Part 4

Update Strategies and Prometheus

In the last part we did automated updates with a deployment pipeline. The update just worked but we have no idea how the update actually happened, other than that a pod was changed, and we can make the update process safer to help us reach a higher number of nines.

There are multiple update/deployment/release strategies. We will focus on two of them and how to implement them.

  • Rolling update
  • Canary release

Both of these update strategies are designed to make sure that the application works during and after an update. Rather than updating every pod at the same time the idea is to update the pods one at a time and confirm that the application works.

Rolling update

By default Kubernetes initiates a "rolling update" when we change the image. That means that every pod is updated sequentially. The rolling update is a great default since it enables the application to be available during the update. If we decide to push an image that does not work the update will automatically stop.

I've prepared an application with 5 versions here. The one with tag v1 works always, v2 never works, v3 works 90% of the time, v4 will die after 20 seconds and v5 works always.

deployment.yaml

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: flaky-update-dep
spec:
  replicas: 4
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: flaky-update
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: flaky-update
    spec:
      containers:
        - name: flaky-update
          image: jakousa/dwk-app8:v1
$ kubectl apply -f deployment.yaml
  deployment.apps/flaky-update-dep created

$ kubectl get po
  NAME                                READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
  flaky-update-dep-7b5fd9ffc7-27cxt   1/1     Running   0          87s
  flaky-update-dep-7b5fd9ffc7-mp8vd   1/1     Running   0          88s
  flaky-update-dep-7b5fd9ffc7-m4smm   1/1     Running   0          87s
  flaky-update-dep-7b5fd9ffc7-nzl98   1/1     Running   0          88s

Now change the tag to v2 and apply it.

$ kubectl apply -f deployment.yaml
$ kubectl get po --watch
...

You can see the rolling update performed but unfortunately the application no longer works. The application is running, it's just that there's a bug which prevents it from working correctly. How do we communicate this malfunction outside the application? This is where ReadinessProbes come in.

Kubernetes Best Practices - Kubernetes Health Checks with Readiness and Liveness Probes

With a ReadinessProbe Kubernetes can check if a pod is ready to process requests. The application has an endpoint /healthz in port 3541, and we can use that to test for health. It will simply answer with status code 500 if it's not working and 200 if it is.

Let's roll the version back to v1 as well so we can test the update to v2 again.

deployment.yaml

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: flaky-update-dep
spec:
  replicas: 4
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: flaky-update
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: flaky-update
    spec:
      containers:
        - name: flaky-update
          image: jakousa/dwk-app8:v1
          readinessProbe:
            initialDelaySeconds: 10 # Initial delay until the readiness is tested
            periodSeconds: 5 # How often to test
            httpGet:
               path: /healthz
               port: 3541

Here the initialDelaySeconds and periodSeconds will mean that the probe is sent 10 seconds after the container is up and every 5 seconds after that. Now if we change the tag to v2 and apply it the result will look like this:

$ kubectl apply -f deployment.yaml
  deployment.apps/flaky-update-dep configured

$ kubectl get po
  NAME                                READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
  flaky-update-dep-f5c79dbc-8lnqm     1/1     Running   0          115s
  flaky-update-dep-f5c79dbc-86fmd     1/1     Running   0          116s
  flaky-update-dep-f5c79dbc-qzs9p     1/1     Running   0          98s
  flaky-update-dep-54888b877b-dkctl   0/1     Running   0          25s
  flaky-update-dep-54888b877b-dbw29   0/1     Running   0          24s

Here three of the pods are completely functional, one of v1 was dropped to make way for the v2 ones but since they do not work they are never READY and the update can not continue.

Even though v2 didn't work. At least the application is working. We can just push a new update on top of the v2. Let's try the v4 which should break after a short while:

$ kubectl apply -f deployment.yaml
  deployment.apps/flaky-update-dep configured

Now the ReadinessProbe may pass for the first 20 seconds but soon enough every pod will break. Unfortunately ReadinessProbe cannot do anything about it, the deploy was successful but the application is buggy.

$ kubectl get po
  NAME                               READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
  flaky-update-dep-dd78944f4-vv27w   0/1     Running   0          111s
  flaky-update-dep-dd78944f4-dnmcg   0/1     Running   0          110s
  flaky-update-dep-dd78944f4-zlh4v   0/1     Running   0          92s
  flaky-update-dep-dd78944f4-zczmw   0/1     Running   0          90s

Let's roll back to the previous version. This may come in handy if you ever are in a panic mode and need to roll an update back:

$ kubectl rollout undo deployment flaky-update-dep
  deployment.apps/flaky-update-dep rolled back

This will roll back into the previous version. Since it was v2, which doesn't work, we need to use a flag with the undo:

$ kubectl describe deployment flaky-update-dep | grep Image
    Image:        jakousa/dwk-app8:v2

$ kubectl rollout undo deployment flaky-update-dep --to-revision=1
  deployment.apps/flaky-update-dep rolled back

$ kubectl describe deployment flaky-update-dep | grep Image
    Image:        jakousa/dwk-app8:v1

Read kubectl rollout undo --help to find out more!

There's another probe that could've helped us in a situation like the v4. LivenessProbes can be configured similarly to ReadinessProbes, but if the check fails the container will be restarted.

deployment.yaml

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: flaky-update-dep
spec:
  replicas: 4
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: flaky-update
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: flaky-update
    spec:
      containers:
        - name: flaky-update
          image: jakousa/dwk-app8:v1
          readinessProbe:
            initialDelaySeconds: 10 # Initial delay until the readiness is tested
            periodSeconds: 5 # How often to test
            httpGet:
               path: /healthz
               port: 3541
          livenessProbe:
            initialDelaySeconds: 20 # Initial delay until the liveness is tested
            periodSeconds: 5 # How often to test
            httpGet:
               path: /healthz
               port: 3541

With this let's just deploy the worst of the versions, v3.

