Install Astronomer Software on GCP GKE

This guide describes the steps to install Astronomer on Google Cloud Platform (GCP), which allows you to deploy and scale any number of Apache Airflow deployments within an GCP Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) cluster.

Prerequisites

To install Astronomer on GCP, you'll need access to the following tools and permissions:

• Git
• Google Cloud SDK
• A compatible version of Kubernetes and PostgreSQL as described in Astronomer's Version compatibility reference
• Kubernetes CLI (kubectl)
• Helm (minimum v3.6)
• An SMTP service and credentials. For example, Mailgun or Sendgrid.
• Permission to create and modify resources on Google Cloud Platform
• Permission to generate a certificate (not self-signed) that covers a defined set of subdomains
• PostgreSQL superuser permissions

info

There is a known bug on GCP GKE Dataplane V2 clusters that affects Astronomer Software installations. When Astronomer Software is installed on a GCP GKE Dataplane V2 cluster, the interaction between the Astronomer Nginx ingress controller and Cilium can cause dropped connections, dropped packets, and intermittent 504 timeout errors when accessing the Astronomer UI or Houston API.

To avoid these issues, Astronomer recommends installing Astronomer Software on a GKE Dataplane V1 cluster.

Step 1: Choose a base domain

All Astronomer services will be tied to a base domain of your choice, under which you will need the ability to add and edit DNS records.

Once created, your Astronomer base domain will be linked to a variety of sub-services that your users will access via the internet to manage, monitor and run Airflow on the platform.

For the base domain astro.mydomain.com, for example, here are some corresponding URLs that your users would be able to reach:

• Software UI: app.astro.mydomain.com
• Airflow Deployments: deployments.astro.mydomain.com/uniquely-generated-airflow-name/airflow
• Grafana Dashboard: grafana.astro.mydomain.com
• Kibana Dashboard: kibana.astro.mydomain.com

For the full list of subdomains, see Step 4.

Step 2: Configure GCP for Astronomer Deployment

Note: You can view Google Cloud Platform's Web Console at https://console.cloud.google.com/

Create a GCP project

Login to your Google account with the gcloud CLI:

gcloud auth login

Create a project:

gcloud projects create [PROJECT_ID]

Confirm the project was successfully created:

$ gcloud projects list
PROJECT_ID             NAME                PROJECT_NUMBER
astronomer-project     astronomer-project  364686176109

Configure the gcloud CLI for use with your new project:

gcloud config set project [PROJECT_ID]

Set your preferred compute zone, which will have a compute region tied to it.

You'll need this later on:

gcloud compute zones list
gcloud config set compute/zone [COMPUTE_ZONE]

Create a GKE cluster

Now that you have a GCP project to work with, the next step is to create a GKE (Google Kubernetes Engine) cluster that the Astronomer platform can be deployed into. Learn more about GKE here.

Note: Astronomer Software does not support GKE Autopilot.

First, enable the Google Kubernetes Engine API.

Then, create a Kubernetes cluster via the gcloud CLI:

gcloud container clusters create [CLUSTER_NAME] --zone [COMPUTE_ZONE] --cluster-version [VERSION] --machine-type n1-standard-8 --enable-autoscaling --max-nodes 10 --min-nodes 3

A few important notes:

• Each version of Astronomer Software is compatible with only a particular set of Kubernetes versions. For more information, refer to Astronomer's Version compatibility reference.
• We recommend using the n1-standard-8 machine type with a minimum of 3 nodes (24 CPUs) as a starting point.
• The Astronomer platform and all components within it will consume ~11 CPUs and ~40GB of memory as the default overhead, so we generally recommend using larger vs smaller nodes.
• For more detailed instructions and a full list of optional flags, refer to GKE's "Creating a Cluster".

If you work with multiple Kubernetes environments, kubectx is an incredibly useful tool for quickly switching between Kubernetes clusters. Learn more here.

Step 3: Configure Helm with your GKE cluster

Helm is a package manager for Kubernetes. It allows you to easily deploy complex Kubernetes applications. You'll use helm to install and manage the Astronomer platform. Learn more about helm here.

