Bring your own Ascend Instance backend

This guide walks you through configuring your own Ascend Instance backend on a Kubernetes cluster.

Prerequisites

• Kubernetes cluster
• Terminal access to interact with your Kubernetes cluster
• Helm CLI version 3.16.0 or higher

Gather configuration information

Before installing the Ascend Instance backend, you'll need to collect some information from your Kubernetes cluster. You'll use this information with the Helm package manager during installation.

First, identify your cluster's OIDC issuer and decide which namespace you'll use, then provide this information to Ascend.

If you don't know how to find your cluster's issuer, consult your cluster administrator.

If you are the cluster admin, you can find it by accessing a service account token. Connect to any pod with a mounted service account token using:

kubectl exec -it -n NAMESPACE POD_NAME -- bash

Then retrieve the token (this is safe as tokens are regularly rotated by Kubernetes):

cat /var/run/secrets/kubernetes.io/serviceaccount/token | pbcopy

To extract the issuer from the token, run:

echo $TOKEN_VAL | cut -d "." -f 2 | base64 -D | jq '.iss'

Replace TOKEN_VAL with the token value, or use pbpaste if available on your system.

Ascend will provide you with a values.yaml file for installation that looks similar to this:

instance:
  uuid: "01953933-14ed-7240-ba0c-36a6039b7de9"  # Required: Instance UUID
  organizationUuid: "018fbc9f-49a2-7909-bb26-dd017195e3d4"  # Required: Organization UUID
  subdomain: "acme-self-hosted-instance"  # Required: Subdomain for instance
managedIdentity:
  ascend:
    domainHash: "i5ft3k"
    instanceHash: "un2edj"
  aws:
    enabled: true
  clusterIssuerHash: "jh3t7v"
  enabled: true
environments:
  - id: dev
    uuid: 01953936-7c3f-7e83-be35-f6e84f860b4e
    hash: "aervpl"
  - id: stage
    uuid: 01953936-9892-7261-91ac-9e9d83cd4271
    hash: "xibnsu"
  - id: prod
    uuid: 01953936-add7-7905-81cf-a5f3b6163918
    hash: "6wdtcs"
msk:
  roleArn: "arn:aws:iam::905936477528:role/asc-a-i5ft3k-un2edj-i"
  clusterArn: "arn:aws:kafka:us-east-1:905936477528:cluster/app-dev/f696d209-f38c-4fc3-9b2a-6f591ccbb5bd-5"

Install the Ascend Instance backend

1. Save the values.yaml file provided by Ascend

2. Set the following bash variables:

   tip

   After creating your cluster, you can get the cluster context by running kubectl config current-context.

   export KUBE_CONTEXT=gke_<gcp-project>_<region>_<cluster-name>
   export NAMESPACE=<your-namespace>  # this should be the same as the subdomain
   export RELEASE_NAME=ascend-deploy-0  # you can change this if desired
   export VALUES_FILE=<path/to/values.yaml>

3. Install the Helm chart:

   # If the namespace doesn't exist yet
   helm install \
       ${RELEASE_NAME} \
       oci://quay.io/ascendio/charts/instance-backend \
       -f ${VALUES_FILE} \
       --kube-context ${KUBE_CONTEXT} \
       --namespace ${NAMESPACE} \
       --create-namespace
   tip

   If the namespace already exists, you can omit the --create-namespace flag.

Upgrade the Ascend Instance backend

To upgrade your Ascend Instance backend, run:

helm upgrade \
    ${RELEASE_NAME} \
    oci://quay.io/ascendio/charts/instance-backend \
    --kube-context ${KUBE_CONTEXT} \
    -n ${NAMESPACE} \
    --reuse-values

tip

If you've updated your values.yaml file, remove the --reuse-values flag and specify the new values with -f ${VALUES_FILE}.

Uninstalling the Ascend Instance backend

To uninstall your Ascend Instance backend, run:

helm uninstall \
    ${RELEASE_NAME} \
    --kube-context ${KUBE_CONTEXT} \
    -n ${NAMESPACE}