Install the Control Tower

Using Helm (directly)

To install Flightcrew via Helm on the command line:

1. (Optional) Create a separate namespace for the deployment to live in:

   kubectl create namespace flightcrew

2. Determine values to fill into the helm chart based on your metric provider:

   Requirement	Field Name	Description
   Always required	fc_api_key	Your Flightcrew API key is a unique, private key that can be found after signing up in your instance. The same key should be used for all Control Towers.
   Always required	cluster_name	Your Kubernetes cluster's name, whose name can be found by using aws eks list-clusters or gcloud container clusters list
   Always required	cloud_provider	For EKS clusters, use provider:aws/platform:eks. For GKE clusters, use provider:gcp/platform:gke
   Always required	metric_providers	Metric provider name: "datadog", "prometheus", "stackdriver", "sumologic"
   Datadog only	datadog_api_key	API key created in the Datadog setup steps
   Datadog only	datadog_app_key	Application key created in the Datadog setup steps
   Prometheus only	prometheus_url	The Control Tower reads from the DNS name for the Prometheus service, in the form http://[SERVICE].[NAMESPACE].svc.cluster.local:[PORT], where: SERVICE=Prometheus service name NAMESPACE=Its namespace PORT=spec.ports.port from the Prometheus service config The final URL should look something like http://prometheus-service.monitoring.svc.cluster.local:9090
   Stackdriver only	stackdriver_service_account	Set to the service account created in the Stackdriver setup steps which should look like iam.gke.io/gcp-service-account=flightcrew-monitoring-viewer@PROJECT_NAME.iam.gserviceaccount.com
   Sumo Logic only	sumo_access_id	Access ID created in the Sumo Logic setup steps
   Sumo Logic only	sumo_access_key	Access Key created in the Sumo Logic setup steps
   Sumo Logic only	sumo_cluster_display_name	Cluster name, described in Sumo Logic verification steps
   Sumo Logic only	sumo_region_code	Region code, described in Sumo Logic verification steps

3. Install the helm chart by running following command, setting the values from above. Here's an example for Datadog:

   helm repo add flightcrew https://flightcrew-helm-charts.storage.googleapis.com/control-tower/stable
   helm repo update
   helm install control-tower flightcrew/control-tower \
     --namespace flightcrew \
     --set fc_api_key=123-abc-xyz \
     --set cluster_name=my-prod-cluster \
     --set cloud_provider=provider:aws/platform:eks \
     --set metric_providers="datadog" \
     --set dd_api_key=000111 \
     --set dd_app_key=222333

After a minute or two, your Kubernetes resources and metrics should begin to populate in the dashboard. If so, we're done!

Flightcrew will take a few hours to build a full understanding of your cloud infrastructure and begin surfacing insights. Recommendations will continue to improve with time after gathering more and more data.

Using Helm (via Terraform)

This example shows how to set up the .tf file with Amazon EKS and Sumo Logic. Replace the values to match your setup, and then run terraform apply.

resource "helm_release" "flightcrew" {
  name             = "control-tower"
  namespace        = "flightcrew"
  repository       = "https://flightcrew-helm-charts.storage.googleapis.com/control-tower/stable"
  chart            = "control-tower"
  create_namespace = true

  set {
    name  = "fc_api_key"
    value = var.FC_API_KEY
  }

  set {
    name  = "cluster_name"
    value = var.cluster_name
  }

  set {
    name  = "cloud_provider"
    value = "provider:aws/platform:eks"
  }

  set {
    name  = "metric_providers"
    value = "sumologic"
  }

  set {
    name  = "sumo_access_id"
    value = var.SUMOLOGIC_ACCESSID
  }

  set {
    name  = "sumo_access_key"
    value = var.SUMOLOGIC_ACCESSKEY
  }

  set {
    name  = "sumo_cluster_display_name"
    value = var.cluster_name
  }

  set {
    name  = "sumo_region_code"
    value = "us2"
  }
}

Troubleshooting

CrashLoopBackOff

The Control Tower will fail loudly if it's misconfigured or cannot reach the APIs it needs. Run the following command to check the error logs:

kubectl logs deployment/control-tower --namespace flightcrew --previous --tail=20

Feel free to send the error logs to the Flightcrew team on Slack or support@flightcrew.io for help debugging.

Out of Memory

Resource usage will vary slightly depending on the size of the cluster. Memory usage very rarely exceeds 500Mi, but if the pod is hitting its memory limit and getting OOMKilled, the resources can be increased by updating fields on the helm chart, for example:

helm upgrade control-tower flightcrew/control-tower --namespace flightcrew --reuse-values \
--set resources.limits.memory="2000Mi" \
--set resources.requests.memory="1000Mi"

Please still reach out to support@flightcrew.io if this happens, so we can take a closer look as something else may be going wrong.