Using AWS ElastiCache Redis with Spinnaker

To productionalize a Spinnaker installation for high availability, one of the recommendations is to use an external Redis store, such as AWS ElasticCache. This guide will go over how to migrate a Kubernetes installation of Spinnaker to an AWS ElasticCache Redis instance using Halyard.

All config files (with the proper directory structure) used in this guide can be found in this this repo: ysawa0/spinnaker-elasticcache-redis

Create the ElastiCache instance

Keep Cluster Mode unchecked.

Node type will depend on your needs and budget, here we chose a m5.large

For Engine Version choose 3.2.10.

Configure Halyard and update Spinnaker

After the instance is created, copy the Primary Endpoint for the cluster.

If you want to update all Spinnaker services at once, place this snippet into ~/.hal/default/service-settings/redis.yml, and replace $REDIS_PRIMARY_ENDPOINT with your endpoint.

overrideBaseUrl: redis://$REDIS_PRIMARY_ENDPOINT
skipLifeCycleManagement: true

To update each Spinnaker service at a time, place the below into ~/.hal/default/profile-settings/$SERVICE-local.yml

Where $SERVICE would be orca, clouddriver, gate, etc.

services.redis.baseUrl: redis://$REDIS_PRIMARY_ENDPOINT

Lastly, after updating the base URLs, place this into ~/.hal/default/profiles/gate-local.yml.

redis:
  configuration:
    secure: true

Now update Spinnaker by running hal deploy apply.

After you confirm that everything is working as expected, it’s time to disable the spin-redis service.

Update ~/.hal/default/service-settings/redis.yml by inserting enabled: false

overrideBaseUrl: redis://$REDIS_PRIMARY_ENDPOINT
skipLifeCycleManagement: true
enabled: false

And scale down the Redis Deployment to 0 replicas in Kubernetes.

kubectl scale deploy spin-redis -n spinnaker --replicas=0

Now sit back, relax and enjoy having to monitor one less data store.