The document discusses the building of a new cloud-native platform to provide lab instances for CloudBees University. The previous infrastructure was outdated and unable to meet current needs. The new platform uses Kubernetes and leverages Jenkins X for provisioning environments in a self-service manner. It aims to apply modern practices like infrastructure as code and GitOps. The technical architecture involves Jenkins X, namespaces, deployments, and an environment controller to provision lab definitions from a Git repository. Key benefits include disaster recovery, standardized practices, and extensibility to integrate further with CloudBees University.

1. Building a Cloud Native Platform
to Provide Lab Instances at
CloudBees University
Our journey, choices, tech, practices...
Romén Rodríguez-Gil, CloudBees
Joost van der Griendt, CloudBees

2. About us
Romén Rodríguez-Gil & Joost van der Griendt

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Romén (@romenrg)
Software engineering, leading startups, building digital products, lecturing,...

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Joost (@joost_vdg)
Consultant, Software Engineer, OpenSource Contributor

5. Building a Cloud Native Platform
to Provide Lab Instances at
CloudBees University
Our journey, choices, tech, practices...
Romén Rodríguez-Gil, CloudBees
Joost van der Griendt, CloudBees

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Index
• What is CloudBees University
– What we offer
– Content and labs
– Our previous lab infrastructure
• Our new cloud-native platform
– Goals and use-cases
– Tech, concepts, and practices applied
• Demo
– Creating instances via UI
• Technical details
– What is happening behind the scenes
– Architecture and components
• Key gains
• Future

7. What is CloudBees University
What we offer
Content and labs ; previous lab infrastructure

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What is CloudBees University
cloudbees.com/cloudbees-university

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What is CloudBees University
CloudBees University Community

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• Self-paced training
– Jenkins, DevOps, ARO, SDM,...
– Multiple levels (fundamentals, intermediate, shorter modules,...)
• Labs
– Hands-on, with pre-configured tools:
• Jenkins (& agents)
• Gitea
• LDAP
• Web terminal
• Jenkins & CloudBees Certifications
What is CloudBees University
What we offer

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What is CloudBees University
Content

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What is CloudBees University
Labs (1)

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What is CloudBees University
Labs (2)

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What is CloudBees University
Our previous lab infrastructure (1)
Infrastructure as-code but
human-operated; & focused
on instructor-led
slides.html
VM.zip
CloudDelivery
SlidesandVMs

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• It has become stale
– Built in 2016, its technology is outdated in today’s world
– Difficult to maintain & enhance
– Highly coupled to AWS
– Maintaining two delivery methods (portable VMs + cloud)
• Cannot fulfill all our current needs
– Not build for self-service
– Not manageable by others (e.g. via UI)
– Not Kubernetes ready
What is CloudBees University
Our previous lab infrastructure (2)

16. Our new cloud-native platform
Goals and use-cases
Tech, concepts, and practices applied

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• Goals
– Kubernetes-ready (e.g. support CBs CI modern)
– Apply today’s practices
– Self-service
– Switch to GCP & < Total Cost of Ownership
• Use cases
– Support existing labs & K8s-based courses (and products)
– Self-service (students, instructors, others)
– Administration by non-team members
• Modern tools & UI (for lower barrier of entry)
• Enable more people to troubleshoot, create & destroy environments
Our new cloud-native platform
Goals and use-cases

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• Tech used
– Version 1: Go backend run K8s commands
• Handle everything in our backend
• Used Jenkins X for CI & CD (of our applications)
– Version 2: Leveraged Jenkins X as our provisioning engine
• Automated provisioning of environments for students
• And Helm, Vault, GitHub, Sentry, Datadog
• Concepts and practices
– Configuration and Infrastructure as Code
– 12-factor app
– GitOps
Our new cloud-native platform
Tech, concepts, and practices applied

19. Demo!
...This is where it fails...

20. Technical details
Architecture and components
What is happening behind the scenes

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• Jenkins X
– Pipelines
– GitOps Environments
– Chart installations
• Namespaces, deployments, pod creations,...
• Platform
– Frontend
– Engine
– Env Controller
• Git repo
• Jenkins X Pipeline
• Env Helper
Technical details
• Lab environment definitions
– Helm charts
– Values template

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Technical details
Architecture and components

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Technical details
What is happening behind the scenes
CBU Engine
(backend)
GitOps
repository

24. Key gains
How is this making our lives any better?

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• Everything as code
– Disaster recovery
• Cluster re-creation:
– Terraform + jx boot
• Known instances states:
– Env controller GitOps repo
– Troubleshooting
• Easier to explore
• No unknown manual changes
Key gains
How is this making our lives any better?

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• Standardization
– Practices & tools
• Modularization
– Separation of concerns
– Easier to replace components
• Extensibility
– Inner sourcing
Key gains
How is this making our lives any better?

27. Future
What are we planning to work on next?

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• Integrate with CloudBees University
– SSO
– Seamless self-service labs
• Multi-cluster support
– Scalability & performance
– Enable further separation of environments
– Becoming a wider provisioning engine for CloudBees
• Not just training instances
– e.g. demo environments
Future

29. Building a Cloud Native Platform
to Provide Lab Instances at
CloudBees University
Our journey, choices, tech, practices...
Romén Rodríguez-Gil, CloudBees
Joost van der Griendt, CloudBees