Install and enable KLT

The Keptn Lifecycle Toolkit must be installed, enabled, and integrated into each cluster you want to monitor. This is because KLT communicates with the Kubernetes scheduler for tasks such as enforcing checks natively, stopping a deployment from proceeding when criteria are not met, doing post-deployment evaluations and tracing all activities of all deployment workloads on the cluster.

Two methods are supported for installing the Keptn Lifecycle Toolkit (KLT):

• Releases v0.7.0 and later can be installed using the Helm Chart. This is the preferred strategy because it allows you to customize your cluster.

• All releases can be installed using the manifests. This is the less-preferred way because it does not support customization.

After KLT is installed, you must Enable KLT for your cluster in order to run some KLT functionality.

You are then ready to Integrate KLT with your applications.

Use Helm Chart

Version v0.7.0 and later of the Lifecycle Toolkit should be installed using Helm Charts. The command sequence to fetch and install the latest release is:

helm repo add klt https://charts.lifecycle.keptn.sh
helm repo update
helm upgrade --install keptn klt/klt \
   -n keptn-lifecycle-toolkit-system --create-namespace --wait

Note that the helm repo update command is used for fresh installs as well as for upgrades.

Some helpful hints:

• Use the --version <version> flag on the helm upgrade --install command line to specify a different KLT version.

• Use the following command sequence to see a list of available versions:

  helm repo update
  helm search repo klt
  

• To verify that the KLT components are installed in your cluster, run the following command:

  kubectl get pods -n keptn-lifecycle-toolkit-system
  

  The output shows all components that are running on your system.

Modify Helm configuration options

Helm chart values can be modified before the installation. This is useful if you want to install only the metrics-operator rather than the full Toolkit or if you need to change the size of the installation.

To modify configuration options, download a copy of the helm/chart/values.yaml file, modify some values, and use the modified file to install KLT:

1. Download the values.yaml file:

   helm get values RELEASE_NAME [flags] > values.yaml
   

2. Edit your local copy to modify some values

3. Install KLT by adding the following string to your helm upgrade command line:

   --values=values.yaml
   

You can also use the --set flag to specify a value change for the helm upgrade --install command. Configuration options are specified using the format:

--set key1=value1,key2=value2,....

For more information,see

• The Helm Get Values) document

• The helm-charts page contains the full list of available values.

Use manifests

All versions of the Lifecycle Toolkit can be installed using manifests, although we recommend that you use Helm Charts to install Version 0.7.0 and later because the Helm Charts allow you to customize your configuration.

Versions 0.6.0 and earlier can only be installed using manifests.

Note When installing Version 0.6.0, you must first install the cert-manager with the following command sequence:

kubectl apply \
   -f https://github.com/cert-manager/cert-manager/releases/download/v1.11.0/cert-manager.yaml
kubectl wait \
   --for=condition=Available deployment/cert-manager-webhook -n cert-manager --timeout=60s

Use a command sequence like the following to install the Lifecycle Toolkit from the manifest, specifying the version you want to install.

kubectl apply \
   -f https://github.com/keptn/lifecycle-toolkit/releases/download/v0.6.0/manifest.yaml
kubectl wait --for=condition=Available deployment/lifecycle-operator \
   -n keptn-lifecycle-toolkit-system --timeout=120s

The Lifecycle Toolkit and its dependencies are now installed and ready to use.

Enable KLT for your cluster

To enable the Keptn Lifecycle Controller in your cluster, annotate the Kubernetes Namespace resource. For an example of this, see simplenode-dev-ns.yaml file, which looks like this:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Namespace
metadata:
  name: simplenode-dev
  annotations:
    keptn.sh/lifecycle-toolkit: "enabled"

You see the annotation line keptn.sh/lifecycle-toolkit: "enabled". This annotation tells the webhook to handle the namespace.