This article walks you through the process of installing Coder onto your Kubernetes cluster.
Dependencies
Install the following dependencies if you haven't already:
For production deployments: set up and use an external PostgreSQL instance to store data, including workspace information and session tokens.
Create the Coder namespace (optional)
We recommend running Coder in a separate namespace; to do so, run
kubectl create namespace coder
Next, change the kubectl context to point to your newly created namespace:
kubectl config set-context --current --namespace=coder
Install Coder
-
Add the Coder Helm repo
helm repo add coder https://helm.coder.com
-
Install the Helm chart onto your cluster (see the changelog for a list of Coder versions or run
helm search repo coder -l
)This step will install Coder with the default configuration. This does not set up dev URLs, TLS, ingress controllers, or an external database. To configure these recommended features, please go to step 4.
helm install coder coder/coder --namespace coder --version=<VERSION>
-
Once
coderd
is running, tail the logs to find the randomly generated password for the admin user:kubectl logs -n coder -l coder.deployment=coderd -c coderd \ --tail=-1 | grep -A1 -B2 Password
When this step is done, you will see:
---------------------- User: admin Password: kv...k3 ----------------------
You will need these credentials to continue setup using Coder's web UI.
If you lose your admin credentials, you can use the admin password reset process to regain access.
-
Create a
values.yaml
file to configure Coder:helm show values coder/coder --version=<VERSION> > values.yaml
View the configuration options available in the
values.yaml
file. -
Optional: change the admin user password by updating
values.yaml
as follows:superAdmin: # Options for configuring the secret used to specify the password for the # built-in super admin account. passwordSecret: # coderd.superAdmin.passwordSecret.name -- Name of a secret that should # be used to determine the password for the super admin account. The # password should be contained in the field `password`, or the manually # specified one. name: "" # coderd.superAdmin.passwordSecret.key -- The key of the secret that # contains the super admin password. key: "password"
-
Optional: To configure an externally hosted database, set the following in
values.yaml
:Ensure that you have superuser privileges to your PostgreSQL database.
postgres: default: enable: false host: HOST_ADDRESS port: PORT_NUMBER user: YOUR_USER_NAME database: YOUR_DATABASE passwordSecret: secret-name sslMode: require
a. To create the
passwordSecret
, run:kubectl create secret generic <NAME> --from-literal="password=UserDefinedPassword"
Put a space before the command to prevent it from being saved in your shell history.
Running this command could potentially expose your database password to other users on your system through
/proc
. If this is a concern, you can use--from-file=password=/dev/stdin
instead of--from-literal=...
to enter your password and pressCtrl+D
when you're done to submit it.Ensure that there are no trailing white spaces in your password secret.
For more detailed configuration instructions, see our PostgreSQL setup guide.
-
Optional: Enable dev URL usage. You must provide a wildcard domain in the Helm chart.
coderd: devurlsHost: "*.my-custom-domain.io"
-
Optional: To set up TLS:
a. You will need to create a TLS secret. To do so, run the following with the
.pem
files provided by your certificate:kubectl create secret tls tls-secret --key key.pem --cert cert.pem
If your certificate provider does not provide
.pem
files, then you may need to attach the certificate to the LoadBalancer manually.b. Attach the secret to the
coderd
service by setting the following values:coderd: tls: hostSecretName: <tls-secret> devurlsHostSecretName: <tls-secret>
-
Optional: If you cannot use a load balancer, you may need an ingress controller. To configure one with Coder, set the following in
values.yaml
:We assume that you already have an ingress controller installed in your cluster.
coderd: devurlsHost: "*.devurls.coderhost.com" serviceSpec: # The Ingress will route traffic to the internal ClusterIP. type: ClusterIP externalTrafficPolicy: "" tls: hostSecretName: <tls-secret> devurlsHostSecretName: <tls-secret> ingress: enable: true # Hostname to use for routing decisions host: "coder.coderhost.com" # Custom annotations to apply to the resulting Ingress object # This is useful for configuring other controllers in the cluster # such as cert-manager or the ingress controller annotations: {}
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Once you've implemented all of the changes in
values.yaml
, install Coder with the following command:helm install coder coder/coder --namespace coder --version=<VERSION> -f values.yaml
Logging
At this time, we recommend reviewing Coder's default logging settings. Logs help monitor the health of your cluster and troubleshooting, and Coder offers you several options for obtaining these.
Accessing Coder
-
To access Coder's web UI, you'll need to get its IP address by running the following in the terminal to list the Kubernetes services running:
kubectl --namespace coder get services
You'll see a row named coderd with an EXTERNAL-IP value; this is the IP address you need.
-
In your browser, navigate to the external IP.
-
Use the admin credentials you obtained in this installation guide's previous step to log in to the Coder platform. If this is the first time you've logged in, Coder will prompt you to change your password.
At this point, you're ready to proceed to configuring Coder.
EKS troubleshooting
If you're unable to access your Coder deployment via the external IP generated
by EKS, this is likely due to coderd
being scheduled onto the incorrect node
group, causing the load balancer health checks to fail. Below are two methods to
resolve this:
-
Set the
externalTrafficPolicy
Helm value toCluster
by running the following command:helm upgrade --install coder coder/coder --set coderd.serviceSpec.externalTrafficPolicy=Cluster
Note that setting
externalTrafficPolicy
toCluster
masks the source IP address of your Coder users. For more information on this value, see the Kubernetes documentation. -
Set the
services.nodeSelector
Helm value to a label assigned to thestandard-workers
node group created by AWS. Common labels include:eks.amazonaws.com/nodegroup=standard-workers alpha.eksctl.io/nodegroup-name=standard-workers beta.kubernetes.io/instance-type=t3.small
This option is recommended if you'd like to preserve the source IP. See the Kubernetes documentation for a full list of the standard node labels.