Create a Kubernetes namespace

Create a namespace called astronomer to host the core Astronomer platform:

kubectl create namespace astronomer

Once Astronomer is running, each Airflow Deployment that you create will have its own isolated namespace.

Step 4: Configure TLS

We recommend running Astronomer Software on a dedicated domain (BASEDOMAIN) or subdomain (astro.BASEDOMAIN).

In order for users to access the web applications they need to manage Astronomer, you'll need a TLS certificate that covers the following subdomains:

BASEDOMAIN
app.BASEDOMAIN
deployments.BASEDOMAIN
registry.BASEDOMAIN
houston.BASEDOMAIN
grafana.BASEDOMAIN
kibana.BASEDOMAIN
install.BASEDOMAIN
alertmanager.BASEDOMAIN
prometheus.BASEDOMAIN

To obtain a TLS certificate, complete one of the following setups:

• Option 1: Obtain a TLS certificate from Let's Encrypt. We recommend this option for smaller organizations where your DNS administrator and Kubernetes cluster administrator are either the same person or on the same team.
• Option 2: Request a TLS certificate from your organization's security team. We recommend this option for large organizations with their own protocols for generating TLS certificates.

warning

Astronomer requires you to use RSA to sign TLS certificates. By default, Certbot uses Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) keys to sign certificates. If you're using Certbot to sign your TLS certificate, you must include -key-type rsa --rsa-key-size 2048 in your command to sign your certificate with an RSA key. If you don't use RSA keys, deploys fail and error messages appear in the registry and Houston logs. For example, you can run the following command to sign your certificate with an RSA key:

sudo certbot certonly --manual --preferred-challenges=dns -d -d *. --key-type=rsa

Option 1: Create TLS certificates using Let's Encrypt

Let's Encrypt is a free and secure certificate authority (CA) service that provides TLS certificates that renew automatically every 90 days. Use this option if you are configuring Astronomer for a smaller organization without a dedicated security team.

To set up TLS certificates this way, follow the guidelines in Automatically Renew TLS Certificates Using Let's Encrypt. Make note of the certificate you create in this setup for Step 5.

Option 2: Request a TLS certificate from your security team

If you're installing Astronomer for a large organization, you'll need to request a TLS certificate and private key from your enterprise security team. This certificate needs to be valid for the BASEDOMAIN your organization uses for Astronomer, as well as the subdomains listed at the beginning of Step 4. You should be given two .pem files:

• One for your encrypted certificate
• One for your private key

To confirm that your enterprise security team generated the correct certificate, run the following command using the openssl CLI:

openssl x509 -in  <your-certificate-filepath> -text -noout

This command will generate a report. If the X509v3 Subject Alternative Name section of this report includes either a single *.BASEDOMAIN wildcard domain or the subdomains listed at the beginning of Step 4, then the certificate creation was successful.

Depending on your organization, you may receive either a globally trusted certificate or a certificate from a private CA. The certificate from your private CA may include a domain certificate, a root certificate, and/or intermediate certificates, all of which need to be in proper certificate order. To verify certificate order, follow the guidelines below.

Confirm certificate chain order

If your organization is using a private certificate authority, you'll need to confirm that your certificate chain is ordered correctly. To determine your certificate chain order, run the following command using the openssl CLI:

openssl crl2pkcs7 -nocrl -certfile <your-certificate-filepath> | openssl pkcs7 -print_certs -noout

The command generates a report of all certificates. Verify the order of the certificates is as follows:

• Domain
• Intermediate (optional)
• Root

If the certificate order is correct, proceed to step 5.

Step 5: Create a Kubernetes TLS Secret

If you received a globally trusted certificate, such as one generated by Let's Encrypt, simply run the following command and proceed to Step 6:

kubectl create secret tls astronomer-tls --cert <your-certificate-filepath> --key <your-private-key-filepath> -n astronomer

If you received a certificate from a private CA, follow these steps instead:

1. Add the root certificate provided by your security team to an Opaque Kubernetes secret in the Astronomer namespace by running the following command:

   kubectl create secret generic private-root-ca --from-file=cert.pem=./<your-certificate-filepath> -n astronomer

   Note: The root certificate which you specify here should be the certificate of the authority that signed the Astronomer certificate, rather than the Astronomer certificate itself. This is the same certificate you need to install with all clients to get them to trust your services.

