DEV Community: K. Sam Ashray

Learning DevOps 05/02

K. Sam Ashray — Wed, 05 Feb 2025 14:38:13 +0000

Explored Deployments and ReplicaSets in Kubernetes, understanding their differences and use cases. Along with that, I also learned how to define their YAML configurations, manage rolling updates, and perform rollbacks to previous revisions.
Practiced hands on with K8s Playground, an awesome tool for learning K8s, and troubleshooted some yml files which had issues.

Learning DevOps 30/01

K. Sam Ashray — Thu, 30 Jan 2025 14:49:52 +0000

Goal: To have hands-on experience in creating from scratch enterprise level CI/CD pipelines, from code commit to building packages, to security scans to infra provisioning to mail notification of completion, while enabling monitoring.

Today worked on:

- Successfully implemented Jenkins to build, tag and push the Docker image to DockerHub.
- With Jenkins, deployed the docker image into the K8s Cluster.
- Used Prometheus and Blackbox to look out for the health of the app
- Created Grafana dashboard which shows the metrics of the app from Prometheus

Next Up:
Dive deeper into Kubernetes

Github Link

Grafana dashboard

Prometheus dashboard

Learning DevOps 29/01

K. Sam Ashray — Wed, 29 Jan 2025 14:57:00 +0000

Workflow:

Tried to run SonarQube and Nexus locally via docker, but did not have enough resources.
Used Terraform to provision 5 EC2 instances with required cpu, storage and inbound rules - 3 for Kubernetes, 1 for SonarQube and 1 for Nexus artifact repository.

Used kubeadm for K8s setup, 1 Master & 2 Slave Nodes
Ran Jenkins from local docker. ( this came back to bite me)
Installed relevant Jenkins Plugins, Configured the tools that will be used in pipeline, Stored the relevant secrets/credentials for Sonar / Nexus / Docker / Kubernetes in Jenkins Credentials.
Used my springboot REST project as the source code.
Was able to successfully build, test, run a Trivy filesystem test, run Sonar scan on the code, package the code and upload the code to nexus.

Faced issue while pushing the Dockerfile to DockerHub.
Faced issue with deploying into K8s cluster.

Current Issues:

The Docker plugin for Jenkins didn’t seem to work, it couldn’t run docker commands.
Could deploy the service.yml from Jenkins into the K8s Cluster.

Solutions:
For 1. Tried restarting the jenkins instance, still the option to configure Docker didnt show in Manage Jenkins > System. Solution might be to run in an EC2 instance, with the latest Jenkins docker image.
For 2. As the Jenkins instance was run locally, I didnt open the port 6443, usually used by K8s api-server. Running Jenkins on EC2 with the right ports open will fix this as well.

Future Plans:
Will try this again tomorrow, but just the Jenkins-Docker-K8s section of the pipeline.
Github

Learning DevOps 28/01

K. Sam Ashray — Tue, 28 Jan 2025 10:13:19 +0000

Goal: To have hands-on experience in creating from scratch enterprise level, CI/CD pipelines, from code commit to building package, to security scans to infra provisioning to mail notification of completion, while enable monitoring.

Current workflow:

Using Terraform to provision an EC2 instance and loadbalancer.
Relevant secrets are stored in Vault (dev server).
After provision, use Ansible to install jdk17 on the instance.
With Jenkins, manually build and package the Springboot project, and copy the jar onto the instance, and run the jar file.

Current Issues:

The CICD workflow is somewhat reversed, provisioning first then building and deploying code.
Setting up a vault server in local is time-consuming, will make a startup script to reduce dev server startup time.
Ansible is set up locally and has to manually enter the ip address to inventory for playbook to work.
Configured Jenkins to poll github, every 5 mins, which is not good, should be using triggers for this.

Solutions:
For 1. At the start, the focus was on learning Terraform and Ansible, so thus used it to provision EC2 instance, then using Jenkins running in local Docker container, deploying the code to the provisioned resource.
For 2. and 3. I have created a startup.sh script to run the vault dev server, store AWS credentials as secrets, then use terraform and ansible to provision resources and install dependencies.
For 4. As Jenkins is running locally, it is tough to configure a trigger build, so left the configuration to poll the repo. (might have to do port forwarding and what not)

Future Plans:
Hopefully have a EC2 instances with Jenkins, SonarCube, JFrog, etc, instead of Docker containers for each.
Instead of provisioning EC2 instances first,
Try to check for code commit -> build and package jar -> upload artifact -> provision resources -> config resources -> download and run artifact.

