Using the GitLab kas chart

The kas sub-chart provides a configurable deployment of the GitLab agent server (KAS). The agent server is a component you install together with GitLab. It is required to manage the GitLab agent for Kubernetes.

This chart depends on access to the GitLab API and the Gitaly Servers. When you enable this chart, an Ingress is deployed.

To consume minimal resources, the kas container uses a distroless image. The deployed services are exposed by an Ingress, which uses WebSocket proxying for communication. This proxy allows long-lived connections with the external component, agentk. agentk is the Kubernetes cluster-side agent counterpart.

The route to access the service depends on your Ingress configuration.

For more information, see the GitLab agent for Kubernetes architecture.

Enable the agent server

The GitLab agent server (kas) is disabled by default. To enable it on your GitLab instance, set the Helm property global.kas.enabled to true.

For example: 

helm upgrade --install kas --set global.kas.enabled=true

Specify an Ingress

When you use the chart’s Ingress with the default configuration, the service for the agent server is reachable on a subdomain. For example, forglobal.hosts.domain: example.com, the agent server is reachable at kas.example.com.

The KAS Ingress can use a different domain than the global.hosts.domain.

Set global.hosts.kas.name, for example: 

global.hosts.kas.name: kas.my-other-domain.com

This example uses kas.my-other-domain.com as the host for the KAS Ingress alone. The rest of the services (including GitLab, Registry, MinIO, etc.) use the domain specified in global.hosts.domain.

Installation command line options

You can pass these parameters to the helm install command by using the --set flags.

Parameter Default Description
annotations {} Pod annotations.
common.labels {} Supplemental labels that are applied to all objects created by this chart.
extraContainers   List of extra containers to include.
image.repository registry.gitlab.com/gitlab-org/build/cng/gitlab-kas Image repository.
image.tag v13.7.0 Image tag.
hpa.targetAverageValue 100m Set the autoscaling target value (CPU).
ingress.enabled true if global.kas.enabled=true You can use kas.ingress.enabled to explicitly turn it on or off. If not set, you can optionally use global.ingress.enabled for the same purpose.
ingress.apiVersion   Value to use in the apiVersion field.
ingress.annotations {} Ingress annotations.
ingress.tls {} Ingress TLS configuration.
ingress.agentPath / Ingress path for the agent API endpoint.
ingress.k8sApiPath /k8s-proxy Ingress path for Kubernetes API endpoint.
metrics.enabled true If a metrics endpoint should be made available for scraping.
metrics.port 8151 Metrics endpoint port.
metrics.path /metrics Metrics endpoint path.
metrics.serviceMonitor.enabled false If a ServiceMonitor should be created to enable Prometheus Operator to manage the metrics scraping. Enabling removes the prometheus.io scrape annotations.
metrics.serviceMonitor.additionalLabels {} Additional labels to add to the ServiceMonitor.
metrics.serviceMonitor.endpointConfig {} Additional endpoint configuration for the ServiceMonitor.
maxReplicas 10 HPA maxReplicas.
maxUnavailable 1 HPA maxUnavailable.
minReplicas 2 HPA maxReplicas.
nodeSelector   Define a nodeSelector for the Pods of this Deployment, if present.
serviceAccount.annotations {} Service account annotations.
podLabels {} Supplemental Pod labels. Not used for selectors.
serviceLabels {} Supplemental service labels.
common.labels   Supplemental labels that are applied to all objects created by this chart.
redis.enabled true Allows opting-out of using Redis for KAS features. Warnings: Redis will become a hard dependency soon, so this key is already deprecated.
resources.requests.cpu 75m GitLab Exporter minimum CPU.
resources.requests.memory 100M GitLab Exporter minimum memory.
service.externalPort 8150 External port (for agentk connections).
service.internalPort 8150 Internal port (for agentk connections).
service.apiInternalPort 8153 Internal port for the internal API (for GitLab backend).
service.loadBalancerIP nil A custom load balancer IP when service.type is LoadBalancer.
service.loadBalancerSourceRanges nil A list of custom load balancer source ranges when service.type is LoadBalancer.
service.kubernetesApiPort 8154 External port to expose proxied Kubernetes API on.
service.privateApiPort 8155 Internal port to expose kas’ private API on (for kas -> kas communication).
privateApi.secret Autogenerated The name of the secret to use for authenticating with the database.
privateApi.key Autogenerated The name of the key in privateApi.secret to use.
global.kas.service.apiExternalPort 8153 External port for the internal API (for GitLab backend).
service.type ClusterIP Service type.
tolerations [] Toleration labels for pod assignment.
customConfig {} When given, merges the default kas configuration with these values giving precedence to those defined here.
deployment.strategy {} Allows one to configure the update strategy utilized by the deployment.

Test the kas chart

To install the chart:

  1. Create your own Kubernetes cluster.
  2. Check out the merge request’s working branch.

  3. Install (or upgrade) GitLab with kas enabled from your local chart branch, using --set global.kas.enabled=true, for example: 

    helm upgrade --force --install gitlab . \
  --timeout 600s \
  --set global.hosts.domain=your.domain.com \
  --set global.hosts.externalIP=XYZ.XYZ.XYZ.XYZ \
  --set certmanager-issuer.email=your@email.com \
  --set global.kas.enabled=true

  4. Use the GDK to run the process to configure and use the GitLab agent for Kubernetes: (You can also follow the steps to configure and use the agent manually.)

    1. From your GDK GitLab repository, move into the QA folder: cd qa.

    2. Run the following command to run the QA test: 

      GITLAB_USERNAME=$ROOT_USER
GITLAB_PASSWORD=$ROOT_PASSWORD
GITLAB_ADMIN_USERNAME=$ROOT_USER
GITLAB_ADMIN_PASSWORD=$ROOT_PASSWORD
bundle exec bin/qa Test::Instance::All https://your.gitlab.domain/ -- --tag orchestrated --tag quarantine qa/specs/features/ee/api/7_configure/kubernetes/kubernetes_agent_spec.rb

      You can also customize the agentk version to install with an environment variable: GITLAB_AGENTK_VERSION=v13.7.1