The open-source DevSecOps platform for manging cloud infrastructure and cloud-native applications.

Capten streamlines the management of Kubernetes clusters, making it an ideal solution for teams or individuals who require automated cluster provisioning, application deployment, and lifecycle management in their development and testing workflows.

The all-in-one DevSecOps platform facilitates close collaboration to build and manage cloud-native ecosystems for application and infrastructure modernization, automation, and security.

Capten controlplane cluster creation supported with Capten CLI, Capten CLI distribution available for Linux, Winodws and MacOS. Capten controlplane cluster creation supported on public cloud providers like AWS and Azure.

• AWS or Azure clound provider account

• Azure CLI (Needed in case of using Azure cloud for cluster setup)

• Docker (Needed in case of using Capten CLI distribution on Windows or MacOS)

• kubectl tool to access Capten controlplane cluster

1. Download and Extract Capten package from Capten github repoistory release page.

wget https://github.com/intelops/capten/releases/download/v1.0.0/capten-v1.0.0.tar.gz
tar -xvf capten-v1.0.0.tar.gz

2. Preparted the cluster installation parameters

Update cluster installation parameters: For AWS cluster, update cluster installation parameters in the aws_config.yaml in config folder.

For Azure cluster, update cluster installation parameters in the azure_config.yaml in config folder.

3. Prepare cluster application deployment parameters

Update cluster application deployment parameters in the capten.yaml in config folder.

4. Create cluster

For creating the cluster, execute below command

./capten create cluster --cloud=<cloudtype> --type=talos

Note: Cloud type supported are 'aws' and 'azure'

• Cluster Creation through Docker Container:

For creating the cluster through docker container (needed in case of using Capten CLI distribution on Windows or MacOS ), run the below command

docker run -v /path/to/aws_config.yaml:/app/config/awsorazure_config.yaml -it ghcr.io/intelops/capten:<latest-image-tag>  create cluster --cloud=aws --type=talos

Post cluster creation, kubeconfig will be generated to ./config/kubeconfig. Access cluster using generated kubeconfig with kubectl

export KUBECONFIG=/home/capten/config/kubeconfig
kubectl get nodes

For deploying the cluster applications, execute below command

./capten setup apps

Capten CLI will deploy Capten application suite and Capten Agent on Controlplane cluster. Post application deployment, mTLS certificates are generated to access Capten Agent. mTLS certificates capten-client-auth-certs.zip generated in cert folder.

Deployed applications can be listed with helm tool

helm list -A

./capten show cluster info

Cluster destruction command initiates the process of removing all components associated with the cluster, such as virtual machines, instances, nodes, networking configurations, and any other resources provisioned for the cluster. It effectively undoes the setup and configuration of the cluster, deallocating resources and ensuring they are no longer in use. This command can be used when the cluster is no longer needed or to clean up resources in cloud computing, distributed systems, or container orchestration environments.

./capten destroy cluster

1. For a new user, sign up on Intelops UI (https://alpha.intelops.app/)

2. For existing user, login with user credentials

3. After login to Intelops UI, for new user, popup screen will be displayed for creating organisation. Create organisation and assign the roles, add cluster admin role to register new cluster

1. Provide the cluster name and upload the client certificates created by Capten CLI.

2. Provide the cluster agent endpoint, Domainname configured in capten.yaml to be used for accessing the cluster

https://captenagent.<domainname>

For example agent endpoint, if 'aws.eg.com' Domainname is configure in capten.yaml,

https://captenagent.aws.eg.com

3. After providing above details, register the cluster.

Capten supports Web UI luanch for supportted applications, Web UI launch supported for default applications like grafana, signoz.

Navigate for Capten controlplane cluster by clicking on the Registered cluster. Web UI launch applications listed on "Tools" tab

Launching the grafana Web UI and access grafana dashboards Click on "Prometheus" Icon to launch grafana Web UI. Web UI will be launched with single sign-on and show grafana landing page, from there navigate to view dashboards

One of the cluster-overview metrics dashboards is as shown below

Navigate for Capten controlplane cluster, Click the remove button to deregister the controlPlane cluster, it will delete registration data from Intelops cluster, to delete cluster, Capten CLI will have to be used.

