Since last month, Bluemix has started to support Kubernetes (beta), which many people consider the de-facto standard for container orchestration. Some of the older and simpler Bluemix sample applications use docker-compose. Below is a description of how to run those examples on Kubernetes.

Essentially, the docker-compose file needs to be converted to a Kubernetes YAML file. For example, I use the chat application BlueChatter. The sample is a Node.js application that leverages Redis to store session data. The file docker-compose.yml defines the two containers: the ports and links.

In order to create the Kubernetes configuration file, I’ve tried an open source project Kompose (Kubernetes + Compose). When you run it, four files are created, two for the deployments and two for the services. For a quick introduction to these terms, watch this video. I’ve merged everything into one file.

There were only two things I had to manually change in the file.

1. I had to enter the name of my Docker image, e.g. ‘registry.ng.bluemix.net/nheidloff/bluechatter_web’

2. In order to expose the web application via a public IP address, I defined a public port for the ‘web’ service via NodePort.

Here is a screenshot of the Kubernetes dashboard.

Here is the Kubernetes file ‘bluechatter.yaml’.

apiVersion: extensions/v1beta1
kind: Deployment
metadata:  
  name: redis
spec:
  replicas: 1  
  template:
    metadata:      
      labels:
        bluechatter: redis
    spec:
      containers:
      - image: redis
        name: redis        
      restartPolicy: Always
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:  
  labels:
    bluechatter: redis
  name: redis
spec:
  clusterIP: None
  ports:
  - name: headless
    port: 55555
    targetPort: 0
  selector:
    bluechatter: redis
---
apiVersion: extensions/v1beta1
kind: Deployment
metadata:  
  name: web
spec:
  replicas: 1
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        bluechatter: web
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: web
        image: registry.ng.bluemix.net/nheidloff/bluechatter_web
        ports:
        - containerPort: 80
        - containerPort: 8080
      restartPolicy: Always
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  labels:
    bluechatter: web
  name: web
spec:
  type: NodePort
  ports:
  - name: "80"
    port: 80
    nodePort: 30072  
  selector:
    bluechatter: web

Run these commands to create and configure a cluster.

$ bx cs cluster-create --name my_cluster
$ bx cs workers my_cluster # wait and repeat until state is 'deployed'
$ bx cs cluster-config my_cluster # copy and paste the 'export ...' line

Run these commands to build the containers of the sample.

$ git clone https://github.com/IBM-Bluemix/bluechatter.git
$ cd bluechatter
$ docker-compose build
$ docker tag bluechatter_web registry.ng.bluemix.net/nheidloff/bluechatter_web
$ docker push registry.ng.bluemix.net/nheidloff/bluechatter_web

Run these commands to deploy the sample application.

$ kubectl create -f bluechatter.yaml
$ bx cs workers my_cluster # to get the public IP
$ kubectl describe service web # to get the port (NodePort)