Synthetic PoP Deployment

Helm Install

Use the helm install command to install a new Synthetic PoP, and pass the following values. You are suggested to install the PoP in a separate namespace.

• downloadKey: The download agent key for pulling image from containers.instana.io Docker registry.
• controller.location: The format is label; displayLabel; country; city; latitude; longitude; description. This label acts as the PoP identifier and can only contain letter, number, hyphen and underscore.
• controller.instanaKey: The Instana agent key, which is used for connecting to Instana backend.
• controller.instanaSyntheticEndpoint: The ingress endpoint of synthetic acceptor in Instana backend.
• controller.clusterName: Optionally. It needs to be set with the name of the Kubernetes cluster that is to be displayed in the Instana UI when Instana agent is installed to monitor this PoP.
• redis.password: The authentication password to redis server. Specify a password with length at least 10.
• redis.tls.enabled: Define if enabling Redis TLS or not (default false). If the value is true, the communication with Redis will be encrypted with TLS.
• redis.tls.secretName: If the value of the redis.tls.enabled field is true, you need to specify a secret name for Redis TLS key/cert files.

Sign in to Instana UI, click Synthetic Monitoring, and then click Deploy a PoP. Copy the values of downloadKey, controller.instanaKey and controller.instanaSyntheticEndpoint.

To configure the installation, specify the values in the command line by using the --set flag, or provide a yaml file with your values by using the -f flag.

In the following example, a PoP is deployed, and Redis uses password for authentication.

helm install synthetic-pop \
    --repo https://agents.instana.io/helm  \
    --namespace syn \
    --create-namespace \
    --set downloadKey="yourdownloadkey" \
    --set controller.location="MyPoP;My PoP;China;Beijing;39.54;116.23;This is a testing Synthetic Point of Presence" \
    --set controller.instanaKey="instanaAgentkey" \
    --set controller.instanaSyntheticEndpoint="https://synthetics-green-saas.instana.io" \
    --set redis.tls.enabled=false \
    --set redis.password="a1fc5d01bcbb" \
    synthetic-pop

You can also provide your values.yaml to deploy a PoP, below examples shows how to get the values.yaml template and then pass the modified yaml file to deploy a PoP.

helm repo add synthetic-pop-repo https://agents.instana.io/helm
helm repo update
helm pull synthetic-pop-repo/synthetic-pop
tar xzvf synthetic-pop-*.tgz
# Modify the synthetic-pop/values.yaml file
# Run helm install to pass the modified values.yaml
 helm install synthetic-pop \
    --repo https://agents.instana.io/helm  \
    --namespace syn \
    --create-namespace \
    -f /path/to/values.yaml \
    synthetic-pop

After PoP is installed, make sure that each pod is in Running and Ready status.

kubectl get pod -n syn

Sign in to Instana UI, click Synthetic _Monitoring > Locations, and then you can see your location is showed up in the location list. If not, go to the Troubleshooting section to check the log files.

Security Enhancement

The following configurations are recommended for security enhancement in production environment.

openssl genrsa -out tls.key 4096
openssl req -x509 -new -nodes -sha256 -key tls.key -days 3650 -subj '/O=Redis/CN=Certificate Authority' -out ca.crt
openssl req -new -sha256 -key tls.key -subj '/O=Redis/CN=Server' | openssl x509 -req -sha256 -CA ca.crt -CAkey tls.key -CAserial ca.txt -CAcreateserial -days 3650 -out tls.crt

# Create a new TLS secret named redis-tls-secret with the given key/cert files
kubectl create secret generic redis-tls-secret -n syn \
--type='kubernetes.io/tls' \
--from-file=ca.crt=path/to/ca.crt \
--from-file=tls.crt=path/to/tls.crt \
--from-file=tls.key=path/to/tls.key

helm install synthetic-pop \
    --repo https://agents.instana.io/helm \
    --namespace syn \
    --create-namespace \
    --set downloadKey="yourdownloadkey" \
    --set controller.location="MyPoP;My PoP;China;Beijing;39.54;116.23;This is a testing Synthetic Point of Presence" \
    --set controller.instanaKey="instanaAgentkey" \
    --set controller.instanaSyntheticEndpoint="https://synthetics-green-saas.instana.io" \
    --set redis.tls.enabled=true \
    --set redis.tls.secretName="redis-tls-secret" \
    synthetic-pop

helm install synthetic-pop \
    --repo https://agents.instana.io/helm \
    --namespace syn \
   ...
    --set seccompDefault=true \
    synthetic-pop

