Continuous Delivery with Jenkins and PHP Laravel on Kubernetes

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by  | December 15, 2017 

Overview of Deploying Applications on Containers

Running Containers at any real-world scale requires container orchestration, and scheduling platform like Docker Swarm, Apache Mesos, AWS ECS but the most popular out of it is Kubernetes. Kubernetes is an open source system for automating deployment and management of containerized applications. 

In this post, We’ll share the process how you can Develop and Deploy Microservices based PHP Laravel Application on the Container Environment -  Docker and Kubernetes and adopt DevOps in existing PHP Applications.

Prerequisites For Deploying Laravel Application on Kubernetes

To follow this guide you need -

• Kubernetes

• Kubectl

• PHP Laravel Application Source Code

• Dockerfile

• Container-Registry

• Kubernetes Automation

It is an open source platform that automates container operations, and Minikube is best for testing Kubernetes.

• Setting Up Kubectl

Kubectl is command line interface to manage Kubernetes cluster either remotely or locally. To configure kubectl on your machine follow this link.

• Shared Persistent Storage

Shared Persistent Storage is permanent storage that we can attach to the Kubernetes container so that we don`t lose our data even when container dies. We will be using GlusterFS as the persistent data store for Kubernetes container applications.

• PHP Application Source Code

Application Source Code is source code that we want to run inside a Kubernetes container.

• Using DockerFile

Dockerfile contains a bunch of commands to build PHP Laravel application.

• Container Registry

The Registry is an online image store for container images.

Below mentioned options are few most popular registries.

• Private Docker Hub

• AWS ECR

• Docker Store

• Google Container Registry

Writing a Dockerfile

The below-mentioned code is sample Dockerfile for PHP Laravel applications. In which we are using Apache Maven 3 as the builder for PHP Laravel applications and OpenJDK 8 as a base development environment. Alpine Linux is used due to its very compact size.

Below mentioned is the sample Apache2 config file for Laravel application.

Create a file name laravel.conf and add the below-mentioned code to it.

Building PHP Laravel Application Image

The below-mentioned command will build your application container image.

Publishing PHP Laravel Application Container Image

Now we publish our PHP Laravel application container image to any container registry like Docker Hub, AWS ECR, Google Container Registry, Private Docker Registry.

Today I will be using Azure container registry for publishing container images.

You also need to Sign UP to Azure Cloud Platform then create container registry by using the link.

Now use this link to Pull and Push to Azure Container registry.

Similarly, we can push or pull any container image to any of the below-mentioned container registries like Docker Hub, AWS ECR, Google Container Registry, Private Docker Registry etc.

Creating Deployment Files for Kubernetes

Deploying application on Kubernetes with ease using deployment and service files either in JSON or YAML format.

• Deployment File

Following Content is for “<name of application>.deployment.yml” file of python container application.

• Service File

Following Content is for “<name of application>.service.yml” file of python container application.

Running PHP Laravel Application on Kubernetes

PHP Laravel Application Container can be deployed either by Kubernetes Dashboard or Kubectl (Command line).

I`m explaining command line that you can use in production Kubernetes cluster.

Now we have successfully deployed PHP Laravel Application on Kubernetes.

Verifying Application Deployment

We can verify application deployment either by using Kubectl or Kubernetes Dashboard.

Below mentioned command will show you running pods of your application with status running/terminated/stop/created.

Result of above command

Testing Application Deployment

Get the External Node Port using the below-mentioned command. External Node Port is in the range from 30000 to 65000.

Launch web Browser and open any of the below-mentioned URLs.

• http://<kubernetes master ip address >: <application service port number>

• http://<cluster ip address >: <application port number>