Small example to create a function on minikube

First we need to download docker tools, minikube, kubectl, helm and put them in our path.

https://github.com/docker/toolbox/releases
https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/tools/install-minikube/
https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/tools/install-kubectl/#install-kubectl-on-windows
https://github.com/helm/helm/releases

Putting your installation in the path on windows and on my system they are in the tools directory so I will need to run the command below.

set PATH=%PATH%;c:\tools

First we need to start minikube so we have the system created and running.

minikube start

Installing openfaas on kubernetes starts by creating a tiller service access rule and connecting it to the cluster. After that we need to setup the namespace for the pods to install into.

kubectl -n kube-system create sa tiller
kubectl create clusterrolebinding tiller --clusterrole cluster-admin --serviceaccount=kube-system:tiller
kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/openfaas/faas-netes/master/namespaces.yml

Next up we configuret the helm repository.

helm repo add openfaas https://openfaas.github.io/faas-netes/

Creating a secret in your system will decouple the security tokens from the actual installation. Here we setup the basic authentication user and password information.

kubectl -n openfaas create secret generic basic-auth --from-literal=basic-auth-user=admin --from-literal=basic-auth-password="YOUR_PASSWORD"

Next we install openfaas telling the system to use the basic auth information.

helm upgrade openfaas --install openfaas/openfaas --namespace openfaas --set functionNamespace=openfaas-fn --set basic_auth=true

We need to configure the client tooling by login into our new installation. Password sent via the terminal standard in is recommened.

minikube ip
SET OPENFAAS_URL={MINIKUBE_IP}:31112
echo "YOUR_PASSWORD" | faas-cli login --gateway http://%OPENFAAS_URL% -u admin --password-stdin

Waiting for the pods to start we can look at the progress using the get pods command below.

kubectl get pods -n openfaas

Now we should be able to see our installation in the web browser using http://{MINIKUBE_IP}:31112.

Next we need to setup the docker enviroment using the commands below to get the enviroment information we need to set and create a registry we can publish our images to.

minikube docker-env
docker run -d -p 5000:5000 --restart always --name registry registry:2

To simplify the creation of a new function we can use templates. The commands below ensure that we have the template for java11 installed. Other templates can be downloaded in a similar maner.

faas-cli template pull
faas-cli template store list
faas-cli template store pull java11

Checking which templates we can use a handy list command is available. Then we simply create a new function using the language and adding our repository address as a prefix in order to publish our images. Otherwise the image will be published to Docker hub and you need your username as a prefix.

faas-cli new --list
faas-cli new java-fn --lang java11 --prefix="localhost:5000"

Next we can build our newly created function with either doing a up command that will run the build, push and deploy commands in sequence or you can run them seperatly in order to handle any errors to each command that might occur.

faas-cli up --yaml java-fn.yml

faas-cli build  --yaml java-fn.yml
faas-cli push --yaml java-fn.yml
faas-cli deploy --yaml java-fn.yml

Now we can look in either the browser or use the list command to see if our function was deployed correctly.

faas-cli list