Exekube

Exekube is a framework (platform) for managing the whole lifecycle of Kubernetes-based projects as declarative code. It takes the modular "Infrastructure as Code" approach to automate the management of both cloud infrastructure and Kubernetes resources using popular open-source tools, Terraform and Helm.

Online documentation

You can find the latest Exekube documentation at https://docs.exekube.com.

Repositories on GitHub

The Exekube project is divided across a few GitHub repositories:

• exekube/exekube. This is the main repository that you are currently looking at. Its divided into the following subdirectories:

  • modules. Exekube's Terraform module library (third-party Module Registry)
  • cli. Exekube's CLI (written in Go) for commands like xk up, xk down, etc.
  • dockerfiles. Exekube's Dockerfiles (exekube/exekube:<version>-<tag>)
  • docs. Documentation source for https://docs.exekube.com (MkDocs / Material theme / Markdown)

• exekube/charts. This Git repository hosts Exekube's Helm chart repository you can add with helm repo add exekube https://exekube.github.io/charts

Example projects

• exekube/base-project. A minimal Exekube project on Google Cloud Platform / GKE
• exekube/demo-apps-project. Deploy web applications (Ruby on Rails, React) onto Google Cloud Platform / GKE
• exekube/demo-ci-project. Deploy private CI tools (Concourse, Docker Registry, ChartMuseum) onto Google Cloud Platform / GKE
• exekube/demo-grpc-project. Deploy a hello-world gRPC server app and its REST client app onto Google Cloud Platform / GKE
• exekube/demo-istio-project. Get started with the Istio mesh framework on GKE

Getting started

Go to the Exekube Getting Started Tutorial at https://docs.exekube.com/in-practice/getting-started to create your first Exekube project.

Motivations

• Using many command line tools and GUIs to manage cloud resources (gcloud, aws, kops) and Kubernetes resources (kubectl, helm) is tedious and error-prone
• Terraform is a very flexible declarative tool with support for a large number of cloud providers and can replace or automate the use of all of the said command line tools
• Exekube aims to take advantage of Terraform's power and give us a "sane default" state for managing everything related to Kubernetes as declarative code in an automated, Git-based workflow following the "Infrastructure as Code" philosophy

Features

The framework allows you to:

• Not worry about managing dependencies like gcloud, terraform, kubectl, helm, etc. since they're all packaged into a Docker image
• Control your cloud infrastructure as declarative code via Terraform
• Control your container orchestration as decalrative code via Terraform and Helm
• Create production-grade clusters and deploy all Kubernetes resources via one command
• Destroy all cloud and Kubernetes resources via one command (to avoid wasting money in non-production environments)
• Freely choose a cloud provider to host Kubernetes (only Google Cloud Platform with experimental Alibaba Cloud support as of 0.3)

Terraform module library (registry)

Contributing

Please review the CONTRIBUTING.md file for information on how to get started contributing to the project.