   Note: The name of the secret file must be cert.pem for your certificate to be trusted properly.

2. Note the value of private-root-ca for when you configure your Helm chart in Step 8. You'll need to additionally specify the privateCaCerts key-value pair with this value for that step.

Step 6: Configure your SMTP URI

An SMTP service is required for sending and accepting email invites from Astronomer. If you're running Astronomer Software with publicSignups disabled (which is the default), you'll need to configure SMTP as a way for your users to receive and accept invites to the platform via email. To integrate your SMTP service with Astronomer, fetch your SMTP service's URI and store it in a Kubernetes secret:

kubectl create secret generic astronomer-smtp --from-literal connection="smtp://USERNAME:PASSWORD@HOST/?requireTLS=true" -n astronomer

In general, an SMTP URI will take the following form:

smtps://USERNAME:PASSWORD@HOST/?pool=true

The following table contains examples of what the URI will look like for some of the most popular SMTP services:

Provider	Example SMTP URL
AWS SES	smtp://AWS_SMTP_Username:AWS_SMTP_Password@email-smtp.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/?requireTLS=true
SendGrid	smtps://apikey:SG.sometoken@smtp.sendgrid.net:465/?pool=true
Mailgun	smtps://xyz%40example.com:password@smtp.mailgun.org/?pool=true
Office365	smtp://xyz%40example.com:password@smtp.office365.com:587/?requireTLS=true
Custom SMTP-relay	smtp://smtp-relay.example.com:25/?ignoreTLS=true

If your SMTP provider is not listed, refer to the provider's documentation for information on creating an SMTP URI.

Note: If there are / or other escape characters in your username or password, you may need to URL encode those characters.

Step 7: Configure the database

Astronomer by default requires a central Postgres database that will act as the backend for Astronomer's Houston API and will host individual metadata databases for all Airflow Deployments spun up on the platform.

While you're free to configure any database, most GCP users on Astronomer run Google Cloud SQL. For production environments, we strongly recommend a managed Postgres solution.

Note: If you're setting up a development environment, this step is optional. Astronomer can be configured to deploy the PostgreSQL helm chart as the backend database with the following set in your values.yaml:

global:
  postgresqlEnabled: true

To connect to an external database to your GKE cluster, create a Kubernetes Secret named astronomer-bootstrap that points to your database.

kubectl create secret generic astronomer-bootstrap \
  --from-literal connection="postgres://USERNAME:$PASSWORD@host:5432" \
  --namespace astronomer

Note: You must URL encode any special characters in your Postgres password.

Step 8: Configure your Helm chart

info

To use a third-party ingress controller for Astronomer, see Third-Party Ingress Controllers.

As a next step, create a file named values.yaml in an empty directory.

For context, this values.yaml file will assume a set of default values for our platform that specify everything from user role definitions to the Airflow images you want to support. As you grow with Astronomer and want to customize the platform to better suit your team and use case, your values.yaml file is the best place to do so.

In the newly created file, copy the example below and replace baseDomain, private-root-ca, /etc/containerd/certs.d, ssl.enabled, and astronomer.houston.secret with your own values. For more example configuration files, see the Astronomer GitHub.

#################################
### Astronomer global configuration
#################################
global:
  # Base domain for all subdomains exposed through ingress
  baseDomain: astro.mydomain.com

  # Name of secret containing TLS certificate
  tlsSecret: astronomer-tls

  # Enable privateCaCerts only if your enterprise security team
  # generated a certificate from a private certificate authority.
  # Create a generic secret for each cert, and add it to the list below.
  # Each secret must have a data entry for 'cert.pem'
  # Example command: `kubectl create secret generic private-root-ca --from-file=cert.pem=./<your-certificate-filepath>`
  privateCaCerts:
  - private-root-ca

  # Enable privateCaCertsAddToHost only when your nodes do not already
  # include the private CA in their docker trust store.
  # Most enterprises already have this configured,
  # and in that case 'enabled' should be false.
  privateCaCertsAddToHost:
    enabled: true
    hostDirectory: /etc/containerd/certs.d
  # For development or proof-of-concept, you can use an in-cluster database
  postgresqlEnabled: false

