Installing Knative serving on VMware

Learn how to install Knative serving in your GKE clusters outside Google Cloud. Knative serving now uses Cloud Service Mesh and GKE Enterprise fleets. Learn what's new and changed with Knative serving fleet installations.

Warning: Performing the steps on this page will perform a new installation of Knative serving on VMware and irreversibly overwrite your previous non-fleet installation. Do not proceed with the following steps in your clusters for which you previously enabled Knative serving.

For previous "free-trial" installations of Knative serving, you must first upgrade Knative serving on VMware to use GKE Enterprise fleets.

Use the steps on this page to configure a new installation or to update an existing fleet installation of Knative serving.

Before you begin

You must ensure that you meet the installation prerequisites.

Configure your CloudRun custom resource

You need to manually create and configure the CloudRun custom resource to configure your installation.

To manually create a CloudRun custom resource for GKE clusters outside Google Cloud:

1. You must create or have an existing service account that has been granted the required Monitoring Metric Writer role (monitoring.metricWriter).

   • To create a new service account and then download the key, see Using service accounts.

   • If you have an existing service account with the necessary permissions, locate the key that you downloaded when you created that service account.

2. Ensure Cloud Monitoring is enabled in Google Distributed Cloud.

3. Create the knative-serving namespace:

   kubectl create namespace knative-serving
   

4. Create a secret in the knative-serving namespace that holds the service account with monitoring.metricWriter permissions:

   kubectl create secret -n knative-serving generic SECRET_NAME --from-file=PATH_TO_KEY_FILE/SECRET_KEY
   

   Replace:

   • SECRET_NAME with the name that you choose for the secret.
   • SECRET_KEY with the name of the file that includes your credentials. Example: key.json
   • PATH_TO_KEY_FILE with the path to the directory of the SECRET_KEY.

   See the kubectl create secret reference to learn more, including optional flags.

5. Create a YAML file with the following attributes, for example cloudrunanthos.yaml:

   apiVersion: operator.run.cloud.google.com/v1alpha1
   kind: CloudRun
   metadata:
     name: cloud-run
   spec:
     metricscollector:
       stackdriver:
         projectid: PROJECT_ID
         gcpzone: CLUSTER_LOCATION
         clustername: CLUSTER_NAME
         secretname: SECRET_NAME
         secretkey: SECRET_KEY
   

   Replace the following:

   • PROJECT_ID with the ID of your Google Cloud project.
   • CLUSTER_LOCATION with the region or zone in which your cluster is located.
   • CLUSTER_NAME with the ID of your cluster or the fully qualified identifier for the cluster.
   • SECRET_NAME with the name of the Secret for the service account of the knative-serving namespace.

   • SECRET_KEY with the key of the Secret for the service account of the knative-serving namespace. For example: key.json

     For details about service accounts, see:

     • Creating service accounts
     • Creating service account keys
   Example

   In this example CloudRun custom resource, the configuration details for Cloud Monitoring are specified to use the my-gcp-logging-secret secret and key.json key:

    apiVersion: operator.run.cloud.google.com/v1alpha1
    kind: CloudRun
    metadata:
      name: cloud-run
    spec:
      metricscollector:
        stackdriver:
          projectid: my-gcp-project-id
          gcpzone: us-central1-c
          clustername: my-anthos-cluster-name
          secretname: my-gcp-logging-secret
          secretkey: key.json
    ```
   

Enable and install Knative serving

Enable the Knative serving component in your GKE Enterprise fleet and then deploy your CloudRun custom resource:

1. Enable Knative serving in your fleet:

   gcloud container fleet cloudrun enable --project=PROJECT_ID
   

   Replace PROJECT_ID with the ID of your Google Cloud project.

   For details and additional options, see the gcloud container fleet cloudrun enable reference.

2. Optional: Verify that the Knative serving feature component is enabled:

   Console

   View if the Knative serving component is Enabled in the Google Cloud console:

   Go to Feature Manager

   Command line

   View if the appdevexperience state is ACTIVE:

   gcloud container fleet features list  --project=PROJECT_ID
   

   Replace PROJECT_ID with the ID of your Google Cloud project.

   For details and additional options, see the gcloud container fleet features list reference.

   Result:

   NAME               STATE
   appdevexperience   ACTIVE
   

3. For each GKE Enterprise cluster where you want to install Knative serving, you must deploy your CloudRun custom resource:

   gcloud

   gcloud container fleet cloudrun apply --kubeconfig=KUBECONFIG --context=CONTEXT --config=CONFIG_FILE
   

   Replace the following:

   • KUBECONFIG with the absolute path to your kubectl config file.
   • CONTEXT with the name of the context in your kubectl config file to use for connecting.
   • CONFIG_FILE with the filename relative path to your cloudRun custom resource. Example cloudrunanthos.yaml.

   For details and additional options, see the gcloud container fleet cloudrun apply reference.

   kubectl

   kubectl apply --kubeconfig=KUBECONFIG --filename CONFIG_FILE
   

   Replace the following:

   • KUBECONFIG with the absolute path to your kubectl config file.
   • CONFIG_FILE with the filename and relative path to your cloudRun custom resource. Example cloudrunanthos.yaml.

   For details and additional options, see the kubectl apply reference.

4. Verify that Knative serving has been enabled in your cluster:
   1. Open the Google Cloud console:

      Go to GKE clusters

   2. Click on the name of your cluster to open the details pane.

   3. Run this command to check if you can see the Knative serving version details: kubectl get all -n knative-serving -o 'go-template={{index .metadata.labels "serving.knative.dev/release"}}'
   4. Verify that all Knative serving specific deployments are in running status under knative-serving and appdevexperience namespaces.

What's next

Set up your installation of Knative serving.