ChaosCenter Advanced Installation

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Prerequisites

• Kubernetes 1.17 or later

• A Persistent volume of 20GB

note

Recommend to have a Persistent volume(PV) of 20GB, You can start with 1GB for test purposes as well. This PV is used as persistent storage to store the chaos config and chaos-metrics in the Portal. By default, litmus install would use the default storage class to allocate the PV. Provide this value

• Helm3 or kubectl

Installation

Users looking to use Litmus for the first time have two options available to them today. One way is to use a hosted Litmus service like Harness Chaos Engineering SaaS. Alternatively, users looking for some more flexibility can install Litmus into their own Kubernetes cluster.

Users choosing the self-hosted option can refer to our Install and Configure docs for installing alternate versions and more detailed instructions.

Self-Hosted

Installation of Self-Hosted Litmus can be done using either of the below methods:

Helm3 chart

Kubectl yaml spec file

Refer to the below details for Self-Hosted Litmus installation.

Hosted (Beta)

Harness offers a free service for community members which makes getting started with Litmus easy. Create an account to get started. Once logged in, create a new hosted control plane and connect to it via the up CLI. Litmus can be used as a hosted cloud service using Harness Chaos Engineering SaaS. Harness Chaos Engineering SaaS executes your Chaos Experiments in the cloud by managing all your Chaos Control Plane components, while the Chaos Execution Plane components exist on your Kubernetes cluster as part of an external chaos infrastructure.

To get started with Harness Chaos Engineering SaaS, visit Harness Chaos Engineering SaaS and register for free. You can skip the below installation steps.

note

With 3.9.0 release, Cluster scope installation is deprecated. Now Namespaced mode is the only supported and standard installation mode.

Install Litmus using Helm

The helm chart will install all the required service account configuration and ChaosCenter.

The following steps will help you install Litmus ChaosCenter via helm.

Step-1: Add the litmus helm repository

helm repo add litmuschaos https://litmuschaos.github.io/litmus-helm/
helm repo list

Step-2: Create the namespace on which you want to install Litmus ChaosCenter

• The ChaosCenter can be placed in any namespace, but for this scenario we are choose litmus as the namespace.

kubectl create ns litmus

Step-3: Install Litmus ChaosCenter

helm install chaos litmuschaos/litmus --namespace=litmus --set portal.frontend.service.type=NodePort

Note: If your Kubernetes cluster isn't local, you may want not to expose Litmus via NodePort. If so, remove --set portal.frontend.service.type=NodePort option. To connect to Litmus UI from your laptop, you can use port-forward svc/chaos-litmus-frontend-service 9091:9091. Then you can use your browser and open 127.0.0.1:9091.

• Litmus helm chart depends on bitnami/mongodb helm chart, which uses a mongodb image not supported on ARM. If you want to install Litmus on an ARM-based server, please replace the default one with your custom mongodb arm image as shown below.

  helm install chaos litmuschaos/litmus --namespace=litmus \
  --set portal.frontend.service.type=NodePort \
  --set mongodb.image.registry=<put_registry> \
  --set mongodb.image.repository=<put_image_repository> \
  --set mongodb.image.tag=<put_image_tag>

Expected Output

NAME: chaos
LAST DEPLOYED: Tue Jun 15 19:20:09 2021
NAMESPACE: litmus
STATUS: deployed
REVISION: 1
TEST SUITE: None
NOTES:
Thank you for installing litmus 😀

Your release is named chaos and its installed to namespace: litmus.

Visit https://docs.litmuschaos.io to find more info.

Note: Litmus uses Kubernetes CRDs to define chaos intent. Helm3 handles CRDs better than Helm2. Before you start running a chaos experiment, verify if Litmus is installed correctly.

Install Litmus using kubectl

In this method the users need to install mongo first via helm and then apply the installation manifest. Follow the instructions here.

Install mongo

 helm repo add bitnami https://charts.bitnami.com/bitnami

Mongo Values

  auth:
  enabled: true
  rootPassword: "1234"
  # -- existingSecret Existing secret with MongoDB(®) credentials (keys: `mongodb-passwords`, `mongodb-root-password`, `mongodb-metrics-password`, ` mongodb-replica-set-key`)
  existingSecret: ""
architecture: replicaset
replicaCount: 3
persistence:
  enabled: true
volumePermissions:
  enabled: true
metrics:
  enabled: false
  prometheusRule:
    enabled: false

# bitnami/mongodb is not yet supported on ARM.
# Using unofficial tools to build bitnami/mongodb (arm64 support)
# more info: https://github.com/ZCube/bitnami-compat
#image:
#  registry: ghcr.io/zcube
#  repository: bitnami-compat/mongodb
#  tag: 6.0.5

helm install my-release bitnami/mongodb --values mongo-values.yml -n <NAMESPACE> --create-namespace

Litmus supports for HTTP and HTTPS mode of installation.

