Deploy Axual services

Introduction to Axual services

The Axual services consist of all the services that are required to start up a kafka-cluster, an instance layer on top of that for client connections, and the self-service stack to manage your topics and applications.

Install Axual Operator

Axual Operator (forked version of Strimzi Operator) is being used to deploy a Kafka cluster.

This will NOT install Kafka Clusters! Only the Axual Operator capable of deploying Kafka clusters.

  1. Add the Axual helm repository

    You need the Axual helm repository to be able to use Axual helm charts and operator.

    helm repo add axual-stable https://[your-username]:[your-password]@dev.axual.io/nexus/repository/axual-helm-stable/
    Make sure to replace the username and password with your credentials for Axual Nexus. If your username or password contain special characters, you might have to 'URL Encode' them in order to prevent clashes with your CLI: 
 !   #   $   %   &   '   (   )   *   +   ,   /   :   ;   <   =   >   ?   @   [   \   ]   ^   _   `   {   |   }   ~
%21 %23 %24 %25 %26 %27 %28 %29 %2A %2B %2C %2F %3A %3B %3C %3D %3E %3F %40 %5B %5C %5D %5E %5F %60 %7B %7C %7D %7E

  1. Update the Axual helm repository to always download the latest charts available.

    helm repo update

  2. Install Axual Operator with Helm.

    helm upgrade --install strimzi --set watchAnyNamespace=true axual-stable/axual-operator -n kafka

[Intermezzo] - k9s

Confirm that everything is working fine with k9s

  1. open k9s.

    K9s home

  2. select strimzi pod and press d to describe the pod.

    K9s describe pod
If you want to take a look at what k9s offers, check out this article.

Install Axual Platform in Kubernetes

To search available chart versions

helm search repo -l axual-stable/platform

To install the Axual platform with a specific Chart version my-version:

helm install platform axual-stable/platform --version=my-version -n kafka

To install the latest version of Axual Platform run the command as shown below.

helm install platform axual-stable/platform -n kafka

Try out Axual Platform

Login into Self-Service

  1. Login to Self Service with the following URL:

    URL: https://platform.local/login/axual
    Self-Service Login

  2. Use the first login credentials:

      Username: kubernetes@axual.com
  Password: password
    Self-Service Axual Home

Create your first environment for getting started

The instance axual-local has been set up by us, not the environment.

  1. You can see here how to create Environments.

Keep your configuration in mind

This is the configuration you’ll have to pass to your AxualClient. You can edit the axual-client-examples with the following values:

  Tenant: axual
  Endpoint: https://platform.local:29000

Follow getting started with your configuration

Now, since your Axual Platform is running fine, you can follow this doc Getting Started to produce/consume some events.

Don’t forget to change the tenant, endpoint, and environment from examples

Next step: Enable Axual-Connect

This concludes the deployment of the Axual services on k8s. You may continue to Enable Axual-Connect.