How to use kops addons

[glesperance]

Can't seem to find the documentation on how to use kops' addons (found in kops/addons) ; more specifically logging-elasticsearch.

It seems I could just apply the YML config via kubectl but what is that "channel" tool mentioned here?

Thanks!

[chrislovecnm]

Great question!

Channels is one of the areas of little documentation unfortunately. One of the components that we use internally for kops, but can be used externally as well.

Internal details

Inside a kops state store cluster s3 bucket you will see a addons folder. That folder is automatically generated by kops for such components as kube-dns, dns-controller, cni, etc. Those manifest files are used by channels which is run inside the protokube container on the master.

Nodeup bootstraps a master, and installs protokube. Once k8s is up, protokube exectutes channels. Channels accesses the yaml staged in s3 and applys the different manifests with kubectl.

At this point we do not recommend using the addons files in the s3 bucket because kops manages them, and we do not have capability to modify how kops handles them. There has been discussions about having addons manifests as well. But that is future work.

External use

You can use the channels binary just like protokube uses it. I do not have the cli options handy, but we do have users that utilize it.

Why would I use it? channels allows for the upgrading of specific components, and targeting components for certain versions of k8s. It is a very simple tool, and I would recommend a more robust cicd tool for complex component. But when you need to bootstrap basic applications it works well.

We should drop all of this into docs, and I am sure I have missed a couple of details.

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[gladiatr72]

Since this seems to be the only spot to find the above useful piece of information, please tag this with something that will prevent it from disappearing into the abyss of auto-closed issues.

It would be appreciated by pretty much anyone trying to read the kops docs if docs/addon_manager.md be rewritten by someone who understands what this document is trying to communicate. Otherwise, please move it to the work-in-progress directory.

Docs are going to vary in quality; however, this file seems less like documentation and more like a skillful transcription of one-side of a conversation between two people who are already familiar with the subject. (and the eaves-dropping transcriptionist arrived after the conversation had already been going for 10 minutes :)

[chrislovecnm]

/lifecycle frozen
/remove-lifecycle stale

@gladiatr72 you are actually able to use the above bot commands ;)

/area documentation

[chrislovecnm]

/lifecycle frozen
/remove-lifecycle rotten

[ruippeixotog]

Hi! I'm still a beginner with Kubernetes and Kops, and I have three questions after reading this:

• I see in many places the "channel tool" mentioned. Where can I download that tool?
• I know that I can use kubectl to create an addon at a specific version, but is there any way I can just apply a YAML with an Addons resource like this? Everything in my cluster creation must be automatable, and it's not very easy if I have to parse and interpret this YAML to do that. Is this what the "channels tool" does?
• Does that "channels tool" allow me to make an addon run as the cluster boots, just like the internal ones?