Configuring internal and external agents

CloudBees CD/RO installation on Kubernetes uses internal services within the cluster to communicate between components, which ensures that communication within the cluster is efficient and secure. A common method for deploying CloudBees CD/RO on Kubernetes is to install CloudBees CD/RO components inside the Kubernetes cluster while installing worker agents such as deployment targets outside the cluster, such as on VMs and traditional platforms.

In a mixed inside and outside deployment use case, communications with the CloudBees CD/RO components happen with internal services installed on Kubernetes, while communication with CD agents happen outside the cluster. These external agents can communicate with the internal components using a pair of gateway agents.

Gateway agent pairs can be installed using one of these methods:

Using the CloudBees CD/RO Helm chart
Using the CloudBees CD/RO agent Helm chart

Installing gateway agent pairs using the CloudBees CD/RO Helm chart

Enable both internalGatewayAgent and externalGatewayAgent to enable the CloudBees CD/RO chart to install the agent sub-chart as gateway agents. Make sure you set ingress.host and externalGatewayAgent.service.publicHostName both as the same value:
```
ingress:
  host: my-flow.example.com

internalGatewayAgent:
  enabled: true

externalGatewayAgent:
  enabled: true
  service:
    publicHostName: my-flow.example.com▼
```

Ensure your default values file has nginx-ingress (Kubernetes versions 1.21 and earlier) or ingress-nginx (Kubernetes versions 1.22 and later) tcp config map settings uncommented, to expose the 7800 gateway agents service:

nginx-ingress or ingress-nginx:
  tcp:
    8200: "{{ .Release.Namespace }}/flow-repository:8200"
    8443: "{{ .Release.Namespace }}/flow-server:8443"
    7800: "{{ .Release.Namespace }}/gateway-external-agent-flow-agents:7800"▼

If you are not creating an ingress controller as part of the CloudBees CD/RO chart because you already have an existing ingress controller make sure you have tcpconfig map added to expose above ports and services (for more details, refer to the Kubernetes documentation):

helm repo add cloudbees https://public-charts.artifacts.cloudbees.com/repository/public/
helm repo update
helm install releaseName cloudbees/cloudbees-flow \
          -f valuesFile --namespace nameSpace --timeout 10000s▼

Installing gateway agents using the CloudBees CD/RO agent Helm chart

To create the gateway agent using the agent chart:

Create the server secret:

# Flow server credentials to use in order to register
# with agent as a resource on the Flow server.

kubectl create secret generic flow-agent-secret \
 --from-literal=CBF_SERVER_USER='admin' \
 --from-literal=CBF_SERVER_PASSWORD=<flow-server-password> \
 -n <namespace>▼

Create a values file for the internal agent called gateway-default-agent.yaml:

resourceName: gateway-default-agent
replicas: 1
flowCredentials:
  existingSecret: flow-agent-secret
service:
  publicHostName: gateway-default-agent-flow-agents▼

Install the gateway internal agent using gateway-default-agent.yaml:

helm install gateway-default-agent cloudbees/cloudbees-flow-agent \
-f gateway-default-agent.yaml -n <namespace>▼

Create a values file for the external agent called gateway-external-agent.yaml that adds zoneName, publicHostName and gateway configuration:

resourceName: gateway-external-agent
zoneName: external
service:
  # External DNS hostname that the external agents would use to communicate
  # with the external gateway agent
  publicHostName: my-flow.example.com

# configure gateway using external gateway agent
gateway:
  # configure gateway using this agent
  enabled: true
  # Name of the gateway to create
  name: external
  # Name of gateway agent to pair with as gateway resource 2
  pairedResourceName: gateway-default-agent

flowCredentials:
  existingSecret: flow-agent-secret▼

Install the gateway external agent using gateway-external-agent.yaml:

helm install gateway-external-agent cloudbees/cloudbees-flow-agent \
-f gateway-external-agent.yaml -n <namespace>▼