🛍️ Multi-Tenant WooCommerce Store Provisioning Platform

This platform automates the provisioning of fully isolated WooCommerce stores on Kubernetes using Helm. It's portable and works both for local development (Minikube) and production-style VPS setups (k3s).

Each store runs in its own dedicated Kubernetes namespace for total isolation.

Author: Varshith Yadav

📦 Architecture Overview

• API Service: Node.js-based controller that handles lifecycle (creation/deletion) of stores.
• Helm Charts: Templated deployments for WordPress (WooCommerce) and MariaDB.
• Kubernetes: Orchestration layer providing resource isolation per namespace.
• Ingress (NGINX): Dynamic routing to map unique store URLs to namespaces.
• Persistent Volumes (PVC): Database and media persistence.
• Isolation Strategy: One store = one namespace to prevent cross-store impact.

🚀 1. Local Setup (Minikube)

Prerequisites

• Docker
• kubectl
• helm
• minikube

Step-by-step Installation

1. Start Minikube & enable ingress:

minikube start
minikube addons enable ingress

2. Verify Ingress Controller:

kubectl get pods -n ingress-nginx

3. Make Ingress Accessible — patch the controller to LoadBalancer and start the tunnel:

kubectl patch svc ingress-nginx-controller \
  -n ingress-nginx \
  --type=merge \
  -p '{"spec":{"type":"LoadBalancer"}}'

minikube tunnel

Keep the minikube tunnel running in a terminal so LoadBalancer IPs resolve locally.

4. Launch the API service (from backend):

cd backend
npm install
npm run dev

🛒 2. Store Operations & Workflow

Create a Store

Send a request to the API to trigger the Helm deployment:

curl -X POST http://localhost:3000/create-store

What happens behind the scenes:

• A new namespace is created (e.g., store-xxxx).
• Helm installs WordPress + MariaDB into that namespace.
• PVCs and Kubernetes Secrets are created for persistence and credentials.
• An Ingress rule is generated (e.g., store-xxxx.<minikube-ip>.nip.io).

Place a Test Order

• Access: Open the generated URL in your browser.
• Configure: Login to /wp-admin, add a product, publish it.
• Checkout: Add the product to cart and use Cash on Delivery (COD).
• Verify: In WooCommerce → Orders you should see the transaction.

How to see the WordPress admin password

After creating a store the provisioning creates Kubernetes Secrets in the store namespace. To view and decode the WordPress admin password:

• List secrets in the store namespace:

kubectl get secret -n <store-namespace>

• View the wordpress-credentials secret (YAML) and inspect the .data field:

kubectl get secret wordpress-credentials \
  -n store-ef9d6d8e-e882-4e85-a3ac-b59d7aecaf49 \
  -o yaml

• Decode the password (JSONPath) and print it — example PowerShell sequence:

$pw = kubectl get secret wordpress-credentials `
  -n store-ef9d6d8e-e882-4e85-a3ac-b59d7aecaf49 `
  -o jsonpath="{.data.wordpress-password}"

[System.Text.Encoding]::UTF8.GetString(
  [System.Convert]::FromBase64String($pw)
)

• Or decode on Linux/macOS using base64:

kubectl get secret wordpress-credentials -n <store-namespace> -o jsonpath="{.data.wordpress-password}" | base64 --decode

Replace <store-namespace> with the actual namespace name created for the store (for example: store-ef9d6d8e-e882-4e85-a3ac-b59d7aecaf49).

Delete a Store

Use the API or kubectl:

curl -X DELETE http://localhost:3000/store/{id}
# Or manually
kubectl delete namespace store-xxxx

🌍 3. VPS / Production Setup (k3s)

For a production-like environment on a Linux VPS (GCP, AWS, DigitalOcean):

Install k3s & Helm

curl -sfL https://get.k3s.io | sh -
curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/helm/helm/main/scripts/get-helm-3 | bash

Deploy NGINX Ingress

helm repo add ingress-nginx https://kubernetes.github.io/ingress-nginx
helm install ingress-nginx ingress-nginx/ingress-nginx -n ingress-nginx --create-namespace

Domain Mapping

• Development: Use store-xyz.<VPS-IP>.nip.io.
• Production: Point a wildcard DNS A record (*.yourdomain.com) to the VPS IP.

🔐 Security & Scaling

• Data Security: Databases are not exposed publicly; credentials are stored in Kubernetes Secrets.
• Persistence: PVCs ensure data survives pod restarts and upgrades.
• Horizontal Scaling: The API service can be scaled as a Deployment; stores can use HPA.
• Resource Control: Namespace-level ResourceQuota and LimitRange prevent a single store consuming all cluster resources.

✅ Project Highlights

• Infrastructure as Code: Entire store environment defined via Helm.
• Portability: Same workflow for local dev and cloud production.
• Automation: Zero-touch provisioning of WordPress + MariaDB stacks per store.

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