabled.

For more information, see:

• GCP documentation
• Azure documentation

Configure cluster network settings

The network types for which you can provide IP ranges are:

Cloud	Supported network types
EKS	Nodes
AKS	Nodes, Services
GKE	Nodes, Services, Pods

You configure the cluster network setting using a Cluster Network Plan and then add the Network Plan to a Cluster Plan.

The cluster plan along with a Compute Template is used to configure the cluster during provisioning.

important

The cluster network settings cannot be changed once the cluster is created.

Upgrade Kubernetes on a cluster

You can updagrade your cluster by creating a new version of a cluster plan and updating the details such as Kubernetes version.

Delete a cluster

Deleting a cluster also deletes namespaces on that cluster, including tenant namespaces if it's a multi-tenant cluster.

To delete a cluster:

Wayfinder's web interface: Go to your workspace and select Clusters. Select the cluster that you want to delete and click the Delete button.

CLI: wf delete cluster CLUSTER-NAME