Red Hat JBoss Fuse w/ Azure Container Service & Kubernetes

Red Hat JBoss Fuse has been the de-facto standard for building Java Web/RESTful services for over a decade. But how do you run it effectively in today’s Cloud-centric world? As you’ll see, an infrastructure-as-a-code and scalable/fault-tolerant approach are both critical for a successful deployment.

In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to:

Build an environment in a Kubernetes (K8s) cluster in Azure.
Package your Red Hat JBoss services into a Docker Container.
Run your services in a scalable, highly-available cluster.

Building an Environment on a Kubernetes Cluster in Azure

To start, you’ll need an operational Kubernetes cluster. Read our blog to learn how to install a Kubernetes cluster in Azure.

After installation, run the Kubernetes Dashboard (kubectl proxy) and ensure the Kubernetes Dashboard UI (http://127.0.0.1:8001/ui) is working:

Deploying Red Hat JBoss Fuse Using Azure Container Service and Kubernetes

Packaging Your Red Hat JBoss Services Into a Docker Container

The typical Red Hat JBoss deployment process requires you to install Red Hat JBoss, configure Red Hat/Karaf features, and deploy your services (i.e., the developed *.jar files). You can automate the installation with the Docker file and get a delivery unit that is ready for testing and deployment to production.

Docker file:

# Use latest jboss/base-jdk:8 image as the base
FROM jboss/base-jdk:8

MAINTAINER Evgeny Pishnyuk <maintainer-email@gmail.com>

ENV DEPLOY_LOCAL_STORAGE=install
ENV DEPLOY_CLOUD_STORAGE=https://your-cloud-storage-with-prepared-artifacts

ENV FUSE_VERSION 6.3.0.redhat-262

RUN curl $DEPLOY_CLOUD_STORAGE/jboss-fuse-karaf-$FUSE_VERSION.zip > /opt/jboss/jboss-fuse-karaf.zip
WORKDIR /opt/jboss
RUN unzip jboss-fuse-karaf.zip -d /opt/jboss && rm *.zip
RUN ln -s "jboss-fuse-$FUSE_VERSION" jboss-fuse

# We turn on the default admin user. Please consider password
RUN sed -i 's/#admin/admin/' etc/users.properties

# We install components that we needed
RUN bin/fuse server & \
sleep 30 && \
bin/client log:clear && \
bin/client 'osgi:install -s mvn:xom/xom/1.2.5'  && \
bin/client features:install camel-jetty  && \
bin/client features:install camel-xmljson  && \
sleep 10 && \
bin/client log:display && \
bin/client 'shutdown -f' && \
sleep 5

# !Usually it is more affordable to use inheritance of Docker Containers and here will be a split point

WORKDIR /opt/jboss/jboss-fuse

COPY $DEPLOY_LOCAL_STORAGE/*.jar /opt/deploy/

# We deploy our service – we do it in different step to save time for building of Docker Image

RUN bin/fuse server & \
sleep 30 && \
bin/client log:clear && \
bin/client 'osgi:install -s file:/opt/deploy/some-service.jar'  && \
sleep 10 && \
bin/client log:display && \
bin/client 'shutdown -f' && \
sleep 5

# Add ports of your services
EXPOSE 8181 8101 1099 44444 61616 1883 5672 61613 61617 8883 5671 61614

CMD /opt/jboss/jboss-fuse/bin/fuse server

Set up your Docker Image Registry (or use DockerHub), and configure your Docker to access the Registry.

We use commands “bin/client log:display” in the Docker file to help ensure that the Red Hat reconfigurations and deployments were successful.

After this, the typical developer’s flow will be to build a Docker Container Image, tag the Image with a version, and push the Image to the Docker Registry:

docker build -t rhesb .

docker tag rhesb pishnuke/rhesb:latest

docker push pishnuke/rhesb:latest

Running Your Services in a Scalable, Highly Available Cluster

You have now successfully configured Kubernetes on Azure Container Service, and you have a Docker Image in a Docker Registry. Next, you’re ready to proceed with Kubernetes!

Basically, you will need to create one Deployment (for Red Hat nodes) and one Service (for a load balancer and publicly accessible IP) in Kubernetes.

To create the Deployment, go to the dashboard, and select “Deployment” in the left menu.

Click “+Create” in the upper right, and select the “Upload a YAML or JSON file” option.

Here is the Kubernetes deployment definition:

apiVersion: extensions/v1beta1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
 name: rhesb
spec:
 replicas: 2    
 template:
  metadata:
   labels:
    name: rhesb
  spec:
   containers:
   - name: rhesb
     imagePullPolicy: Always
     image: pishnuke/rhesb:latest
     ports:
     - containerPort: 8040
     - containerPort: 9001
     - containerPort: 1099
     - containerPort: 44444
     - containerPort: 8000
     - containerPort: 8001
     - containerPort: 8101
     - containerPort: 8888
     - containerPort: 61616
     - containerPort: 2181
     - containerPort: 1527
     - containerPort: 8082
     - containerPort: 8088
     - containerPort: 8090

Select Rh-deployment.yaml, and click “Upload”. Next, select “Pods” in the left menu. Wait until “rhesb-….” is ready. This should take approximately 5 minutes because the image is 2GB.

Then go to “Services”, click “+Create”, and select the Kubernetes service definition(rh-service.yaml). Ensure the “selector” attribute in the Service definition matches the “metadata” name of the Deployment definition.

Here is the Kubernetes service definition:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
 name: rhesb
spec:
 type: LoadBalancer
 ports:
   - name: service1
     port: your_service1_port
     targetPort: your_service1_port
 selector:
  name: rhesb

Go to “Services” and wait until the new service displays an IP address. This will take a few minutes as the load balancer and rules are created.

You are now ready to test your service using SoapUI, or a similar tool:

While you can go into production with this Docker Image and a couple of Kubernetes yaml files, you should also:

Choose an approach for managing environment-specific properties (for example, URLs and ports of services).
Set up log shipping using Stash or the Azure Monitoring Agent.
Add readinessProbe and livenessProbe (for each service) to Kubernetes Service definition to ensure you are not the owner of a cluster of all-dead nodes.
Consider using Kublr to get more auto-scaling/highly available features out-of-the-box!