Managing deployment processes

Managing DeploymentConfig objects

Important

As of OpenShift Container Platform 4.14, DeploymentConfig objects are deprecated. DeploymentConfig objects are still supported, but are not recommended for new installations. Only security-related and critical issues will be fixed.

Instead, use Deployment objects or another alternative to provide declarative updates for pods.

DeploymentConfig objects can be managed from the OpenShift Container Platform web console’s Workloads page or using the oc CLI. The following procedures show CLI usage unless otherwise stated.

Starting a deployment

You can start a rollout to begin the deployment process of your application.

Procedure

To start a new deployment process from an existing DeploymentConfig object, run the following command:
```
$ oc rollout latest dc/<name>
```
Note

If a deployment process is already in progress, the command displays a message and a new replication controller will not be deployed.

Viewing a deployment

You can view a deployment to get basic information about all the available revisions of your application.

Procedure

To show details about all recently created replication controllers for the provided DeploymentConfig object, including any currently running deployment process, run the following command:
```
$ oc rollout history dc/<name>
```
To view details specific to a revision, add the --revision flag:
```
$ oc rollout history dc/<name> --revision=1
```
For more detailed information about a DeploymentConfig object and its latest revision, use the oc describe command:
```
$ oc describe dc <name>
```

Retrying a deployment

If the current revision of your DeploymentConfig object failed to deploy, you can restart the deployment process.

Procedure

To restart a failed deployment process:
```
$ oc rollout retry dc/<name>
```
If the latest revision of it was deployed successfully, the command displays a message and the deployment process is not retried.

Note

Retrying a deployment restarts the deployment process and does not create a new deployment revision. The restarted replication controller has the same configuration it had when it failed.

Rolling back a deployment

Rollbacks revert an application back to a previous revision and can be performed using the REST API, the CLI, or the web console.

Procedure

To rollback to the last successful deployed revision of your configuration:
```
$ oc rollout undo dc/<name>
```
The DeploymentConfig object’s template is reverted to match the deployment revision specified in the undo command, and a new replication controller is started. If no revision is specified with --to-revision, then the last successfully deployed revision is used.
Image change triggers on the DeploymentConfig object are disabled as part of the rollback to prevent accidentally starting a new deployment process soon after the rollback is complete.

To re-enable the image change triggers:
```
$ oc set triggers dc/<name> --auto
```

Note

Deployment configs also support automatically rolling back to the last successful revision of the configuration in case the latest deployment process fails. In that case, the latest template that failed to deploy stays intact by the system and it is up to users to fix their configurations.

Executing commands inside a container

You can add a command to a container, which modifies the container’s startup behavior by overruling the image’s ENTRYPOINT. This is different from a lifecycle hook, which instead can be run once per deployment at a specified time.

Procedure

Add the command parameters to the spec field of the DeploymentConfig object. You can also add an args field, which modifies the command (or the ENTRYPOINT if command does not exist).

kind: DeploymentConfig
apiVersion: apps.openshift.io/v1
metadata:
  name: example-dc
# ...
spec:
  template:
# ...
    spec:
     containers:
     - name: <container_name>
       image: 'image'
       command:
         - '<command>'
       args:
         - '<argument_1>'
         - '<argument_2>'
         - '<argument_3>'

For example, to execute the java command with the -jar and /opt/app-root/springboots2idemo.jar arguments:

kind: DeploymentConfig
apiVersion: apps.openshift.io/v1
metadata:
  name: example-dc
# ...
spec:
  template:
# ...
    spec:
      containers:
        - name: example-spring-boot
          image: 'image'
          command:
            - java
          args:
            - '-jar'
            - /opt/app-root/springboots2idemo.jar
# ...

Viewing deployment logs

Procedure

To stream the logs of the latest revision for a given DeploymentConfig object:
```
$ oc logs -f dc/<name>
```
If the latest revision is running or failed, the command returns the logs of the process that is responsible for deploying your pods. If it is successful, it returns the logs from a pod of your application.
You can also view logs from older failed deployment processes, if and only if these processes (old replication controllers and their deployer pods) exist and have not been pruned or deleted manually:
```
$ oc logs --version=1 dc/<name>
```

Deployment triggers

A DeploymentConfig object can contain triggers, which drive the creation of new deployment processes in response to events inside the cluster.

Warning

If no triggers are defined on a DeploymentConfig object, a config change trigger is added by default. If triggers are defined as an empty field, deployments must be started manually.

Config change deployment triggers

The config change trigger results in a new replication controller whenever configuration changes are detected in the pod template of the DeploymentConfig object.

Note

If a config change trigger is defined on a DeploymentConfig object, the first replication controller is automatically created soon after the DeploymentConfig object itself is created and it is not paused.

Config change deployment trigger

kind: DeploymentConfig
apiVersion: apps.openshift.io/v1
metadata:
  name: example-dc
# ...
spec:
# ...
  triggers:
    - type: "ConfigChange"

Image change deployment triggers

The image change trigger results in a new replication controller whenever the content of an image stream tag changes (when a new version of the image is pushed).

