Microservices Engine:Implement an end-to-end canary release by using CI/CD pipelines in Jenkins

Enable Microservices Governance for microservice applications in an ACK cluster

1. Activate Microservices Governance. For more information, see Activate Microservices Governance.

2. Enable Microservices Governance for microservice applications in a Container Service for Kubernetes (ACK) cluster. For more information, see Enable Microservices Governance for microservice applications in an ACK cluster.

Deploy demo applications

1. Log on to the ACK console. In the left-side navigation pane, click Clusters.

2. On the Clusters page, find the cluster that you want to manage and click the name of the cluster or click Details in the Actions column. The details page of the cluster appears.

3. In the left-side navigation pane of the details page, choose Workloads > Deployments.

4. On the Deployments page, click Create from YAML.

5. Configure the parameters and click Create.

   In this example, the following applications are deployed: spring-cloud-a (Application A), spring-cloud-b (Application B), spring-cloud-c (Application C), nacos-server, and spring-cloud-zuul. The nacos-server application is deployed as a registry and the spring-cloud-zuul application is deployed as an ingress application. The applications are called in the following order: spring-cloud-zuul -> spring-cloud-a -> spring-cloud-b -> spring-cloud-c.

   The spring-cloud-zuul application handles the default 100 QPS and additional 10 QPS for requests that are attached with the x-mse-tag: gray header. This header is a built-in canary header in MSE. If requests are attached with the x-mse-tag: gray header after Microservices Governance is activated and the agent is installed, the requests attached with this header are automatically routed to downstream nodes that are tagged with gray. You can replace gray with the tag values of other nodes based on your business requirements.

   • Yet Another Markup Language (YAML) code for the spring-cloud-zuul ingress application

     Show code

     apiVersion: apps/v1
     kind: Deployment
     metadata:
       name: spring-cloud-zuul
     spec:
       replicas: 1
       selector:
         matchLabels:
           app: spring-cloud-zuul
       template:
         metadata: 
           labels:
             app: spring-cloud-zuul
             msePilotCreateAppName: spring-cloud-zuul
         spec:
           containers:
             - name: spring-cloud-zuul
               image: registry.cn-shanghai.aliyuncs.com/yizhan/spring-cloud-zuul:1.0.1
               imagePullPolicy: Always
               ports:
                 - containerPort: 20000

   • YAML code for the base version of spring-cloud-a

     Show code

     apiVersion: apps/v1
     kind: Deployment
     metadata:
       name: spring-cloud-a
     spec:
       replicas: 2
       selector:
         matchLabels:
           app: spring-cloud-a
       template:
         metadata:
           labels:
             app: spring-cloud-a
             msePilotCreateAppName: spring-cloud-a
         spec:
           containers:
           - name: spring-cloud-a
             image: registry.cn-shanghai.aliyuncs.com/yizhan/spring-cloud-a:0.1-SNAPSHOT
             imagePullPolicy: Always
             ports:
             - containerPort: 20001
             livenessProbe:
               tcpSocket:
                 port: 20001
               initialDelaySeconds: 10
               periodSeconds: 30

   • YAML code for the base version of spring-cloud-b

     Show code

     apiVersion: apps/v1
     kind: Deployment
     metadata:
       name: spring-cloud-b
     spec:
       replicas: 2
       selector:
         matchLabels:
           app: spring-cloud-b
       strategy:
       template:
         metadata: 
           labels:
             app: spring-cloud-b
             msePilotCreateAppName: spring-cloud-b
         spec:
           containers:
           - name: spring-cloud-b
             image: registry.cn-shanghai.aliyuncs.com/yizhan/spring-cloud-b:0.1-SNAPSHOT
             imagePullPolicy: Always
             ports:
             - containerPort: 8080
             livenessProbe:
               tcpSocket:
                 port: 20002
               initialDelaySeconds: 10
               periodSeconds: 30