Capten Plugin SDK to develop and deploy applications on Capten cluster

• Onboard Plugin applications in to Capten Plugin Store
• Deploy Plugin applications on Capten cluster
• Deploy Plugin applications on Business cluster
• Capten Cluster Storage service access for Plugin application
• Capten Cluster Vault service access for Plugin application
• Capten Cluster SDK API service access for Plugin application
• Enabling Single SignOn for Plugin application UI

Capten SDK provides a simple way to onboard the Capten Plugin Applications (Plugins or Plugin Apps) into the Capten Plugin Store.

Intelops manages the central plugin store Git repository (https://github.com/intelops/capten-plugin) to onboard and manage Capten Plugin applications. This is an open-source repository for the Capten community to onboard and manage Capten Plugin applications.

This Central Plugin Store is integrated with Capten Stack by default, and Plugins available in the Central Plugin Store can be deployed on the Capten cluster from the Capten UI.

Capten SDK supports managing a local plugin store, i.e., in your Git repository. A Git repository needs to be integrated into the Capten from Capten UI, which can then be used to onboard and manage Plugin applications.

Pre-requisites to onboard Plugin Application into this Capten Plugin Store

• Plugin Application available in helm repository accessible from Capten cluster
• Container image for plugin application available in container registry onboarded into the Capten cluster

Add the plugin application name in plugin-store/plugin-list.yaml file

plugins:
  - argo-cd
  - crossplane
  - tekton

Create a folder with plugin name plugin-store/<plugin-name>, and add plugin metadata files

• Add plugin application configuration in plugin-store/<plugin-name>/plugin-config.yaml file
• Add plugin application Icon file in plugin-store/<plugin-name>/icon.svg

pluginName: "argo-cd"
description: "GitOps continuous delivery tool for Kubernetes"
category: "CI/CD"
icon: "icon.svg"
versions:
  - "v1.0.2"
  - "v1.0.5"

For each supported version, create version folder plugin-store/<plugin-name>/<version> and add plugin version deployment metadata files

• add plugin application version deployment configuration in plugin-store/<plugin-name>/<version>/plugin-config.yaml file
• add plugin application version values file in plugin-store/<plugin-name>/<version>/values.yaml file

** plugin application version deployment configuration attributes **

Table below shows an example of plugin application version deployment configuration

deployment:
  controlplaneCluster:
    chartName: "argo-cd"
    chartRepo: "https://kube-tarian.github.io/helmrepo-supporting-tools"
    version: "v1.0.2"
    defaultNamespace: "argo-cd"
    privilegedNamespace: false
    valuesFile: "values.yaml"
apiEndpoint: https://argo.{{.DomainName}}
uiEndpoint: https://argo.{{.DomainName}}
capabilities:
  - deploy-controlplane-cluster
  - capten-sdk
  - ui-sso-oauth

Merge all plugin configuration files into the capten plugin store Git repository

Deploy Plugin application on Capten cluster from Intelops UI(https://alpha.intelops.app/)

#1 Login to Intelops UI

Capten SDK creates resources for plugin applications for plugin-configured capabilities before deploying plugin applications to the Capten cluster.

#3 Select "Configure Apps Store" and click on "sync' button to Synchronize the plugin store

#4 Click on Deploy plugin application, Select plugin version and click on Deploy button

Capten SDK creates resources for plugin application for the configured capabilities before deploying plugin application to Capten cluster

List of supported capabilities:

- Capten SDK
- Vault Store
- Postgres Store

• This capability provides MTLS certificate for server and client authentications.
• Plugin application uses client certificate to communicate with Capten agent.
• Plugin application can server certificate to enable mtls for communication.

• This capability provides access to key secrets.

• This capability provides postgres DB setup required for the plugin application.

• Plugin application UI can be launched directly from icons shortcut in cluster widget.

