Automating An Install

Starting with KOTS 1.15.0, it’s possible to automate a KOTS installation to an existing cluster (non-airgap) by providing a license file and the application configuration values when running kots install. When these values are provided, they are written as ConfigMaps to the cluster, and the Admin Console will find these and process them to complete the installation.

License File

Given a license file stored locally as license.yaml, running:

kubectl kots install app-name \
  --license-file ./license.yaml \
  --shared-password <some value> \
  --namespace app-name

Will install the Admin Console to the app-name namespace, and when starting, the Admin Console will automatically install the license file provided.

Config Values

Many applications need configuration. It’s possible to also supply the config values at installation time using the --config-values flag. To do this, create a local YAML file that contains all of the config values. The easist way to get a template to start from is to use kubectl kots download --decrypt-password-values from an already running instance of the application. When KOTS downloads the application from the cluster using this command, a file will be written to upstream/userdata/config.yaml. This file will be:

apiVersion: kots.io/v1beta1
kind: ConfigValues
...

All password type items will be decrypted and the value will be stored in valuePlaintext. All non-password type config items will have their value stored in value. When this file is uploaded, any valuePlaintext will be re-encrypted if the matching config item is a type password.

Disable Admin Console port-forwarding

kots install by default will open up a port-forward to the Admin Console as part of the installation. To disable this behavior add the following flag to the install command:

--port-forward=false

You can later access the Admin Console with the following command:

kubectl kots admin-console -n <your app namespace>

Example

Given the information above, and a config file named configvalues.yaml, a license file named license.yaml, the following command might be used to automate the installation of an application:

kubectl kots install app-name \
  --namespace app-name \
  --shared-password password \
  --license-file ./license.yaml \
  --config-values ./configvalues.yaml \
  --port-forward=false

Once this has completed, visiting http://localhost:8800 will show the configured application dashboard, assuming all required config items were set and any included preflight checks passed.

Airgap Install

As the first step, Admin Console images must be pushed to a private registry using kubectl kots admin-console push-images command as described in this document.