Udagram Microservices

This is the Udagram, second project of Udacity Cloud Developer Nanodegree, refactored from monolith to microservices using Docker containers and CI/CD pipelines with Travis and Kubernetes.

Users will be able to post photos to a feed and process it using an image filtering.

These are the components that compose the complete solution:

• A Kubernetes cluster deployed in AWS containing:
  • An Ionic frontend UI on it's own pod/container;
  • A Node-Express backend REST API for user endpoint on it's own pod/container;
  • A Node-Express backend REST API for feed endpoint on it's own pod/container;
  • A reverse proxy sitting in front of the REST APIs;
  • A Node-Express image filtering microservice on it's own pod/container;
• AWS S3 file store;
• AWS RDS database;

The Ionic frontend consumes the Node-Express REST APIs through the reverse-proxy API Gateway.

The REST APIs communicates with the Ionic Frontend, a S3 file store, the RDS database and with the image filtering microservice.

Screenshots

As per Udacity project evaluation a screenshots folder was created containing all required images of each step of a working project.

Kubernetes Configuration Files

The Kubernetes application configuration files are located in kubernetes folder in project root.

• k8s.udagram-dtm.yml - specifies all application services and deployments;
• k8s.configMap.yml - a k8s ConfigMap containing the project environment variables;
• k8s.secrets.yml - a k8s secrets containing the project sensitive environment variables;
• k8s.autoscaler.yml - the horizontal pod autoscaler configuration file;
• k8s.networkPolicy.yml - the ingress network policy for all required pods in the application;

Current Frontend Endpoint

Current Kubernetes Ionic frontend endpoint: Udagram Microservices.

Installation instructions

The project is deployed in the AWS cloud, but if you want to try by your own please check the instructions below.

1. Requirements:

   • A provisioned AWS S3 file store;
   • A provisioned AWS RDS PostgreSQL database;
   • Install Node.js (tested with Node.Js 14);
   • Install AWS cli;
   • Install kubectl;

2. Create an AWS IAM profile or use an existing one for this project;

3. Create an EKS Cluster in AWS with the chosen IAM profile.

   • The cluster can be created with a different IAM profile than the actual user that will access and use it. In this case additional steps should be taken. Reference - Managing users or IAM roles for your cluster - To add an IAM user or role to an Amazon EKS cluster section;
     • configure the IAM user who created the cluster locally with aws configure;
     • use this user to edit the aws-auth ConfigMap
     • add the IAM user who will work in the cluster afterwards inside the aws-auth mapUsers section of the ConfigMap;

4. Create a Node Group inside the EKS Cluster with the chosen IAM profile;

5. Update the IAM profile to have access to EKS resources;

6. Configure your local AWS profile with the IAM to be used for this project;

7. Tie the kubectl cli to your created AWS cluster;

8. Create your k8s.secrets.yml inside kubernetes folder. This secrets should contain the sensitive environment variables necessary to the project:

   • RESTAPI_FEED_CLIENT_ID - restapi server client id for server-server jwt token authentication;
   • RESTAPI_FEED_PRIVATE_KEY - restapi server private key for server-server jwt token authentication;
   • IMG_JWT_SECRET - image filtering microservice secret to generate the jwt server-server access token;
   • POSTGRESS_USERNAME - AWS RDS database username;
   • POSTGRESS_PASSWORD - AWS RDS database password;
   • POSTGRESS_DATABASE - AWS RDS database db name;
   • POSTGRESS_HOST - AWS RDS database host address;
   • JWT_SECRET - secret to generate the jwt authorization token for frontend;
   • AWS_REGION - AWS deployed resources region;
   • AWS_PROFILE - AWS IAM profile that has permissions to the project resources;
   • AWS_MEDIA_BUCKET - AWS S3 bucket endpoint.

9. To deploy all components in EKS run the command in your terminal:

   • npm run udagram-dtm

10. Get the reverse-proxy external IP:

    • kubectl get service -l app=reverse-proxy

11. Update the frontend environment.prod.ts API host with the reverse-proxy external IP;

12. Update the git repository with the new code and trigger Travis CI process;

13. Update kubernetes frontend pod with the latest image;

14. Get your frontend endpoint and access the Udagram app from the browser:

    • kubectl get service -l app=frontend-ionic