The Ascender installer is a script that makes for relatively easy install of Ascender Automation Platform on Kubernetes platforms of multiple flavors. The installer is being expanded to new Kubernetes platforms as users/contributors allow, and if you have specific needs for a platform not yet supported, please submit an issue to this Github repository.

General Prerequisites

If you have not done so already, be sure to follow the general prerequisites found in the Ascender-Install main README

RKE2 Preamble

RKE2, also known as RKE Government, is a Kubernetes distribution from Rancher that is focused on compliance with the U.S. Federal Government Sector. As such, these instructions are primarily focused on installing Ascender into an on-premise environment that may have no public internet access.
- More details on RKE2 and how it it uniquely suited to Public Sector can be found at Rancher's Introduction website for RKE2.

If you do not yet have an RKE2 Cluster, Labrinth Labs has developed together an Ansible role that can be used to set up a cluster of any size that is incredibly well-documented.

The role URL is here: RKE2 Ansible Role

The example playbook used by the CIQ team in order to create a cluster with one control plane host, is in this repository, but is copied here for easy access:

- name: Deploy RKE2
hosts: all
become: yes
vars:
  # RKE2 version
  # All releases at:
  # https://github.com/rancher/rke2/releases
  rke2_version: v1.28.4+rke2r1
  # RKE2 channel
  rke2_channel: stable
  # Architecture to be downloaded, currently there are releases for amd64 and s390x
  rke2_architecture: amd64
  # Changes the deploy strategy to install based on local artifacts
  rke2_airgap_mode: true
  # Airgap implementation type - download, copy or exists
  # - 'download' will fetch the artifacts on each node,
  # - 'copy' will transfer local files in 'rke2_artifact' to the nodes,
  # - 'exists' assumes 'rke2_artifact' files are already stored in 'rke2_artifact_path'
  rke2_airgap_implementation: download
  # Additional RKE2 server configuration options
  rke2_server_options:
    - "disable-cloud-controller: true"
    - "kubelet-arg:"  
    - "  - \"cloud-provider=external\""
    - "  - \"provider-id=vsphere://$master_node_id\""
  # Additional RKE2 agent configuration options
  rke2_agent_options:
    - "disable-cloud-controller: true"
    - "kubelet-arg:"
    - "  - \"cloud-provider=external\""
    - "  - \"provider-id=vsphere://$worker_id\""
  # Pre-shared secret token that other server or agent nodes will register with when connecting to the cluster
  rke2_token: defaultSecret12345
  # Deploy RKE2 with default CNI canal
  rke2_cni: canal
  # Local source path where artifacts are stored
  rke2_airgap_copy_sourcepath: /tmp/rke2_artifacts
  # Local path to store artifacts
  rke2_artifact_path: /var/tmp/rke2_artifacts
  # Airgap required artifacts
  rke2_artifact: 
    - sha256sum-{{ rke2_architecture }}.txt
    - rke2.linux-{{ rke2_architecture }}.tar.gz
    - rke2-images.linux-{{ rke2_architecture }}.tar.zst
  # Download Kubernetes config file to the Ansible controller
  rke2_download_kubeconf: true
  # Name of the Kubernetes config file will be downloaded to the Ansible controller
  rke2_download_kubeconf_file_name: config
  # Destination directory where the Kubernetes config file will be downloaded to the Ansible controller
  rke2_download_kubeconf_path: ~/.kube

roles:
  - role: lablabs.rke2

The installer was run against a vSphere cluster, and if you elect to do the same, you will need to set up the vSphere Container Storage Plug-in in your RKE2 cluster. Detailed instructions from VMWare can be found at this URL: Installation of vSphere Container Storage Plug-in

RKE2-specific Prerequisites

These instructions assume that you either have an existing RKE2 cluster, and have the kubeconfig file necessary to access it, at ~/.kube/config
Minimal System Requirements for installing Ascender and Ledger on RKE2:
- CPUs: 2
- Memory: 8Gb (if installing both Ascender and Ledger)
- 20GB of free disk (for Ascender and Ledger Volumes)
SSL Certificate and Key
- To enable HTTPS on your website, you need to provide the Ascender installer with an SSL Certificate file, and a Private Key file. While these can be self-signed certificates, it is best practice to use a trusted certificate, issued by a Certificate Authority. A good way to generate a trusted Certificate for the purpose of sandboxing, is to use the free Certificate Authority, Let's Encrypt.
- Once you have a Certificate and Private Key file, make sure they are present on the Ascender installing server, and specify their locations in the default config file, with the variables tls_crt_pathand tls_key_path, respectively. The installer will parse these files for their content, and use the content to create a Kubernetes TLS Secret for HTTPS enablement.

