Getting started

Introduction

This lab is designed to guide you through the construction of a complete GitOps-driven CI/CD pipeline on the Nutanix Kubernetes Platform (NKP). These documents provide a step-by-step roadmap for setting up a modern software delivery lifecycle, starting from initial environment preparation to automated container builds.

Lab Objectives

By following these modules, you will establish a robust Continuous Integration (CI) framework. Currently, the labs cover:

• Environment Preparation: Setting up the necessary prerequisites, including an NKP workload cluster and the installation of essential tools like the Tekton and Flux CLI clients.
• Infrastructure Configuration: Configuring secrets, ServiceAccounts, and RBAC to allow your CI tools to interact securely with your cluster and image registries.
• Pipeline Development: Building Tekton Pipelines that utilize Kaniko to compile "Hello World" containers and push them to a private Harbor registry or public Docker registry.
• Automation: Implementing Tekton Triggers and the SMEE client to allow your cluster to receive GitHub webhooks, ensuring your pipeline fires automatically on every code push.

Getting Started

Before proceeding to the CI setup, ensure your jumphost VM and NKP cluster meet the minimum requirements, such as having the appropriate vCPU, memory, and storage allocations defined in the prerequisites. Once your tools are installed and your environment is sourced, you will be ready to build your first Tekton objects.

By the end you will have:

• Tekton Pipelines + Triggers installed, with the Dashboard exposed over HTTPS via Ingress
• Flux v2 bootstrapped against your personal GitHub fork, managing both Tekton manifests and the application deployment
• A Kaniko build task that compiles a Hello World container and pushes it to your private Harbor project
• A GitHub webhook that fires the pipeline automatically on every push to main using SMEE client

Lab Flow

stateDiagram-v2
    direction LR

    state PrepEnvironment {
        [*] --> PrepJumphost
        PrepJumphost --> InstallCLIs
        InstallCLIs --> [*]
    }

    state ConfigureInfra {
        [*] --> SetEnvVars
        SetEnvVars --> CreateSecrets
        CreateSecrets --> ApplyRBAC
        ApplyRBAC --> [*]
    }

    state SetupTekton {
        [*] --> DeployTekton
        DeployTekton --> ForkRepo
        ForkRepo --> CreateTasks
        CreateTasks --> CreatePipeline
        CreatePipeline --> [*]
    }

    state ManualTest {
        [*] --> RunPipeline
        RunPipeline --> VerifyLogs
        VerifyLogs --> [*]
    }

    state ConfigureTriggers {
        [*] --> SetupTemplates
        SetupTemplates --> CreateEventListener
        CreateEventListener --> DeploySMEE
        DeploySMEE --> [*]
    }

    state AutomatedCI {
        [*] --> PushCode
        PushCode --> AutoTrigger
        AutoTrigger --> [*]
    }

    state CDIntegration {
        [*] --> BootstrapFlux
        BootstrapFlux --> DeployApp
        DeployApp --> [*]
    }

    [*] --> PrepEnvironment
    PrepEnvironment --> ConfigureInfra
    ConfigureInfra --> SetupTekton
    SetupTekton --> ManualTest
    ManualTest --> ConfigureTriggers
    ConfigureTriggers --> AutomatedCI
    AutomatedCI --> CDIntegration
    CDIntegration --> [*]