Preparing Your Local Environment For Codiac: Quick Start
Why?
For Codiac to get installed and configured, it needs two things:
1. The Codiac CLI
2. The Codiac container
The Codiac CLI is installed and updated with NPM, which is the JavaScript package manager. You don’t need to know JavaScript to use it, you just need the package manager to install it. For example, on a Mac, you use Homebrew to install software and tools. It’s the same thing, just with JavaScript.
The Codiac container that runs locally is like the brains of the operation. When you use the Codiac CLI, the commands get sent to your Codiac environment via the Codiac container, so it acts as a relay. Nothing gets stored locally in terms of persistent data because Codiac is a SaaS-based platform, so they manage all of that for you.
The last “prerequisite”, which isn’t really a prereq, but more of a “need” is a Kubernetes cluster. At this time, you can manage Kubernetes clusters from either Azure or AWS. Because of that, you’ll need an Azure or AWS account, which you can sign up via free tier.
Now that you know the prerequisites, let’s learn how to configure them.
Docker
The first step is Docker. If you’re on a Mac, Windows machine, or Linux distribution, you can install the Docker engine. One
of the most popular methods is with Docker Desktop.
First, go to the link below and you should see a screenshot similar to the one below.
https://www.docker.com/products/docker-desktop/
Next, choose your platform architecture for installation.
Once installed, you should see the Docker engine running. For example, on a Mac, you’ll see it at on the top navigation bar.
When you begin to install Codiac and get it running, you can go back into Docker Desktop and you’ll see the Codiac Relay container. You won’t see this container until you start the Codiac configuration process, which is out of the scope for this blog post.
NodeJS
The next installation you’ll need is NodeJS. When you install NodeJS, it comes with JavaScript and the NPM package manager, which you’ll need to install the CLI.
To install NodeJS, go to the following link:
You should see a screen similar to the screenshot below.
When you click the Download button, you’ll see the package on your local computer.
Once you download the NodeJS package, you can open up a terminal, run `npm`, and confirm that NPM is installed.
A Place To Run Clusters
The last thing you’ll need is a location to run Kubernetes clusters. At the time of writing this article, Codiac supports two major cloud providers.
1. Azure
2. AWS
Let’s learn how to set up both within the free tier limits.
Azure
To set up an Azure account, you can see the free account link below.
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/free
You’ll see a green Start free button similar to the screenshot below.
On the same page, you’ll see that Azure gives you a $200.00 free credit which you can use for an Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) cluster.
AWS
For the AWS Free Tier, you can use the following link:
You’ll see a page similar to the screenshot below come up. Before clicking the orange Create a Free Account button, click the blue Learn more button.
You should see all of the Free Tier details, including the EC2 hours that you get for free (ec2 instances are what run the
Kubernetes Worker Nodes on Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS).
What you won’t see for free, however, is EKS. You’ll most likely have to pay a few bucks for EKS (for the EKS service itself, not for the EC2 instances running the Worker Nodes), but as long as you delete the EKS cluster when you’re done in your home lab, you won’t accrue thousands of dollars of cost.
Congrats! You’re officially ready to start using Codiac.