Image change deployment trigger

kind: DeploymentConfig
apiVersion: apps.openshift.io/v1
metadata:
  name: example-dc
# ...
spec:
# ...
  triggers:
    - type: "ImageChange"
      imageChangeParams:
        automatic: true 
        from:
          kind: "ImageStreamTag"
          name: "origin-ruby-sample:latest"
          namespace: "myproject"
        containerNames:
          - "helloworld"

If the imageChangeParams.automatic field is set to false, the trigger is disabled.

With the above example, when the latest tag value of the origin-ruby-sample image stream changes and the new image value differs from the current image specified in the DeploymentConfig object’s helloworld container, a new replication controller is created using the new image for the helloworld container.

Note

If an image change trigger is defined on a DeploymentConfig object (with a config change trigger and automatic=false, or with automatic=true) and the image stream tag pointed by the image change trigger does not exist yet, the initial deployment process will automatically start as soon as an image is imported or pushed by a build to the image stream tag.

Setting deployment triggers

Procedure

You can set deployment triggers for a DeploymentConfig object using the oc set triggers command. For example, to set a image change trigger, use the following command:
```
$ oc set triggers dc/<dc_name> \
    --from-image=<project>/<image>:<tag> -c <container_name>
```

Setting deployment resources

A deployment is completed by a pod that consumes resources (memory, CPU, and ephemeral storage) on a node. By default, pods consume unbounded node resources. However, if a project specifies default container limits, then pods consume resources up to those limits.

Note

The minimum memory limit for a deployment is 12 MB. If a container fails to start due to a Cannot allocate memory pod event, the memory limit is too low. Either increase or remove the memory limit. Removing the limit allows pods to consume unbounded node resources.

You can also limit resource use by specifying resource limits as part of the deployment strategy. Deployment resources can be used with the recreate, rolling, or custom deployment strategies.

Procedure

In the following example, each of resources, cpu, memory, and ephemeral-storage is optional:
```
kind: Deployment
apiVersion: apps/v1
metadata:
  name: hello-openshift
# ...
spec:
# ...
  type: "Recreate"
  resources:
    limits:
      cpu: "100m" 
      memory: "256Mi" 
      ephemeral-storage: "1Gi" 
```
1. cpu is in CPU units: 100m represents 0.1 CPU units (100 * 1e-3).
2. memory is in bytes: 256Mi represents 268435456 bytes (256 * 2 ^ 20).
3. ephemeral-storage is in bytes: 1Gi represents 1073741824 bytes (2 ^ 30).
  
  However, if a quota has been defined for your project, one of the following two items is required:
  A resources section set with an explicit requests:
  
  kind: Deployment apiVersion: apps/v1 metadata: name: hello-openshift # ... spec: # ... type: "Recreate" resources: requests: cpu: "100m" memory: "256Mi" ephemeral-storage: "1Gi"
  
  1 The requests object contains the list of resources that correspond to the list of resources in the quota.
  
  A limit range defined in your project, where the defaults from the LimitRange object apply to pods created during the deployment process.
  To set deployment resources, choose one of the above options. Otherwise, deploy pod creation fails, citing a failure to satisfy quota.
4. The requests object contains the list of resources that correspond to the list of resources in the quota.

Additional resources

For more information about resource limits and requests, see Understanding managing application memory.

Scaling manually

In addition to rollbacks, you can exercise fine-grained control over the number of replicas by manually scaling them.

Note

Pods can also be auto-scaled using the oc autoscale command.

Procedure

To manually scale a DeploymentConfig object, use the oc scale command. For example, the following command sets the replicas in the frontend DeploymentConfig object to 3.
```
$ oc scale dc frontend --replicas=3
```
The number of replicas eventually propagates to the desired and current state of the deployment configured by the DeploymentConfig object frontend.

Accessing private repositories from DeploymentConfig objects

You can add a secret to your DeploymentConfig object so that it can access images from a private repository. This procedure shows the OpenShift Container Platform web console method.

Procedure

Create a new project.
Navigate to Workloads → Secrets.
Create a secret that contains credentials for accessing a private image repository.
Navigate to Workloads → DeploymentConfigs.
Create a DeploymentConfig object.
On the DeploymentConfig object editor page, set the Pull Secret and save your changes.

Running a pod with a different service account

You can run a pod with a service account other than the default.

Procedure

Edit the DeploymentConfig object:
```
$ oc edit dc/<deployment_config>
```

Add the serviceAccount and serviceAccountName parameters to the spec field, and specify the service account you want to use:

apiVersion: apps.openshift.io/v1
kind: DeploymentConfig
metadata:
  name: example-dc
# ...
spec:
# ...
  securityContext: {}
  serviceAccount: <service_account>
  serviceAccountName: <service_account>