  # Enables using SSL connections to
  # encrypt client/server communication
  # between databases and the Astronomer platform.
  # Note that incluster postgres only supports sslmode.enabled = false
  # If your database enforces SSL for connections,
  # change this value to true
  ssl:
    enabled: false
#################################
### Nginx configuration
#################################
nginx:
  # IP address the nginx ingress should bind to
  loadBalancerIP: ~
  # Dict of arbitrary annotations to add to the nginx ingress. For full configuration options, see https://docs.nginx.com/nginx-ingress-controller/configuration/ingress-resources/advanced-configuration-with-annotations/
  ingressAnnotations: {}

#################################
### SMTP configuration
#################################

astronomer:
  houston:
    config:
      publicSignups: false # Users need to be invited to have access to Astronomer. Set to true otherwise
      emailConfirmation: true # Users get an email verification before accessing Astronomer
      deployments:
        manualReleaseNames: true # Allows you to set your release names
        serviceAccountAnnotationKey: iam.gke.io/gcp-service-account  # Flag to enable using IAM roles (don't enter a specific role)
      email:
        enabled: true
        reply: "noreply@astronomer.io" # Emails will be sent from this address
      auth:
        github:
          enabled: true # Lets users authenticate with Github
        local:
          enabled: false # Disables logging in with just a username and password
        openidConnect:
          google:
            enabled: true # Lets users authenticate with Google
    secret:
    - envName: "EMAIL__SMTP_URL"  # Reference to the Kubernetes secret for SMTP credentials. Can be removed if email is not used.
      secretName: "astronomer-smtp"
      secretKey: "connection"

These are the minimum values you need to configure for installing Astronomer. For information on additional configuration, read What's Next.

info

If you are installing Astronomer in an airgapped environment without access to the public internet, complete all of the setup in Install in an Airgapped Environment and then skip directly to Step 10 in this document.

Step 9: Install Astronomer

Now that you have a GCP cluster set up and your values.yaml defined, you're ready to deploy all components of our platform.

First, run:

helm repo add astronomer https://helm.astronomer.io/

Then, run:

helm repo update

This ensures that you pull the latest image from the Astronomer Helm repository. Now, run:

helm install -f values.yaml --version=0.34 --namespace=astronomer <your-platform-release-name> astronomer/astronomer

This command installs the most recent patch version of Astronomer Software. To install a different patch version, add the --version= flag and use the format 0.34.x. For example, to install Astronomer Software v0.34.0, you specify --version=0.34.0. For more information about the available patch versions, see the Software Release Notes.

When you're defining <your-platform-release-name>, Astronomer recommends limiting the name to 12 characters to avoid operational issues.

After you run the previous commands, a set of Kubernetes pods are generated in your namespace. These pods power the individual services required to run the Astronomer platform, including the Software UI and Houston API.

Alternative ArgoCD installation

You can install Astronomer with ArgoCD, which is an open source continuous delivery tool for Kubernetes, as an alternative to using helm install.

Because ArgoCD doesn't support sync wave dependencies for app of apps structures, installing Astronomer requires some additional steps compared to the standard ArgoCD workflow:

1. Under the global section of your values.yaml file, add enableArgoCDAnnotation: true.

2. Create a new ArgoCD app. When creating the app, configure the following:

   • Path: The filepath of your values.yaml file
   • Namespace: The namespace you want to use for Astronomer
   • Cluster: The Kubernetes cluster in which you're installing Astronomer
   • Repository URL: https://helm.astronomer.io

3. Sync the ArgoCD app with every component of the Astronomer platform selected. See Sync (Deploy) the Application.

4. Stop the sync when you see that astronomer-houston-db-migrations has completed in the Argo UI.

5. Sync the application a second time, but this time clear astronomer-alertmanager in the Argo UI while keeping all other components selected. Wait for this sync to finish completely.