   • YAML code for the base version of spring-cloud-c

     Show code

     apiVersion: apps/v1
     kind: Deployment
     metadata:
       name: spring-cloud-c
     spec:
       replicas: 1
       selector:
         matchLabels:
           app: spring-cloud-c
       template:
         metadata:  
           labels:
             app: spring-cloud-c
             msePilotCreateAppName: spring-cloud-c
         spec:
           containers:
           - name: spring-cloud-c
             image: registry.cn-shanghai.aliyuncs.com/yizhan/spring-cloud-c:0.1-SNAPSHOT
             imagePullPolicy: Always
             ports:
             - containerPort: 20003
             livenessProbe:
               tcpSocket:
                 port: 20003
               initialDelaySeconds: 10
               periodSeconds: 30

   • YAML code for nacos-server

     Show code

     apiVersion: apps/v1
     kind: Deployment
     metadata:
       name: nacos-server
     spec:
       replicas: 1
       selector:
         matchLabels:
           app: nacos-server
       template:
         metadata:
           labels:
             app: nacos-server
         spec:
           containers:
           - env:
             - name: MODE
               value: standalone
             image: nacos/nacos-server:v2.2.0
             imagePullPolicy: Always
             name: nacos-server
           dnsPolicy: ClusterFirst
           restartPolicy: Always
     
     # Create a Server Load Balancer (SLB) instance for the spring-cloud-zuul application.
     ---
     apiVersion: v1
     kind: Service
     metadata:
       annotations:
         service.beta.kubernetes.io/alibaba-cloud-loadbalancer-spec: slb.s1.small
       name: zuul-slb
     spec:
       ports:
         - port: 80
           protocol: TCP
           targetPort: 20000
       selector:
         app: spring-cloud-zuul
       type: LoadBalancer

6. After the applications are deployed, view the traffic that passes through Application A in the MSE console, and verify that all traffic is routed to untagged nodes and no traffic is routed to canary nodes.

Configure the permissions to push images to an image repository

In this example, the source code needs to be packaged into images and then pushed to an image repository. You must make sure that Jenkins has the permissions to push images to the image repository. For more information, see Deploy Jenkins in an ACK cluster and then create and deploy an application.

Create an end-to-end canary release pipeline in Jenkins

You can use Jenkins pipelines for automated releases. A pipeline can provide canary release, observability, and rollback capabilities for application releases to ensure production safety.

1. In the left-side navigation pane of the Jenkins dashboard, click New Item.

2. Enter the item name, select a pipeline, and then click OK.

3. On the page that appears, click the Pipeline tab. On the Pipeline tab, configure the parameters, enter a path in the Script Path field, and then click Save.

   • Definition: Select Pipeline script from SCM from the drop-down list.

   • SCM: Select Git from the drop-down list.

   • Repository URL: Enter a URL of the Git repository. In this example, the repository URL is https://github.com/aliyun/alibabacloud-microservice-demo/tree/master/mse-simple-demo.

     Note

     Alibaba Cloud cannot pull the source code from GitHub. In this case, the source code from Gitee is used instead.

   • Script Path: Enter Jenkinsfile.

     The following parameter configurations are provided for your reference. You can also edit a Jenkinsfile and add the file to the specified path of the Git repository. This path is the specified script path of the pipeline.

     Show code

     #!groovy
     pipeline {
     
         // Specify the tag of the build environment. In this example, slave-pipeline is used.
         agent{
             node{
               label 'slave-pipeline'
             }
         }
     
         // A constant parameter. In most cases, this parameter does not need to be modified after the parameter is specified.
         environment{
             IMAGE = sh(returnStdout: true,script: 'echo registry.$image_region.aliyuncs.com/$image_namespace/$image_reponame:$image_tag').trim()
             BRANCH =  sh(returnStdout: true,script: 'echo $branch').trim()
         }
         options {
             // Maintain the maximum number of builds.
             buildDiscarder(logRotator(numToKeepStr: '10'))
         }
     
         parameters {
             string(name: 'image_region', defaultValue: 'cn-shanghai')
             string(name: 'image_namespace', defaultValue: 'yizhan')
             string(name: 'image_reponame', defaultValue: 'spring-cloud-a')
             string(name: 'image_tag', defaultValue: 'gray')
             string(name: 'branch', defaultValue: 'master')
             string(name: 'number_of_pods', defaultValue: '2')
         }
     