Advanced installation (HTTPS based and CORS rules apply)

1. Generate TLS certificates: You can provide your own certificates or can generate using this bash script.

2. Create secret

   kubectl create secret generic tls-secret --from-file=ca.crt=ca.crt --from-file=tls.crt=tls.crt --from-file=tls.key=tls.key -n <NAMESPCACE>

3. Applying the manifest file will install all the required service account configuration and ChaosCenter in namespaced scope.

kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/litmuschaos/litmus/master/mkdocs/docs/3.9.1/litmus-installation.yaml -n <NAMESPACE>

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Verify your installation

Verify if the frontend, server, and database pods are running

• Check the pods in the namespace where you installed Litmus:

  kubectl get pods -n litmus

  Expected Output

  NAME                                       READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
  litmusportal-server-6fd57cc89-6w5pn        1/1     Running     0          57s
  litmusportal-auth-server-7b596fff9-5s6g5   1/1     Running     0          57s
  litmusportal-frontend-55974fcf59-cxxrf     1/1     Running     0          58s
  my-release-mongodb-0                       1/1     Running     0          63s
  my-release-mongodb-1                       1/1     Running     0          63s
  my-release-mongodb-2                       1/1     Running     0          62s
  my-release-mongodb-arbiter-0               1/1     Running     0          64s
  

• Check the services running in the namespace where you installed Litmus:

  kubectl get svc -n litmus

  Expected Output

  NAME                                  TYPE           CLUSTER-IP     EXTERNAL-IP      PORT(S)                         AGE
  chaos-exporter                        ClusterIP      10.68.45.7     <none>           8080/TCP                        23h
  litmusportal-auth-server-service      NodePort       10.68.34.91    <none>           9003:32368/TCP,3030:31051/TCP   23h
  litmusportal-frontend-service         NodePort       10.68.43.68    <none>           9091:30070/TCP                  23h
  litmusportal-server-service           NodePort       10.68.33.242   <none>           9002:32455/TCP,8000:30722/TCP   23h
  my-release-mongodb-arbiter-headless   ClusterIP      None           <none>           27017/TCP                       23h
  my-release-mongodb-headless           ClusterIP      None           <none>           27017/TCP                       23h
  workflow-controller-metrics           ClusterIP      10.68.33.65    <none>           9090/TCP                        23h

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Accessing the ChaosCenter

To setup and login to ChaosCenter expand the available services just created and copy the PORT of the litmusportal-frontend-service service

kubectl get svc -n litmus

Expected Output

NAME                               TYPE        CLUSTER-IP     EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)                         AGE
litmusportal-frontend-service      NodePort    10.43.79.17    <none>        9091:31846/TCP                  102s
litmusportal-server-service        NodePort    10.43.30.54    <none>        9002:31245/TCP,8000:32714/TCP   101s
litmusportal-auth-server-service   NodePort    10.43.81.108   <none>        9003:32618/TCP,3030:31899/TCP   101s
mongo-service                      ClusterIP   10.43.227.10   <none>        27017/TCP                       101s
mongo-headless-service             ClusterIP   None           <none>        27017/TCP                       101s

Note: In this case, the PORT for litmusportal-frontend-service is 31846. Yours will be different.

Once you have the PORT copied in your clipboard, simply use your IP and PORT in this manner <NODEIP>:<PORT> to access the Litmus ChaosCenter.

For example:

https://172.17.0.3:31846/

Where 172.17.0.3 is my NodeIP and 31846 is the frontend service PORT. If using a LoadBalancer, the only change would be to provide a <LoadBalancerIP>:<PORT>. Learn more about how to access ChaosCenter with LoadBalancer

NOTE: With advanced installation CORS rules are applied, once manifest is applied frontend loadbalancer IP needs to be added in the ALLOWED_ORIGINS environment in both auth and graphql server deployment.

You should be able to see the Login Page of Litmus ChaosCenter. The default credentials are

Username: admin
Password: litmus

By default you are assigned with a default project with Owner permissions.

Learn more

• Install ChaosCenter with HTTP
• Setup Endpoints and Access ChaosCenter without Ingress
• Setup Endpoints and Access ChaosCenter with Ingress