$ kubectl apply -f deployment.yaml
  deployment.apps/flaky-update-dep configured

After a while it may look something like this (if you're lucky).

$ kubectl get po
  NAME                                READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
  flaky-update-dep-fd65cd468-4vgwx   1/1     Running   3          2m30s
  flaky-update-dep-fd65cd468-9h877   0/1     Running   4          2m49s
  flaky-update-dep-fd65cd468-jpz2m   0/1     Running   3          2m13s
  flaky-update-dep-fd65cd468-529nr   1/1     Running   4          2m50s

At least something is working!

A StartupProbe can delay the liveness probe so that an application with a longer startup can take its time. You may require it in real life but is not discussed further on this course

Canary release

With rolling updates, when including the Probes, we could create releases with no downtime for users. Sometimes this is not enough and you need to be able to do a partial release for some users and get data for the new / upcoming release. Canary release is the term used to describe a release strategy in which we introduce a subset of the users to a new version of the application. Then increasing the number of users in the new version until the old version is no longer used.

At the moment of writing this Canary is not a strategy for deployments. This may be due to the ambiguity of the methods for canary release. We will use Argo Rollouts to test one type of canary release:

$ kubectl create namespace argo-rollouts
$ kubectl apply -n argo-rollouts -f https://github.com/argoproj/argo-rollouts/releases/latest/download/install.yaml

Now we have a new resource "Rollout" available to us. The Rollout will replace our previously created deployment and enable us to use a new field:

rollout.yaml

apiVersion: argoproj.io/v1alpha1
kind: Rollout
metadata:
  name: flaky-update-dep
spec:
  replicas: 4
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: flaky-update
  strategy:
    canary:
      steps:
      - setWeight: 25
      - pause:
          duration: 30s
      - setWeight: 50
      - pause:
          duration: 30s
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: flaky-update
    spec:
      containers:
        - name: flaky-update
          image: jakousa/dwk-app8:v1
          readinessProbe:
            initialDelaySeconds: 10 # Initial delay until the readiness is tested
            periodSeconds: 5 # How often to test
            httpGet:
               path: /healthz
               port: 3541
          livenessProbe:
            initialDelaySeconds: 20 # Initial delay until the liveness is tested
            periodSeconds: 5 # How often to test
            httpGet:
               path: /healthz
               port: 3541

The above strategy will first move 25% (setWeight) of the pods to a new version (in our case 1 pod) after which it will wait for 30 seconds, move to 50% of pods and then wait for 30 seconds until every pod is updated. A kubectl plugin from Argo also offers us promote command to enable us to pause the rollout indefinitely and then use the promote to move forward.

There are other options such as the maxUnavailable but the defaults will work for us. However, simply rolling slowly to production will not be enough for a canary deployment. Just like with rolling updates we need to know the status of the application.

With another custom resource we've already installed with Argo Rollouts called "AnalysisTemplate" we will be able to define a test that doesn't let the broken versions through.

If you don't have Prometheus available go back to part 2 for a reminder. We'll have the analysis done as the version is updating. If the analysis fails it will automatically cancel the rollout.

  ...
  strategy:
    canary:
      steps:
      - setWeight: 50
      - analysis:
          templates:
          - templateName: restart-rate
  template:
  ...

The CRD (Custom Resource Definition) AnalysisTemplate will, in our case, use Prometheus and send a query. The query result is then compared to a preset value. In this simplified case if the number of overall restarts over the last 2 minutes is higher than two it will fail the analysis. initialDelay will ensure that the test is not run until the data required is gathered. Note that this is not a robust test as the production version may crash and prevent the update even if the update itself is working correctly. The AnalysisTemplate is not dependant on Prometheus and could use a different source, such as a JSON endpoint, instead.

analysistemplate.yaml

apiVersion: argoproj.io/v1alpha1
kind: AnalysisTemplate
metadata:
  name: restart-rate
spec:
  metrics:
  - name: restart-rate
    initialDelay: 2m
    successCondition: result < 2
    provider:
      prometheus:
        address: http://kube-prometheus-stack-1602-prometheus.prometheus.svc.cluster.local:9090 # DNS name for my Prometheus, find yours with kubectl describe svc ...
        query: |
          scalar(
            sum(kube_pod_container_status_restarts_total{namespace="default", container="flaky-update"}) -
            sum(kube_pod_container_status_restarts_total{namespace="default", container="flaky-update"} offset 2m)
          )

With the new Rollout and AnalysisTemplate we can safely try to deploy any version. Deploy for v2 is prevented with the Probes we set up. Deploy for v3 will automatically roll back when it notices that it has random crashes. And v4 will also fail. The short 2 minutes to test may still let a version pass. With more steps and pauses for analysis and more robust tests we could be more confident in our solution. Use kubectl describe ar flaky-update-dep-6d5669dc9f-2-1 to get info for a specific AnalysisRun.

Other deployment strategies

Kubernetes supports Recreate strategy which takes down the previous pods and replaces everything with the updated one. This creates a moment of downtime for the application but ensures that different versions are not running at the same time. Argo Rollouts supports BlueGreen strategy, in which a new version is run side by side to the new one but traffic is switched between the two at a certain point, such as after running update scripts or after your QA team has approved the new version.

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