# Use the following command to print apiserver endpoint
# For example, if the following command prints "Endpoints: 10.128.0.127:16443", you need to block the IP address 10.128.0.127 
kubectl describe service kubernetes

playbackEngineNetworkPolicy:
  # Change the value to true to enable the network policy
  enabled: true
  egress:
    - to:
        - ipBlock:
            # Allow all IP address v4
            cidr: 0.0.0.0/0
            except:
              # Block Kubernetes API server IP address
              - 10.128.0.127/32
              # Block cloud provider metadata service IP address
              - 169.254.169.254/32

# --set-json only be supported since Helm V3.11
helm install synthetic-pop \
    --repo https://agents.instana.io/helm \
    --namespace syn \
   ...
    --set playbackEngineNetworkPolicy.enabled=true \
    --set-json 'playbackEngineNetworkPolicy.egress=[{"to":[{"ipBlock":{"cidr":"0.0.0.0/0","except":["10.128.0.127/32","169.254.169.254/32"]}}]}]' \
    synthetic-pop

Migration Scenario

To support the backend migration scenario, you can specify multiple synthetic acceptor endpoints and Instana agent keys with semicolon. Instana agent keys and synthetic acceptor endpoints are one-to-one correspondence. During the migration period, Synthetic PoP can send data to both old and new backend to avoid downtime.

See the following example:

helm install synthetic-pop \
    --repo https://agents.instana.io/helm \
    --namespace syn \
    --set controller.instanaKey="instanaAgentkey;anotherInstanaAgentKey" \
    --set controller.instanaSyntheticEndpoint="https://synthetics-green-saas.instana.io;https://synthetics-green-saas.instana.host" \
    ...

Scalability

Currently, only playback engines support horizontal scalability, and PoP Controller and Redis don't support horizontal scalability yet. The PoP workload is mainly on the playback engine pods. So to support more workload on a certain type of test, just increase the replicas number in the values.yaml file.

The following example shows that the replicas of HTTP playback engine are increased to 2 and replicas of javascript playback engine are increased to 3.

--set http.replicas=2
--set javascript.replicas=3

Capabilities

The controller.capabilities property defines the playback capabilities for this PoP. Only the HTTPAction and HTTPScript test types are supported.

CustomProperties

The controller.customProperties property defines the customized tags or properties for this PoP. The property is a list of key:value pairs, separated by a semicolon, such as key1=value1;key2=value2.

Use an API such as $env.key1 to access the custom property or tag in an API or browser script.

Proxy

You can configure a proxy server for synthetic PoP to connect the Instana backend server. The following options are supported.

• proxy.popProxyProtocol: the protocol used by the proxy server. Set the value to http or socks.
• proxy.popProxyServer: the proxy server address in the ipaddress:port format.
• proxy.popProxyUserPass: the username and password to authenticate the proxy server. Enter the username and password in the username:password format.

Using external secrets

If you don't want to use Helm chart to create new secrets for the keys controller.instanaKey, redis.password, proxy.popProxyUserPass, and downloadKey, you can use the existing secrets that you have created for the Synthetic PoP deployment by specifying the secret names as follows:

helm install synthetic-pop \
    --repo https://agents.instana.io/helm \
    --namespace syn \
    --set downloadSecret="my-pull-secret" \
    --set controller.instanaKeySecret="my-pop-secret" \
    --set redis.passwordSecret="my-pop-secret" \ 
    --set proxy.popProxyUserPassSecret="my-pop-secret" \
    ...

For the keys controller.instanaKey, redis.password, and proxy.popProxyUserPass, you can use the same secret or different existing secrets. However, when you create the secret, you must use the specified key fields instana-key, redis-password, and proxy-user-pass as follows:

 kubectl create secret generic my-pop-secret  --namespace <namespace> \
 --from-literal=instana-key='<instana agent key>'  \
 --from-literal=redis-password='<redis password>'  \
 --from-literal=proxy-user-pass='<proxy username and password>'  

Note: You need to replace <namespace> with the namespace that you use to install the Synthetic PoP.

The secret for the downloadKey key must use the kubernetes.io/dockerconfigjson type. You can create the secret with the kubernetes.io/dockerconfigjson type as follows:

kubectl create secret docker-registry my-pull-secret --namespace <namespace> --docker-server="https://containers.instana.io" --docker-username="_" --docker-password="<downloadKey>" 

Notes:

• Replace <namespace> with the namespace that you use to install the Synthetic PoP.
• Don't change the value of the --docker-username argument.
• Replace <downloadKey> with the Instana download key.