6. Sync the ArgoCD app a third time with all Astronomer platform components selected.

Step 10: Verify that all Pods are up

To verify all pods are up and running, run:

kubectl get pods --namespace <my-namespace>

You should see something like this:

$ kubectl get pods --namespace astronomer
NAME                                                    READY   STATUS      RESTARTS   AGE
newbie-norse-alertmanager-0                            1/1     Running     0          30m
newbie-norse-cli-install-565658b84d-bqkm9              1/1     Running     0          30m
newbie-norse-commander-7d9fd75476-q2vxh                1/1     Running     0          30m
newbie-norse-elasticsearch-client-7cccf77496-ks2s2     1/1     Running     0          30m
newbie-norse-elasticsearch-client-7cccf77496-w5m8p     1/1     Running     0          30m
newbie-norse-elasticsearch-curator-1553734800-hp74h    1/1     Running     0          30m
newbie-norse-elasticsearch-data-0                      1/1     Running     0          30m
newbie-norse-elasticsearch-data-1                      1/1     Running     0          30m
newbie-norse-elasticsearch-exporter-748c7c94d7-j9cvb   1/1     Running     0          30m
newbie-norse-elasticsearch-master-0                    1/1     Running     0          30m
newbie-norse-elasticsearch-master-1                    1/1     Running     0          30m
newbie-norse-elasticsearch-master-2                    1/1     Running     0          30m
newbie-norse-elasticsearch-nginx-5dcb5ffd59-c46gw      1/1     Running     0          30m
newbie-norse-fluentd-gprtb                             1/1     Running     0          30m
newbie-norse-fluentd-qzwwn                             1/1     Running     0          30m
newbie-norse-fluentd-rv696                             1/1     Running     0          30m
newbie-norse-fluentd-t8mqt                             1/1     Running     0          30m
newbie-norse-fluentd-wmjvh                             1/1     Running     0          30m
newbie-norse-grafana-57df948d9-jv2m9                   1/1     Running     0          30m
newbie-norse-houston-dbc647654-tcxbz                   1/1     Running     0          30m
newbie-norse-kibana-58bdf9bdb8-2j67t                   1/1     Running     0          30m
newbie-norse-kube-state-549f45544f-mcv7m               1/1     Running     0          30m
newbie-norse-nginx-7f6b5dfc9c-dm6tj                    1/1     Running     0          30m
newbie-norse-nginx-default-backend-5ccdb9554d-5cm5q    1/1     Running     0          30m
newbie-norse-astro-ui-d5585ccd8-h8zkr                  1/1     Running     0          30m
newbie-norse-prometheus-0                              1/1     Running     0          30m
newbie-norse-registry-0                                1/1     Running     0          30m

If you are seeing issues here, check out our guide on debugging your installation

Step 11: Configure DNS

Now that you've successfully installed Astronomer, a new Elastic Load Balancer (ELB) will have spun up in your GCP account. This ELB routes incoming traffic to our NGINX ingress controller.

Run $ kubectl get svc -n astronomer to view your ELB's CNAME, located under the EXTERNAL-IP column for the astronomer-nginx service.

$ kubectl get svc -n astronomer
NAME                                          TYPE           CLUSTER-IP     EXTERNAL-IP     PORT(S)                                      AGE
astronomer-alertmanager                       ClusterIP      10.0.184.29    <none>          9093/TCP                                     6m48s
astronomer-astro-ui                           ClusterIP      10.0.107.212   <none>          8080/TCP                                     6m48s
astronomer-cli-install                        ClusterIP      10.0.181.211   <none>          80/TCP                                       6m48s
astronomer-commander                          ClusterIP      10.0.201.246   <none>          8880/TCP,50051/TCP                           6m48s
astronomer-elasticsearch                      ClusterIP      10.0.47.56     <none>          9200/TCP,9300/TCP                            6m48s
astronomer-elasticsearch-exporter             ClusterIP      10.0.130.79    <none>          9108/TCP                                     6m48s
astronomer-elasticsearch-headless-discovery   ClusterIP      None           <none>          9300/TCP                                     6m48s
astronomer-elasticsearch-nginx                ClusterIP      10.0.218.244   <none>          9200/TCP                                     6m48s
astronomer-grafana                            ClusterIP      10.0.42.156    <none>          3000/TCP                                     6m48s
astronomer-houston                            ClusterIP      10.0.57.247    <none>          8871/TCP                                     6m48s
astronomer-kibana                             ClusterIP      10.0.15.226    <none>          5601/TCP                                     6m48s
astronomer-kube-state                         ClusterIP      10.0.132.0     <none>          8080/TCP,8081/TCP                            6m48s
astronomer-kubed                              ClusterIP      10.0.254.39    <none>          443/TCP                                      6m48s
astronomer-nginx                              LoadBalancer   10.0.146.24    20.185.14.181   80:30318/TCP,443:31515/TCP,10254:32454/TCP   6m48s
astronomer-nginx-default-backend              ClusterIP      10.0.132.182   <none>          8080/TCP                                     6m48s
astronomer-postgresql                         ClusterIP      10.0.0.252     <none>          5432/TCP                                     6m48s
astronomer-postgresql-headless                ClusterIP      None           <none>          5432/TCP                                     6m48s
astronomer-prometheus                         ClusterIP      10.0.128.170   <none>          9090/TCP                                     6m48s
astronomer-prometheus-blackbox-exporter       ClusterIP      10.0.125.142   <none>          9115/TCP                                     6m48s
astronomer-prometheus-node-exporter           ClusterIP      10.0.2.116     <none>          9100/TCP                                     6m48s
astronomer-registry                           ClusterIP      10.0.154.62    <none>          5000/TCP                                     6m48s

