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Install Harness Delegate on Kubernetes or Docker

What is Harness Delegate?​

Harness Delegate is a lightweight worker process that is installed on your infrastructure and communicates only via outbound HTTP/HTTPS to the Harness Platform. This enables the Harness Platform to leverage the delegate to execute the CI/CD and other tasks on your behalf, without any of your secrets leaving your network.

You can install the Harness Delegate on either Docker or Kubernetes.

Install Harness Delegate​

Create a new delegate token​

Log in to the Harness Platform and go to Account Settings -> Account Resources -> Delegates. Select the Tokens tab. Select +New Token, and enter a token name, for example firstdeltoken. Select Apply. Harness Platform generates a new token for you. Select Copy to copy and store the token in a temporary file. You will provide this token as an input parameter in the next installation step. The delegate will use this token to authenticate with the Harness Platform.

Get your Harness account ID​

Along with the delegate token, you will also need to provide your Harness accountId as an input parameter during delegate installation. This accountId is present in every Harness URL. For example, in the following URL:

https://app.harness.io/ng/#/account/6_vVHzo9Qeu9fXvj-AcQCb/settings/overview

6_vVHzo9Qeu9fXvj-AcQCb is the accountId.

Now you are ready to install the delegate on either Docker or Kubernetes.

Prerequisite​

Ensure that you have access to a Kubernetes cluster. For the purposes of this tutorial, we will use minikube.

Install minikube

  • On Windows: 
choco install minikube
  • On macOS: 
brew install minikube

Now start minikube with the following config.

minikube start --memory 4g --cpus 4

Validate that you have kubectl access to your cluster.

kubectl get pods -A

Now that you have access to a Kubernetes cluster, you can install the delegate using any of the options below.

Install the Helm chart​

As a prerequisite, you must have Helm v3 installed on the machine from which you connect to your Kubernetes cluster.

You can now install the delegate using the delegate Helm chart. First, add the harness-delegate Helm chart repo to your local Helm registry.

helm repo add harness-delegate https://app.harness.io/storage/harness-download/delegate-helm-chart/
helm repo update
helm search repo harness-delegate

We will use the harness-delegate/harness-delegate-ng chart in this tutorial.

NAME                                    CHART VERSION   APP VERSION DESCRIPTION                                
harness-delegate/harness-delegate-ng    1.0.8           1.16.0      A Helm chart for deploying harness-delegate

Now we are ready to install the delegate. The following example installs/upgrades firstk8sdel delegate (which is a Kubernetes workload) in the harness-delegate-ng namespace using the harness-delegate/harness-delegate-ng Helm chart.

To install the delegate, do the following:

  1. In Harness, select Deployments, then select your project.

  2. Select Delegates under Project Setup.

  3. Select Install a Delegate to open the New Delegate dialog.

  4. Select Helm Chart under Install your Delegate.

  5. Copy the helm upgrade command.

  6. Run the command.

The command uses the default values.yaml located in the delegate-helm-chart GitHub repo. If you want change one or more values in a persistent manner instead of the command line, you can download and update the values.yaml file as per your need. You can use the updated values.yaml file as shown below.

helm upgrade -i firstk8sdel --namespace harness-delegate-ng --create-namespace \
  harness-delegate/harness-delegate-ng \
  -f values.yaml \
  --set delegateName=firstk8sdel \
  --set accountId=PUT_YOUR_HARNESS_ACCOUNTID_HERE \
  --set delegateToken=PUT_YOUR_DELEGATE_TOKEN_HERE \
  --set managerEndpoint=PUT_YOUR_MANAGER_HOST_AND_PORT_HERE \
  --set delegateDockerImage=harness/delegate:23.02.78306 \
  --set replicas=1 --set upgrader.enabled=false

Deploy using a custom role​

During delegate installation, you have the option to deploy using a custom role. To use a custom role, you must edit the delegate YAML file.

Harness supports the following custom roles:

  • cluster-admin
  • cluster-viewer
  • namespace-admin
  • custom cluster roles

To deploy using a custom cluster role, do the following:

  1. Open the delegate YAML file in your text editor.

  2. Add the custom cluster role to the roleRef field in the delegate YAML.

    ---
    apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1beta1
    kind: ClusterRoleBinding
    metadata:
      name: harness-delegate-cluster-admin
    subjects:
      - kind: ServiceAccount
        name: default
        namespace: harness-delegate-ng
    roleRef:
      kind: ClusterRole
      name: cluster-admin
      apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io
    ---

    In this example, the cluster-admin role is defined.

  3. Save the delegate YAML file.

Verify delegate connectivity​

Select Continue. After the health checks pass, your delegate is available for you to use. Select Done and verify your new delegate is listed.

Helm chart & Terraform Helm provider​

Delegate Available

Kubernetes manifest​

Delegate Available

Docker​

Delegate Available

You can now route communication to external systems in Harness connectors and pipelines by selecting this delegate via a delegate selector.

Delegate selectors do not override service infrastructure connectors. Delegate selectors only determine the delegate that executes the operations of your pipeline.

Troubleshooting​

The delegate installer provides troubleshooting information for each installation process. If the delegate cannot be verified, select Troubleshoot for steps you can use to resolve the problem. This section includes the same information.

Harness asks for feedback after the troubleshooting steps. You are asked, Did the delegate come up?

If the steps did not resolve the problem, select No, and use the form to describe the issue. You'll also find links to Harness Support and to Delegate docs.

Use the following steps to troubleshoot your installation of the delegate using Helm.

  1. Verify that Helm is correctly installed:

    Check for Helm:

    helm

    And then check for the installed version of Helm:

    helm version

    If you receive the message Error: rendered manifests contain a resource that already exists..., delete the existing namespace, and retry the Helm upgrade command to deploy the delegate.

    For further instructions on troubleshooting your Helm installation, go to Helm troubleshooting guide.

  2. Check the status of the delegate on your cluster:

    kubectl describe pods -n <namespace>

  3. If the pod did not start, check the delegate logs:

    kubectl logs -f <harnessDelegateName> -n <namespace>

    If the state of the delegate pod is CrashLoopBackOff, check your allocation of compute resources (CPU and memory) to the cluster. A state of CrashLoopBackOff indicates insufficent Kubernetes cluster resources.

  4. If the delegate pod is not healthy, use the kubectl describe command to get more information:

    kubectl describe <pod_name> -n <namespace>