Deployment

Configuring settings for deployment and runtime behavior

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Helm Chart

Altinn applications are published to a Kubernetes cluster using a deployment Helm chart. A Helm chart contains the necessary resources to publish an app, including YAML configuration files.

Based on tests and experiences, we have set some default values in a central Helm chart as a starting point for publishing Altinn applications. These values may change as we gain more experience.

Custom settings

Custom settings are configured in the App/deployment/values.yaml file by adding the desired property under the deployment section. These will override corresponding settings in the Helm chart (for exceptions, see here). See Initial Scaling for an example.

Scaling

Initial scaling

The initial scaling is defined by replicaCount. If autoscaling is enabled, the autoscaler will override this value.

Standard settings in the Helm chart:

replicaCount: 2

...

To override the settings in your app, you can add replicaCount under deployment i App/deployment/values.yaml:

deployment:

  replicaCount: 3

...

Autoscaling

When configuring how autoscaling behaves, you need to consider the following sections:

1. resources: Guarantees and limits for CPU and memory for app pods during runtime. See Resource Configuration.
2. autoscaling: Settings for when the application should scale up or down.

Autoscaling utilizes the Horizontal Pod Autoscaler to automatically scale an app up and down based on CPU usage.

The autoscaling section configures when an application should automatically scale.

Default settings in the Helm chart:

...

autoscaling:
  enabled: true
  replicas:
    min: 2
    max: 10
  avgCpuUtilization: 70
  behavior:
    stabilizationWindowSeconds:
      scaleUp: 0
      scaleDown: 120

...

autoscaling.replicas

• min: The lowest number of pods the autoscaler is allowed to scale down to.
• max: The highest number of pods the autoscaler is allowed to scale up to.

autoscaling.avgCpuUtilization

avgCpuUtilization sets the threshold for the percentage of CPU requests utilized before scaling up or down.

Scaling up is not immediate, as a new pod takes time to start (1-2 minutes in most cases). If all resources in a cluster are reserved, a new node must be started in Azure (5-10 minutes in most cases). It is, therefore, wise to have a small buffer so that the application can handle the load until the capacity is expanded.

autoscaling.behavior.stabilizationWindowSeconds

The stabilization window limits the flickering of replicas when the values used for scaling vary.

• scaleUp: The number of seconds Kubernetes should wait after the last scaling before performing a new scaling-up evaluation.
• scaleDown: The number of seconds Kubernetes should wait after the last scaling before it performs a new evaluation for scaling down.

With standard settings, scaling up will happen once the consumption exceeds the threshold values. Scaling down will wait for two minutes.

Resources configuration

The ideal settings for resources depend on the application’s code and tasks. We have tried to set default values that should work for as many of the apps in Altinn as possible, but they may not be suitable for your app.

Default values in the Helm chart:

...

resources:
  requests:
    cpu: 300m
    memory: 256Mi

...

Values that are possible to configure (the values below are just an example and by no means definitive):

deployment:

  resources:
    requests:
      cpu: 200m
      memory: 256Mi
    limits:
      cpu: 1000m
      memory: 512Mi

...

deployment.resources.requests

The requests property defines the resources reserved for each pod in the app and are used when the Kubernetes scheduler determines which node the pod should run on. Based on these settings, the maximum number of pods that can run on a node is calculated. The maximum number is limited by the setting allowing the fewest pods.

requests are also used by the Horizontal Pod Autoscaler to determine whether the app should scale up or down.

The requests settings do not limit how much CPU or memory an application can use if there are available resources. However, a pod may be “evicted” from the node if there are few available resources and the pod uses more than specified in requests.

deployment.resources.limits

limits define how much of a resource a pod can use at most.

If a pod tries to use more CPU than what is set as a limit, it will be throttled.

If a pod attempts to allocate more memory than what is set as a limit, it will be terminated with an Out Of Memory (OOM) error.

Linkerd

By default, all services are add to the Linkerd service mesh:

...

linkerd:
  enabled: true

...

Mounting of volumes

volumes and volumeMounts define volumes mounted to the application’s filesystem. Volumes describe the content of the mounted resource, and volumeMounts specify where in the application’s filesystem the content should be mounted.

There are two predefined mounted resources and mounting points in the Helm chart that are necessary for standard functionality, including communication with the Altinn Platform:

...

volumeMounts:
  - name: datakeys
    mountPath: /mnt/keys
  - name: accesstoken
    mountPath: "/accesstoken"

volumes:
  - name : datakeys
    persistentVolumeClaim:
      claimName: keys
  - name: accesstoken
    secret:
      secretName: accesstoken

...

Custom volumes can be added under the development section in App/deployment/values.yaml.

At the moment, there is only one use case for adding other volumes: Fetching secrets from Azure Key Vault.

Service

The service configuration defines which port is exposed internally in the cluster and which external port it should be mapped to.

Default settings in the Helm chart:

...

service:
  name: deployment
  type: ClusterIP
  externalPort: 80
  ## If your application is running on another port, change only the internal port.
  internalPort: 5005

...

If your application is running on a different port than 5005, you can configure deployment.service.internalPort in the application’s values.yaml file:

deployment:
...

  service:
    internalPort: 5007

...

Settings overridden at deploy time

• image
• ingressRoute

These settings are overridden during publishing, so changes here will have no effect.