You will need to create a new A record through your DNS provider using the external IP address listed above. You can create a single wildcard A record such as *.astro.mydomain.com, or alternatively create individual A records for the following routes:

app.astro.mydomain.com
deployments.astro.mydomain.com
registry.astro.mydomain.com
houston.astro.mydomain.com
grafana.astro.mydomain.com
kibana.astro.mydomain.com
install.astro.mydomain.com
alertmanager.astro.mydomain.com
prometheus.astro.mydomain.com

Step 12: Verify that you can access the Software UI

Go to app.BASEDOMAIN to see the Software UI.

Consider this your new Airflow control plane. From the Software UI, you'll be able to both invite and manage users as well as create and monitor Airflow Deployments on the platform.

Step 13: Verify your TLS setup

To check if your TLS certificates were accepted, log in to the Software UI. Then, go to app.BASEDOMAIN/token and run:

curl -v -X POST https://houston.BASEDOMAIN/v1 -H "Authorization: Bearer <token>"

Verify that this output matches with that of the following command, which doesn't look for TLS:

curl -v -k -X POST https://houston.BASEDOMAIN/v1 -H "Authorization: Bearer <token>"

Next, to make sure the registry is accepted by Astronomer's local docker client, try authenticating to Astronomer with the Astro CLI:

astro login <your-astronomer-base-domain>

If you can log in, then your Docker client trusts the registry. If Docker does not trust the Astronomer registry, run the following and restart Docker:

$ mkdir -p /etc/docker/certs.d
$ cp privateCA.pem /etc/docker/certs.d/

Finally, try running $ astro deploy on a test deployment. Create a deployment in the Software UI, then run:

$ mkdir demo
$ cd demo
$ astro airflow init
$ astro deploy -f

Check the Airflow namespace. If pods are changing at all, then the Houston API trusts the registry.

If you have Airflow pods in the state ImagePullBackoff, check the pod description. If you see an x509 error, ensure that you have:

• Configured containerd’s config_path to point to /etc/containerd/certs.d.
• Added the privateCaCertsAddToHost key-value pairs to your Helm chart.

If you missed these steps during installation, follow the steps in Apply a config change to add them after installation. If you are using a base image such as CoreOS that does not permit values to be changed, or you otherwise can't modify values.yaml, contact Astronomer support for additional configuration assistance.

What's next

To help you make the most of Astronomer Software, check out the following additional resources:

• Renew TLS Certificates on Astronomer Software
• Integrating an Auth System
• Configuring Platform Resources
• Managing Users on Astronomer Software

Astronomer support team

If you have any feedback or need help during this process and aren't in touch with our team already, a few resources to keep in mind:

• Community Forum: Search previously asked questions about Airflow + Astronomer FAQs
• Astronomer Support Portal: Platform or Airflow issues

For detailed guidelines on reaching out to Astronomer Support, reference our guide here.