• Navigate to "Capten" -> "Platform Engineering"
• In this screen plugin application can be visualized.

1. First to add crossplane plugin, we need to add an empty private repository.
2. In onboarding section, go to Git tab and click Add Git Repo.
3. Enter the git repo url and the token and also set the label to crossplane.

======= Add git repository details in the mentioned section_

1. Now to add cloud provider, go to Cloud Providers and click _ Add Cloud Provider_.
2. Select the required cloud provider and enter the credentials for the same. (The label is set to crossplane)

Add cloud provider details in the mentioned section_

Note: The label crossplane is used by the crossplane plugin to reference both the repository and provider.

1. In platform engineering section, select Setup under Crossplane plugin.
2. Under providers section, select both the required provider and 'crossplane' label.
3. Under configure section, click sync next to the repository which is needed to deploy the plugin.
4. After the sync, the provider will get deployed and enter Healthy state in a few minutes.

Once onboarding is done both the git and provider details will be automatically populated in crossplane plugin using crossplane label_

1. After the sync is successful, the crossplane objects and its argocd applications are added to the empty repository under the infra directory.
2. Go to infra/clusters/cluster-configs/cluster-claim.yaml
3. Uncomment the cluster-claim.yaml file (or add any required changes)
4. Go to argocd UI page and sync all crossplane related applications
5. After the clusterclaim is created, the business cluster creation will get triggered.

Make sure to sync all crossplane related apps_

1. To delete the business cluster, remove all applications from the business cluster.
2. Go to infra/clusters/cluster-configs and remove cluster-claim.yaml
3. Now prune sync the cluster-config-app application (watching the cluster-claim.yaml).
4. This will trigger the business cluster deletion

1. To delete crossplane provider, go to capten UI.
2. Under platform engineering, select Setup under Crossplane plugin
3. Under providers section, select the delete option next to the provider which is to be deleted.
4. This removes the provider from the cluster
5. It is also possible to remove the provider from onboarding list by the delete option provided with the cloud provider

To delete the crossplane provider, click the delete button next to the provider name_

1. Login to the capten ui page

2. Onboarding git project in to capten

   

   • select the add git repo from the git section
   • add the git repo url,access token and label for the customer repo (label is tekton) and the tekton ci/cd repo (label is IntelopsCi)

3. Onboarding container registry in to capten

• select add container registry from container registry section
• add the registry url,username,access token and label to which the built image needs to be pushed (labels is "tekton")

Go to the capten-->platform engineering ,select on the tekton plugin setup and then select the sync option under the configure section and this will configure the tekton and the neccessary floders will be created in the customer's repo

• Use the already created tekton-pipelines namespace for the creation of pipeline.

• Create a Clustersecretstore from the yaml given below.Replace the server with the url which can be obtained from the kubectl command given below.

  kubectl get ingress -n capten

   apiVersion: external-secrets.io/v1beta1
   kind: SecretStore
   metadata:
     name: vault-root-store
   spec:
     provider:
       vault:
         server: <"replace with the ingress host obtained from above command">
         path: "secret"
         version: "v2"
         auth:
           tokenSecretRef:
             name: "tekton-vault-token"
             key: "token"
             namespace: tekton
  

  Here, the tekton-vault-token is the secret created in tekton namespace to access the vault

• Git secret

  Go to onboarding-->git under the respective git project the path of the vault where the credentials of git stored can be viewed.copy the path and add it to the path in the external secret yaml as given below

  Annotate the external-secret to specify the domains for which Tekton can use the credentials.

