MARA is an reference architecture for Kubernetes that aims to be as production ready as possible. The MARA team created it to showcase the open source underpinnings of modern applications in an easily deployable, modifiable, and shareable fashion. As a framework, MARA focuses on protocols over products, enabling users to add and remove components to meet their specific needs. In this session Jason Schmidt, Solutions Architect for NGINX, discusses the MARA design philosophy, the progress that has been made over the past year, and the project roadmap. He focuses special attention on both expected and unexpected challenges encountered on the way, and explores key real-world use cases. Speakers: Jason Schmidt

1. MARA
Scaffolding for ModernApplications
Jason Schmidt
Solutions Architect
August 2022

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A Brief Introduction

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What is MARA?
An example
architecture using
Kubernetes that
aims to be as
production ready
as possible

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Who are we?
NGINX Community and Alliances Team
○ Work with the OSS Community
○ Work with Partners
Technical Experience
○ Operations
○ Development
○ Quality Assurance
○ Change Management
○ Project Management
○ Support
○ Training
○ Technical Writing

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Why did we build this?
Leverage our
experience to
build a “best
practice” example
1
Respond to the
many existing
anti-patterns the
team has seen
2
Highlight OSS as
a core part of
modern
applications
3

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How is to be used?
Run the whole project
Review a pattern used for X
Take code to solve X in
your environment
Application
Observability
Management
Kubernetes
Infrastructure

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How do I use MARA?
Clone the
repository
Have
credentials for a
supported cloud
or a K8
installation
Run the setup
script
Run the startup
script
Congratulations!
You are running
MARA!

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Drawing it all out
MARA is a scaffold
that can be built on
and updated to
meet your needs

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Current Themes

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● Focus on incremental updates
● Development
○ Stable, defined interfaces
○ Software Bill of Materials (SBOM)
● Deployment
○ Use of continuous integration
○ Frequent releases
○ Automated testing
● Operational
○ Manage breaking changes
○ Manage component versions
Stability

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● Development
○ Design documents
● Deployment
○ Deployment documentation
● Operational
○ Operators' documentation
Documentation

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● Protocols over products
● Deployment targets
○ All targets at parity
○ Full NGINX IC build support
● Process improvements
○ Dependencies / Versions
○ Automation
○ Continuous integration
● Ingress
○ K8, Vendor, and Gateway support
● OpenTelemetry
Enhancements

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New Deployment Targets

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Kubernetes Targets
Azure
Canonical
MicroK8s
GCP
K3s Minikube
MARA can deploy via a
kubeconfig file to any
K8 installation with K8
loadbalancer and
persistent volume
support

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Infrastructure Targets
AWS Digital Ocean
Linode
MARA will provision and
configure infrastructure
and deploy itself on
several IaaS providers

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Improvements

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● Code Version Management
○ Python Versions
○ Python Package Versions
● Kubernetes Management
○ API Versions
○ Managed Versions
● Deployment Management
○ Helm Chart / Image Versions
● Management of inter-component dependencies
○ Component X requires specific version of
Component Y
● Creation of MARA best practices
Dependency and Version Maintenance

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● Jenkins added for automated deployment tests
○ AWS
○ Digital Ocean
○ K3s
○ Linode
○ MicroK8s
○ Minikube
● Jenkinsfiles used are available in repo under
/extras/Jenkins
● Status icons have been added to the repository
README.md
Deployment Testing
Image from the Jenkins Project
https://jenkins.io/

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● Replaces existing startup / destroy scripts
○ Written in BASH with Pulumi CLI calls
○ Overly complex and repetitive
● New Python startup / destroy / validate program
○ Leverages Pulumi Automation API
○ Reduction of complexity
○ Better extensibility
○ Better performance
○ More portable
○ Existing scripts have been deprecated
Automation API

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New Features

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● Exposes cluster resources outside the cluster
● NGINX-based solutions
○ Upstream (Community) Ingress
○ NGINX OSS Ingress (Plus)
● Multiple choices for use
○ Kubernetes Compatible
○ NGINX Vendor API
○ NGINX Kubernetes Ingress Gateway
Kubernetes Ingress

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Ingress Type Comparison

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Addition of OpenTelemetry
tracing
Documentation updates
Updates to management
endpoints
Support for docker-compose
deployment
Bank of Sirius Updates
(Image credit: Hubble, ESA/ Akira Fujii)

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Open Telemetry

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● OpenTelemetry Backend
○ Deployment of OTEL Operator
● OpenTelemetry Application Updates
○ Addition of OTEL logic to Bank of Sirius
● Trace Visualization
○ Addition of Jaeger Frontend
○ Push traces to Lightstep
○ Push OTEL to SumoLogic
● Work in Progress
○ OTEL for logs and metrics
● Breakout Session on MARA/OTEL
Open Telemetry Work

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● Work in Progress
● NGINX Service Mesh
○ OTEL included
● NGINX Ingress Controller
○ On roadmap
● NGINX OTEL Module
○ Tracing
○ Metrics (partial)
○ Logging (not started)
NGINX and OpenTelemetry

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MARA Telemetry (Now)
• OTEL collector consumes traces from application
• Prometheus consumes metrics
• ELK consumes logs
Collection
• Grafana for metrics
• Kibana for logs
• Logging for traces
Visualization
• OTEL Operator
• Prometheus Operator (kube-prometheus-stack)
• ELK / Filebeat
Deployed
Resources

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MARA Telemetry (Future)
• OTEL collector consumes traces from application
• OTEL collector consumes metrics
• OTEL collector consumes logs
Collection
• Jaeger
• Grafana
• Visualization/Trace SaaS
Visualization
• OTEL Operator
• Visualization
Deployed
Resources

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Community Engagement

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MARA Community Engagement
• Via the #mara channel
NGINX Community Slack
• Clone and use
• Fork /modify / pull request
• Discussions and Issues
GitHub Repository
• Reddit
• Stack Overflow
• Wiki
• Conferences / Webinars / Talks
Other Channels