Veeam Kastens with Rancher K3s , WSL 2 & first App : Guide

Veeam Kasten on Rancher K3s running on WSL 2 ,  first App : Guide

Intro  

I wanted to run a small lab environment on my laptop , i would normally do this contained in a VM on hyper V or Vmware Workstation. Since we can Install Windows Subsystem Linux , i decided why not just use WSL to achieve the same.

What I’ve done is install windows subsystem Linux on windows & then Install K3s then install Kasten’s , then install a application called sock shop from Weave Works

Here are the steps , from WSL install to Application install 

**NOTE 

For WSL i recommend creating a config to limit its usage or you will see VMMEM process use most of your system resources. 

See the tail end of this post for config example i used.

WSL:

In PowerShell as administrator run the following :

Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Windows-Subsystem-Linux

wsl --list --online

wsl --install -d ubuntu-20.04

You will then be prompted with WSL Ubuntu Terminal , finish the installation, and create User & Password

You could also find the terminal through a start menu search

 

Next Prep Linux for K3s Install

Enable systemd as the init system in WSL to you can get normal behavior

sudo -b unshare --pid --fork --mount-proc /lib/systemd/systemd --system-unit=basic.target

sudo -E nsenter --all -t $(pgrep -xo systemd) runuser -P -l $USER -c "exec $SHELL"

Turn off Nftables and use legacy iptables only  ( k3s Doesn’t support NFtables )

sudo update-alternatives --set iptables /usr/sbin/iptables-legacy

Install K3s : Is a lightweight Kubernetes distribution by Rancher labs

sudo curl -sfL https://get.k3s.io | sh -

Confirm its installed by checking the version

k3s --version

Check configuration : you want PASS

k3s check-config

Launch K3s Server ( in the background )

screen -d -m -L -Logfile /var/log/k3s.log k3s server

Next Install Helm  

Helm is a software package manager for Kubernetes , we will use helm install our apps , like Kasten

Helm install

sudo curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/helm/helm/master/scripts/get-helm-3 | bash

Verify install

helm version

Create Kube Config file ( Helm  Kasten’s install will look for this )

First we will create a folder .kube

Change directory to home your user

cd /home/” ur user “

Make a directory .kube

sudo  mkdir .kube

Change ownership of .kube

sudo chown -R "ur user" /home/ur user/.kube/

generate config file

sudo kubectl config view --raw >~/.kube/config

 

Next Install Kastens

Add helm repository for Kastens

sudo helm repo add kasten https://charts.kasten.io/

create Kastens namespace

sudo kubectl create ns kasten-io

install Kastens using helm ( generate config file should allow Helm to us that for install , but put Kubeconfig in if it doesn’t )

sudo helm install k10 kasten/k10 --namespace=kasten-io --kubeconfig /etc/rancher/k3s/k3s.yaml

At this point its deploying Kastens we can watch this live

sudo Kubectl get pods --namespace kasten-io --watch

They will slowly start one by one ignore the errors unless they don’t go away , mine took 18 odd minutes, Again depends on Laptop and resorces available.

When all containers are running and ready 1/1 , 3/3 , you can move on.

To exit watch , press Ctrl + C

Then we expose the port so we can access the web ui

sudo kubectl --namespace kasten-io port-forward service/gateway 8080:8000 &

Then access this URL to get to K10 Dashboard

http://127.0.0.1:8080/k10/#/dashboard

Next we can install a Application

We will deploy Sock-shop

Sock Shop simulates the user-facing part of an e-commerce website that sells socks

Open a new ubuntu WSL terminal

Run PWD to check you still in your home directory

Use Git to clone the deployment to WSL

sudo git clone https://github.com/microservices-demo/microservices-demo

Create sock shop Namespace

sudo kubectl create namespace sock-shop

Apply the Deployment Yaml

sudo kubectl apply -f microservices-demo/deploy/kubernetes/complete-demo.yaml

 

Or  CD to microservices-demo/deploy/Kubernetes /    

Skip if you ran the one above  sudo kubectl apply -f complete-demo.yaml

 

Watch the containers create like we did with kastens

sudo kubectl get pods --namespace sock-shop --watch

This again took some time to get up

Next we use a describe command to get information about sock shop to get its url & port

Sudo kubectl describe svc front-end -n sock-shop

Its url will be :

http://127.0.0.1:30001

 

From here you can use Kastens to back up the sockshop and recreate it etc…

This does eat alot of resources on your laptop at one point I was at 99% memory usage, before setting WSL .config.

 WSL  .Config

So to hard stop WSL to give memory back run this is PowerShell

wsl –shutdown

When wsl is shutdown, you can create a config that will limit its usage

In ur user profile directory  C:\Users\User>

Create a .wslconfig   file ( make sure to remove the .txt if you use notepad )

In the file paste the following ( modify below as you see fit , for best performance on your Laptop )

[wsl2]

memory=10gb

swap=32

 

Conclusion :

I used multiple Tools , Software & projects , to have a Lab that i can play round with on my laptop for testing , to read up on each here are the links...

WSL : https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/

K3s : https://rancher.com/docs/k3s/latest/en/

Veeam Kastens : https://www.kasten.io/

Sock Shop Demo App : https://go.weave.works/socks

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