Flagger Install on Kubernetes
This guide walks you through setting up Flagger on a Kubernetes cluster with Helm or Kubectl.
See the Flux install guide for installing Flagger and keeping it up to date the GitOps way.
Install Flagger with Helm
Add Flagger Helm repository:
helm repo add flagger https://flagger.app
Install Flagger's Canary CRD:
kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/fluxcd/flagger/main/artifacts/flagger/crd.yaml
Deploy Flagger for Istio:
helm upgrade -i flagger flagger/flagger \
--namespace=istio-system \
--set crd.create=false \
--set meshProvider=istio \
--set metricsServer=http://prometheus:9090
Note that Flagger depends on Istio telemetry and Prometheus, if you're installing Istio with istioctl then you should be using the default profile.
For Istio multi-cluster shared control plane you can install Flagger on each remote cluster and set the Istio control plane host cluster kubeconfig:
helm upgrade -i flagger flagger/flagger \
--namespace=istio-system \
--set crd.create=false \
--set meshProvider=istio \
--set metricsServer=http://istio-cluster-prometheus:9090 \
--set controlplane.kubeconfig.secretName=istio-kubeconfig \
--set controlplane.kubeconfig.key=kubeconfig
Note that the Istio kubeconfig must be stored in a Kubernetes secret with a data key named kubeconfig
. For more details on how to configure Istio multi-cluster credentials read the Istio docs.
Deploy Flagger for Linkerd:
helm upgrade -i flagger flagger/flagger \
--namespace=linkerd \
--set crd.create=false \
--set meshProvider=linkerd \
--set metricsServer=http://linkerd-prometheus:9090
If you need to add labels to the flagger deployment or pods, you can pass the labels as parameters as shown below.
helm upgrade -i flagger flagger/flagger \
<other parameters> \
--set podLabels.<labelName>=<labelValue> \
--set deploymentLabels.<labelName>=<labelValue>
You can install Flagger in any namespace as long as it can talk to the Prometheus service on port 9090.
For ingress controllers, the installation instructions are:
To uninstall the Flagger release with Helm run:
helm delete flagger
The command removes all the Kubernetes components associated with the chart and deletes the release.
Note that on uninstall the Canary CRD will not be removed. Deleting the CRD will make Kubernetes remove all the objects owned by Flagger like Istio virtual services, Kubernetes deployments and ClusterIP services.
If you want to remove all the objects created by Flagger you have to delete the Canary CRD with kubectl:
kubectl delete crd canaries.flagger.app
Install Grafana with Helm
Flagger comes with a Grafana dashboard made for monitoring the canary analysis.
Deploy Grafana in the istio-system namespace:
helm upgrade -i flagger-grafana flagger/grafana \
--namespace=istio-system \
--set url=http://prometheus.istio-system:9090 \
--set user=admin \
--set password=change-me
You can access Grafana using port forwarding:
kubectl -n istio-system port-forward svc/flagger-grafana 3000:80
Install Flagger with Kubectl
Install Flagger and Prometheus using the Kustomize overlay from the GitHub repository:
kubectl apply -k https://github.com/fluxcd/flagger/kustomize/kubernetes?ref=main
This deploys Flagger and Prometheus in the flagger-system
namespace, sets the metrics server URL to http://flagger-prometheus.flagger-system:9090
and the mesh provider to kubernetes
.
The Prometheus instance has a two hours data retention and is configured to scrape all pods in your cluster that have the prometheus.io/scrape: "true"
annotation.
Customized installer
Create a kustomization file using Flagger as base and patch the container args:
cat > kustomization.yaml <<EOF
namespace: istio-system
bases:
- https://github.com/fluxcd/flagger/kustomize/kubernetes?ref=main
patches:
- target:
kind: Deployment
name: flagger
patch: |-
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
name: flagger
spec:
template:
spec:
containers:
- name: flagger
args:
- -mesh-provider=istio
- -metrics-server=http://prometheus.istio-system:9090
- -include-label-prefix=app.kubernetes.io
EOF
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