Tapping into Kubernetes

Your Orka environment is a Kubernetes cluster with tiller installed and configured. To manage it, you need to install kubectl and create a kube account for your Orka environment. Optionally, you can also install helm locally to tap into tiller.

Your kube account is basically a Kubernetes service account for your Orka environment. It's limited to the sandbox namespace and comes with a default RBAC configuration.

1. Install kubectl locally or upgrade your existing installation. For example:

brew install kubectl

OR

brew upgrade kubectl

2. Create a kube account and export the kubeconfig. Alternatively, if you already have a kube account, get the respective kubeconfig and export it.

orka kube create --account <NAME> -y

OR

orka kube get --account <NAME> -y

3. Export the resulting kubeconfig and verify that kubectl is configured properly.

export KUBECONFIG=$(pwd)/kubeconfig-orka

kubectl config view

If configured properly, you will see a similar output:

apiVersion: v1
clusters:
- cluster:
    certificate-authority-data: DATA+OMITTED
    server: https://10.10.10.99:6443
  name: kubernetes
contexts:
- context:
    cluster: kubernetes
    namespace: sandbox
    user: mykubeuser
  name: mykubeuser@kubernetes
current-context: mykubeuser@kubernetes
kind: Config
preferences: {}
users:
- name: mykubeuser
  user:
    token: eyJhbGciOiJSUz...

📘

Kubeconfig lost?

Sometimes, after a system or a terminal restart, you might need to re-get and re-export the kubeconfig for your account. Run orka kube get --account NAME -y followed by export KUBECONFIG=$(pwd)/kubeconfig-orka.

4. (Optional) Install or upgrade helm, and verify the installation.

brew install helm

OR

brew upgrade helm

AND THEN

helm env

📘

IMPORTANT: Helm version

Use Helm 3. Older versions of Helm rely on Tiller and might not work as expected.

Run helm version to check your Helm version.

HELM_NAMESPACE must be set to sandbox.

What's next

Check the limitations imposed by the RBAC configuration and start using kubectl and helm to manage your cluster.