Testing/CI/KubernetesRunners

To be able to run Gitlab CI jobs on a Kubernetes cluster, a Gitlab Runner must be installed [1].

This page documents the steps taken to deploy a GitLab Runner instance on a Azure Kubernetes cluster by using Helm [2].

Kubernetes Cluster

Create a Kubernetes cluster on Azure (AKS). Single node pool "agentpool" for the Kubernetes system pods. Enable virtual nodes [3] to have on-demand capacity for the CI workloads.

CLI

Follow the docs to Install the Azure CLI.

Alternatively, run the Azure CLI in a container [4]:

podman run -it mcr.microsoft.com/azure-cli

Install the Kubernetes CLI (kubectl) [5]:

az aks install-cli

Install the Helm CLI [6]:

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

Sign in to Azure [7]:

az login

Connect to your Kubernetes Cluster. Open the Azure web dashboard for your cluster and push the "Connect" button. A list of commands will be displayed to connect to your cluster. Something like the following:

az account set --subscription ...
az aks get-credentials ...

Gitlab Runner

Now it's time to install the Gitlab runner with Helm [8].

Create a namespace:

kubectl create namespace "gitlab-runner"

Create a values.yaml file for your runner configuration [9]:

gitlabUrl: "https://gitlab.com/"
runnerRegistrationToken: ""

Deploy the runner:

helm install --namespace gitlab-runner gitlab-runner -f values.yaml gitlab/gitlab-runner

Gitlab

Follow the docs to Register the agent with GitLab.

Make sure you keep the command under "Recommended installation method" (last step).

Gitlab Agent

Now it's time to install the Gitlab agent with Helm [10]. Paste and run the command you got earlier from Gitlab. The "Recommended installation method".

The command you run should look like this:

helm repo add gitlab https://charts.gitlab.io
helm repo update
helm upgrade --install ...

Take note of the output of the helm upgrade --install command. It contains the namespace where Helm installed the Gitlab agent.

Verify

You can check that the agent is running:

kubectl get pods -n <namespace>

The output of kubectl get pods should list the gitlab-agent pod as running:

NAME                            READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
gitlab-agent-566c8b6898-hzk87   1/1     Running   0          0m30s

Now go back to your project on Gitlab. From the left sidebar, select Infrastructure > Kubernetes clusters. The agent should show up as connected.