towerops/k8s
Graham McIntire 07b0ddb67d
Set DEPLOY_TIMESTAMP from GitLab CI instead of pod metadata
- Update GitLab CI deploy job to set DEPLOY_TIMESTAMP when deploying
- Use 'kubectl set env' to update all pods with same timestamp
- Change deployment.yaml to use static placeholder value
- Update documentation to explain GitLab CI timestamp approach

This ensures all pods show the same deployment time, regardless of:
- Which pod handles the request (with replicas=2)
- When individual pods were created or restarted
- Pod restarts from crashes or rolling updates

The timestamp now represents when the deployment was initiated by GitLab CI,
not when individual pods were created.
2026-01-17 11:17:07 -06:00
..
certificate.yaml Remove www subdomain from certificate and IngressRoute 2026-01-02 15:06:21 -06:00
deployment.yaml Set DEPLOY_TIMESTAMP from GitLab CI instead of pod metadata 2026-01-17 11:17:07 -06:00
Dockerfile Silence debconf warnings in Docker builds 2026-01-03 16:00:54 -06:00
ingressroute.yaml Remove www subdomain from certificate and IngressRoute 2026-01-02 15:06:21 -06:00
kustomization.yaml Remove secretGenerator from kustomization for GitOps compatibility 2026-01-14 13:09:19 -06:00
namespace.yaml Add Kubernetes deployment manifests for towerops.net 2026-01-02 14:38:52 -06:00
README.md Set DEPLOY_TIMESTAMP from GitLab CI instead of pod metadata 2026-01-17 11:17:07 -06:00
service-headless.yaml cluster 2026-01-02 15:29:02 -06:00
service.yaml Add Kubernetes deployment manifests for towerops.net 2026-01-02 14:38:52 -06:00

Kubernetes Deployment

Secrets Management

Secrets are managed directly in the cluster and must be created before deploying the application.

Required secrets in the towerops namespace:

  • gitlab-registry - Docker registry credentials for pulling images
  • towerops-secrets - Application secrets (RELEASE_COOKIE, SECRET_KEY_BASE)
  • towerops-db - Database connection credentials
  • towerops-aws - AWS credentials (AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID, AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY, AWS_REGION)

For local development, the project root .envrc is used by direnv.

Deployment Timestamp

The application footer displays the deployment timestamp to track when the current version was deployed. This is automatically set by GitLab CI during deployment:

# GitLab CI sets this during deploy
- kubectl set env deployment/towerops DEPLOY_TIMESTAMP=$(date -u +"%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ") -n towerops

All pods in the deployment share the same timestamp (when the deployment was initiated), regardless of when individual pods were created. This is displayed in the footer as "Last deployed X ago · YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS UTC".

For manual deployments without GitLab CI, set the timestamp:

kubectl set env deployment/towerops DEPLOY_TIMESTAMP=$(date -u +"%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ") -n towerops

Deploying

Apply all resources using kustomize:

kubectl apply -k k8s/

Or individually:

kubectl apply -f k8s/namespace.yaml
kubectl apply -f k8s/secret.yaml
kubectl apply -f k8s/deployment.yaml
kubectl apply -f k8s/service.yaml
kubectl apply -f k8s/service-headless.yaml
kubectl apply -f k8s/certificate.yaml
kubectl apply -f k8s/ingressroute.yaml