         // Go through each stage of the pipeline.
         stages {
     
             stage('Code packaging') {
                 steps{
                     container("maven") {
                         echo "Image building......"
                         sh "cd A && mvn clean package"
                     }
     
                 }
             }
     
     
             stage('Image building and releasing'){
               steps{
                   container("kaniko") {
                       sh "kaniko -f `pwd`/A/Dockerfile -c `pwd`/A --destination=${IMAGE} --skip-tls-verify"
                   }
               }
             }
     
     
     
             stage('Canary deployment') {
                 steps{
                     container('kubectl') {
                         echo "Canary deployment......"
                         sh "cd A && sed -i -E \"s/${env.image_reponame}:.+/${env.image_reponame}:${env.image_tag}/\" A-gray-deployment.yaml"
                         sh "cd A && sed -i -E \"s/replicas:.+/replicas: ${env.number_of_pods}/\" A-gray-deployment.yaml"
                         sh "kubectl apply -f A/A-gray-deployment.yaml -n default"
                     }
                 }
             }
     
             stage('Completing canary deployment') {
                 input {
                     message "Are you sure that you want to enable a full release"
                     ok "OK"
                     parameters {
                         string(name: 'continue', defaultValue: 'true', description: 'true indicates a full release, and false indicates a rollback')
                     }
                 }
                 steps{
                     script {
                         env.continue = sh (script: 'echo ${continue}', returnStdout: true).trim()
                         if (env.continue.equals('true')) {
                             container('kubectl') {
                                 echo "Full releasing......"
                                 sh "cd A && sed -i -E \"s/${env.image_reponame}:.+/${env.image_reponame}:${env.image_tag}/\" A-deployment.yaml"
                                 sh "cd A && sed -i -E \"s/replicas:.+/replicas: ${env.number_of_pods}/\" A-deployment.yaml"
                                 sh "kubectl apply -f A/A-deployment.yaml -n default"
                             }
                         } else {
                             echo 'Rolling back'
                         }
                         container('kubectl') {
                             sh "kubectl delete -f A/A-gray-deployment.yaml -n default"
                         }
                     }
                 }
             }
         }
     }
                                         

Build a Jenkins pipeline

1. On the Jenkins dashboard, click on the right of the pipeline.

2. Click Build.

   Note

   If you build a Jenkins pipeline for the first time, you must pull the configuration from the Git repository and initialize the pipeline. If an error is reported during this process, you can click Build with Parameters to generate relevant parameters, specify the parameters, and then build the Jenkins pipeline again.

   View the deployment status. The code packaging, image building and releasing, and canary deployment stages are complete, and the stage for completing the canary deployment is pending confirmation.

   • If the result passes verification, perform a full release. For more information, see Perform a full release of the application.

   • If the result does not pass verification, perform a rollback. For more information, see Roll back an application.

Verify the result

1. Log on to the ACK console. In the left-side navigation pane, click Clusters.

2. On the Clusters page, find the cluster that you want to manage and click its name. In the left-side pane, choose Workloads > Deployments.

3. On the Deployments page, confirm that the created spring-cloud-a-gray application is displayed and its image version is replaced with the spring-cloud-a:gray version.

4. On the details page of the cluster, choose Network > Services, select the required namespace, and then click the public endpoint of the zuul-slb service to view the actual call result.

   • If you use a non-canary header, traffic is routed to the nodes for the base version of spring-cloud-a.

     • curl command:

       curl http://182.92.XX.XX/A/a

     • Output:

       A[10.4.XX.XX] -> B[10.4.XX.XX] -> C[10.4.XX.XX]%

   • If you use a header with the canary release tag, traffic is routed to the canary node of spring-cloud-a.

     • curl command:

       curl http://182.92.XX.XX/A/a?name=xiaoming

     • Output:

       Agray[10.4.XX.XX] -> B[10.4.XX.XX] -> C[10.4.XX.XX]%

5. Log on to the MSE console. On the application details page, confirm that canary traffic is routed to the canary node.