Offline Installation

In order to perform an offline installation of Ascender on RKE2, you must complete the following steps before running the installation script:

The RKE2 cluster MUST ALREADY EXIST as the installer will not create it for you. You may however, have the installer retrieve the KUBECONFIG file as part of the process.
Run the playbooks/create_bundle.yml playbook on a machine that has access to the internet.
Copy the offline folder into your ascender-install folder on the machine you would like to install from.
When setting the variables in config_vars.sh, be sure to set k8s_offline to true. This will force you to specify the required internal container registry and namespace for Ascender, with the variable k8s_container_registry. The registry address and namespace is expected to be the same for all container images that are part of an Ascender installation.
The container images required for installation MUST BE NAMED AS THEY ARE BELOW. Here are all of the names of the container images, and their original locations:
- Ascender:
  - ascender (Found at Github Container Registry)
  - awx-ee (Found at Quay)
  - postgres (Found at Dockerhub)
  - redis (Found at Dockerhub)
- Ledger
  - ledger-parser (Found at Github Container Registry)
  - ledger-db (Found at Github Container Registry)
  - ledger-web (Found at Github Container Registry)

Install Instructions

Obtain the sources

You can use the git command to clone the ascender-install repository or you can download the zipped archive.

To use git to clone the repository run:

git clone https://github.com/ctrliq/ascender-install.git

This will create a directory named ascender-install in your present working directory (PWD).

We will refer to this directory as the in the remainder of this instructions.

Set the configuration variables for a RKE2 Install

custom.config.yml file

You can run the bash script at

< ASCENDER-INSTALL-SOURCE >/config_vars.sh

The script will take you through a series of questions, that will populate the variables file requires to install Ascender. This variables file will be located at:

< ASCENDER-INSTALL-SOURCE >/custom.config.yml

Afterward, you can simply edit this file should you not want to run the script again before installing Ascender.

Run the setup script

Run ./setup.sh from top level directory in this repository.

The setup must run as a user with Administrative or sudo priviledges.

To begin the setup process, type:

sudo ./setup.sh

Once the setup is completed successfully, you should see a final output similar to:

...<OUTPUT TRUNCATED>...
PLAY RECAP *************************************************************************************************************************
ascender_host              : ok=14   changed=6    unreachable=0    failed=0    skipped=2    rescued=0    ignored=0
localhost                  : ok=72   changed=27   unreachable=0    failed=0    skipped=4    rescued=0    ignored=0

ASCENDER SUCCESSFULLY SETUP

Connecting to Ascender Web UI

The Ascender and Ledger web UIs are served from the kubeapi_server_ip specified in the config file used in the Ascender installer, and together with the Ingress object for Ascender and Legder, will give access to the respective GUIs.

To ensure access to the Ascender and Ledger GUIs, ensure that the ASCENDER_HOSTNAME resolves to kubeapi_server_ip with a DNS query. If the IP address is not being served by a DNS server, you will have to add that rule locally on the server you are using to connect to the Ascender GUI. For example, on a Mac, the file /private/etc/hosts would need the following line added:

127.0.0.1	localhost
255.255.255.255	broadcasthost
::1             localhost
<kubeapi_server_ip>     <ASCENDER_HOSTNAME>

Afterward, ou can visit/Browse/Administer your Ascender instance by pointing your web browser to:

https://<ASCENDER_HOSTNAME>

The username and the corresponding password are stored in /default.config.yml (or /custom.config.yml) under the ASCENDER_ADMIN_USER and ASCENDER_ADMIN_PASSWORD variable, respectively.

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README.md

README.md

Table of Contents

General Prerequisites

RKE2 Preamble

RKE2-specific Prerequisites

Offline Installation

Install Instructions

Obtain the sources

Set the configuration variables for a RKE2 Install

custom.config.yml file

Run the setup script

Connecting to Ascender Web UI

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README.md

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README.md

File metadata and controls

Table of Contents

General Prerequisites

RKE2 Preamble

RKE2-specific Prerequisites

Offline Installation

Install Instructions

Obtain the sources

Set the configuration variables for a RKE2 Install

custom.config.yml file

Run the setup script

Connecting to Ascender Web UI