Github

Portfolio Website / Bible App - Devlog #9

K. Sam Ashray — Thu, 14 Mar 2024 15:52:37 +0000

Accomplished:

Configured a MySQL database with free hosting services.
Securely connected to the database from local Spring Boot application.

To Do:

Implement responsive design.
Integrate a "Contact Me" section with social icons.
Incorporate project listings to showcase relevant work.

Next Steps:

Deploy both client and server APIs to make the application accessible to users.

Portfolio Website / Bible App - Devlog #8

K. Sam Ashray — Sat, 09 Mar 2024 13:59:38 +0000

Worked on:
Backend - Saving References to MySQL DB instead of a local DAO service,
Frontend - Quiz feature which will call backend and display references randomly and next button to view the next one.

To do:
Styling - text size, etc.. and overall polishing.
Responsiveness
Finish Portfolio site
Deploy client and api servers.

Portfolio Website / Bible App - Devlog #7

K. Sam Ashray — Tue, 05 Mar 2024 15:32:21 +0000

Accomplished:
Add verse button - which will dynamically render a form when clicked, the form POSTS a request to backend server, which stores the request body.
Clicking on a button will dynamically display the respective content / action User is looking for - Viewing saved Verses, Add Verses and (in progress) Quiz on the Saved Verses.

View Verses

Add Verse

To do:
Validate data before adding to Object Array / DB.
Quizzing feature
Styling!!

Then finish off main portfolio website!

Portfolio Website / Bible App - Devlog #6

K. Sam Ashray — Sun, 03 Mar 2024 19:20:38 +0000

Accomplished:
Conditional rendering of verses.
Check for duplicate reference before adding.

View Verses

To do:
Maybe after clicking the buttons should shrink,
Styling,
Implement form handling to Add Verse reference, which POSTs object to backend Springboot server to add to DAO / Object array (temporary).

Portfolio Website - Devlog #5

K. Sam Ashray — Thu, 29 Feb 2024 17:28:35 +0000

Plan:
TO use React as frontend (Client side) and Springboot the backend Server,
Implement Bible Memorization tool (for personal use), when client calls (REST arch) backend, the response returned will have JS Object.

Accomplished:
Began work on Projects section with placeholders to add other projects. Added project at ../bible-app with Routes.

Worked with BrowserRouters, Routes in 'react-router-dom'.

Worked with Fetch API to call backend Springboot server, and display verses return dynamically using Tertiary operator.

After clicking:

Goals for next time:
Display verses better in /bible-app project.
Add other project (either link Github / PDF).
Create Contact me page.
Final Styling.

Please let me know if you have any ideas regarding this project!

Thank you
Sam

Portfolio Website - Devlog #4

K. Sam Ashray — Sat, 24 Feb 2024 19:29:58 +0000

Fixed responsiveness on My Expertise Section. Started on the next Section - Work Experience.

Next Steps:
Add dropdown in purple title bar, when then shows the description shown below it.
Also maybe display projects in the same way.

Portfolio Website - Devlog #3

K. Sam Ashray — Thu, 22 Feb 2024 07:24:24 +0000

Started on the next Section - My Expertise.

Desktop View

Mobile View

Next Steps:
Fix responsiveness on mobile
Fix background image

Portfolio website - Devlog #2

K. Sam Ashray — Mon, 19 Feb 2024 16:51:07 +0000

Back after a day's break.
Inspired by a Navbar seen on YT here

The first section is done, it is responsive in an OK way and styling is almost done
For a Responsive Navbar > Used @media in CSS and click listeners in JS in Navbar Component, which on a desktop is centred, but on mobile will show a hamburger icon and when clicked will reveal the navbar as a side panel.

First section:

Navbar in mobile

Things to work on:

Design and Code the Next sections: a) Expertise b) Work / Projects c) Contact me page...

Planning to return Work / Projects section dynamically from backend Springboot server.
Also maybe do a little form handling with the above server in the Contact me page.
Would like to integrate my other unfinished project - Bible Memorization webapp and deploy it, to make it easier for me quiz myself on verses on the fly.