  A credential annotation key must begin with tekton.dev/git- or tekton.dev/docker- and its value is the URL of the host for which Tekton will be using that credential. eg-tekton.dev/git-0: https://gitlab.com , tekton.dev/git-0: https://github.com , tekton.dev/docker-0: https://gcr.io

      apiVersion: external-secrets.io/v1beta1
      kind: ExternalSecret
      metadata:
        annotations:
          tekton.dev/git-0: "https://github.com"
        name: gitcred-external
        namespace: tekton-pipelines
      spec:
        refreshInterval: "10s"
        secretStoreRef:
          name: vault-root-store
          kind: SecretStore
        target:
          name: gitcred-capten-pipeline
        data:
        - secretKey: password
          remoteRef:
            key: <vault path cpoied from ui>
            property: accessToken
        - secretKey: username
          remoteRef:
            key: <vault path copied from ui>
            property: userID
  

• Container registry secret

  Go to onboarding-->container registry under the respective container registry, where the path of the vault where the credentials of container registry stored can be viewed.copy the path and add it to the path in the external secret yaml as given below

     apiVersion: external-secrets.io/v1beta1
     kind: ExternalSecret
     metadata:
       name: docker-external
       namespace: tekton-pipelines
     spec:
       refreshInterval: "10s"
       secretStoreRef:
         name: vault-root-store
         kind: SecretStore
       target:
         name: docker-credentials-capten-pipeline
       data:
       - secretKey: config.json
         remoteRef:
           key: <vault path copied from ui>
           property: config.json
  

• Cosign docker login secret

  Go to onboarding-->conatainer registry under the respective container registry where the path of the vault in which the credentials of container registry stored can be viewed.copy the path and add it to the path in the external secret yaml as given below

  apiVersion: external-secrets.io/v1beta1
  kind: ExternalSecret
  metadata:
    name: cosign-docker-external
    namespace: tekton-pipelines
  spec:
    refreshInterval: "10s"
    secretStoreRef:
      name: vault-root-store
      kind: SecretStore
    target:
      name: cosign-docker-secret-capten-pipeline
    data:
    - secretKey: password
      remoteRef:
        key: <vault path copied from ui>
        property: password
    - secretKey: registry
      remoteRef:
        key: <vault path copied from ui>
        property: registry
    - secretKey: username
      remoteRef:
        key: <vault path copied from ui>
        property: username
  

• Argocd secret Use the below secret yaml and replace the password with the encoded argocd password which can be obtained by using the kubectl command and the server url is obtained from the capten ui under capten-->platform-engineering .Copy the repo url from the argocd setup ,encoded it and add it to the server url.Username is admin ,add the encoded username to the yaml given below

 kubectl get secrets argocd-initial-admin-secret -n argo-cd

  apiVersion: v1
  data:
    PASSWORD: <replace with encoded argocd secret>
    SERVER_URL: <repo url copied from ui>
    USERNAME: <encoded username>
  kind: Secret
  metadata:
    name: argocd-capten-pipeline
    namespace: tekton-pipelines
  type: Opaque

• cosign-keys

  Now the cosign keys secret is automatically created in tekton-pipelines namespace.

• Extra-config secret

  Go to onboarding-->git under the respective git project where the path of the vault in which the credentials of git stored can be viewed.copy the path and add it to the path in the external secret yaml as given below

  apiVersion: external-secrets.io/v1beta1
  kind: ExternalSecret
  metadata:
    name: extraconfig-external
    namespace: tekton-pipelines
  spec:
    refreshInterval: "10s"
    secretStoreRef:
      name: vault-root-store
      kind: SecretStore
    target:
      name: extraconfig-capten-pipeline
    data:
    - secretKey: GIT_TOKEN
      remoteRef:
        key: <vault path copied from ui>
        property: accessToken
    - secretKey: GIT_USER_NAME
      remoteRef:
        key: <vault path copied from ui>
        property: userID
  

Now commit the required pipeline,rbac,triggers and ingress in the customer repo under the directory cicd-->tekton-pipelines-->templates. once done the argocd will update this changes to the cluster and the pipeline,triggers,rbac and ingress will be created in the controlplane cluster

Now add the webhook url to the tekton ci/cd repo on which the tekton pipeline needs to be executed upon trigger. once all the setup is done and now when a changes is commited in the tekton ci/cd repo the tekton pipeline will get executed and the image gets built and pushed to the container registry ,finally the built image will get deployed in the bussiness cluster.