• Helm chart for Skipper
  • Helm registry
  • Deployment
    • Minimal
    • Other namespace than default
    • Enable RBAC
    • Enable prometheus-operator
    • Debugging
    • Enable ingress.class annotation handling
    • Deploy with values.yaml file
    • Running multiple instances

The chart is available at the Quay.io registry.

To be able to install the chart you will need the registry plugin. Please follow the install guide in the GitHub repository.

The minimal deployment of this chart looks like this:

• install the Helm client
• install the Helm registry plugin

helm registry upgrade quay.io/baez/skipper -- \
    --install \
    --wait \
    "<you release name e.g. skipper>"

To deploy the ingress controller to a specific namespace run it like this and adjust the --namespace value:

helm registry upgrade quay.io/baez/skipper -- \
    --install \
    --wait \
    --namespace "<your-namespace>"
    "<you release name e.g. skipper>"

Role-Based Access Control (“RBAC”) is stable since Kubernetes 1.8 and is part of the Kubernetes best practices. This Helm chart includes manifests for all required resources but does not deploy them by default. If you have RBAC enabled in your Kubernetes cluster you need the following additional resources deployed:

• ClusterRole
• ClusterRoleBinding
• ServiceAccount

This is done by passing --set rbac.create=true to the helm CLI like this:

helm registry upgrade quay.io/baez/skipper -- \
    --install \
    --wait \
    --set rbac.create=true
    "<you release name e.g. skipper>"

There are additional values you can override if you want to customize e.g. the name of the ServiceAccount. The following variables can be overridden:

Note: the ServiceAccount will be created in the same namespace as the rest of the chart.

Prometheus-Operator is project that deploys Prometheus to your Kubernetes cluster.

Note: there's also a Helm chart available for Prometheus-Operator.

To notify Prometheus-Operator that it should collect the metrics of Skipper the following additional resources are required:

• ServiceMonitor

This Helm chart includes the required manifest but does not deploy it by default. To enable support for Prometheus-Operator add the flat --set prometheusOperator.create=true to your helm CLI like this:

helm registry upgrade quay.io/baez/skipper -- \
    --install \
    --wait \
    --set prometheusOperator.create=true \
    "<you release name e.g. skipper>"

There are a few more configuration options available you can pass to the CLI if required:

Sometimes something is just going wrong and you have no clue what's happening. You can set the log level to DEBUG to get more insights by adding the flat --set skipper.logLevel="DEBUG" to the helm CLI like this:

helm registry upgrade quay.io/baez/skipper -- \
    --install \
    --wait \
    --set skipper.logLevel="DEBUG" \
    "<you release name e.g. skipper>"

The available log levels are:

• ERROR
• WARN
• INFO
• DEBUG

If you want to split the traffic to different Skipper deployments you can define the value skipper.ingressClass which will enable the built-in support of Skipper to parse the pod annotation kubernetes.io/ingress.class.

Pass the flag --set skipper.ingressClass=skipper-prod to the helm CLI like this

helm registry upgrade quay.io/baez/skipper -- \
    --install \
    --wait \
    --set skipper.ingressClass="skipper-prod" \
    "<you release name e.g. skipper>"

To enable the parsing support and force Skipper to filter for pods with the annotation:

kubernetes.io/ingress.class: skipper-prod

If you don't want to pass all options via --set you can also copy the shipped ./skipper/values.yaml, adopt it and pass it to the helm CLI like this:

helm registry upgrade quay.io/baez/skipper -- \
    --install \
    --wait \
    -f my-values.yaml \
    "<you release name e.g. skipper>"

If you want to run multiple instances of Skipper and the ingress controller make sure that you change some default values to avoid naming and port clashes.

A bare minimal scenario might look like this to avoid port clashes:

helm registry upgrade quay.io/baez/skipper -- \
    --install \
    --wait \
    --set skipper.ingressClass="skipper-prod" \
    --set skipper.webEndpoint.port=9999 \
    --set skipper.metricsEndpoint.port=9911 \
    --set skipper.
  "<you release name e.g. skipper-prod>"

helm registry upgrade quay.io/baez/skipper -- \
    --install \
    --wait \
    --set skipper.ingressClass="skipper-staging" \
    --set skipper.webEndpoint.port=9988 \
    --set skipper.metricsEndpoint.port=9922 \
  "<you release name e.g. skipper-staging>"

Things are getting a little bit more complicated if it comes to RBAC and Prometheus-Operator:

helm registry upgrade quay.io/baez/skipper -- \
    --install \
    --wait \
    --set skipper.ingressClass="skipper-prod" \
    --set skipper.webEndpoint.port=9999 \
    --set skipper.metricsEndpoint.port=9911 \
    --set rbac.create=true \
    --set rbac.svcAccountName="skipper-prod" \
    --set rbac.clusterRoleName="skipper-prod" \
    --set rbac.clusterRoleBindingName="skipper-prod" \
    --set skipper.
  "<you release name e.g. skipper-prod>"

helm registry upgrade quay.io/baez/skipper -- \
    --install \
    --wait \
    --set skipper.ingressClass="skipper-staging" \
    --set skipper.webEndpoint.port=9988 \
    --set skipper.metricsEndpoint.port=9922 \
    --set rbac.create=true \
    --set rbac.svcAccountName="skipper-staging" \
    --set rbac.clusterRoleName="skipper-staging" \
    --set rbac.clusterRoleBindingName="skipper-staging" \
  "<you release name e.g. skipper-staging>"