In today’s DevOps world, automation is key to faster and more reliable deployments. Instead of manually applying Kubernetes manifests, we can use GitHub Actions to trigger deployments automatically whenever we push code.
What We Built Today?
- A complete GitHub Actions pipeline for Kubernetes deployments
- End-to-end automation from code commit to deployment
- Secure & efficient setup using GitHub Secrets
Key Challenges We Solved:
- How to integrate GitHub Actions with Kubernetes?
- Ensuring deployments are non-root and secure
- Handling GitHub Secrets for secure kubeconfig access Kubernetes Deployment YAML
Here’s the Kubernetes deployment we used today:
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
name: myapp
namespace: default
spec:
replicas: 2
selector:
matchLabels:
app: myapp
template:
metadata:
labels:
app: myapp
spec:
securityContext:
runAsNonRoot: true
containers:
- name: myapp
image: nginxinc/nginx-unprivileged:latest
ports:
- containerPort: 80
securityContext:
runAsNonRoot: true
readOnlyRootFilesystem: true
volumeMounts:
- mountPath: /var/cache/nginx
name: cache-volume
- mountPath: /tmp
name: tmp-volume
volumes:
- name: cache-volume
emptyDir: {}
- name: tmp-volume
emptyDir: {}
- Runs as a non-root user
- Read-only root filesystem for security
- Uses nginx-unprivileged for better compliance Setting Up GitHub Actions for Kubernetes
To automate deployment, we used this GitHub Actions workflow:
name: Deploy to Kubernetes
on:
push:
branches:
- main
jobs:
deploy:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- name: Checkout Code
uses: actions/checkout@v3
- name: Set up kubectl
uses: azure/setup-kubectl@v3
with:
version: latest
- name: Configure Kubernetes Cluster
run: |
echo "${{ secrets.KUBECONFIG }}" | base64 --decode > kubeconfig
export KUBECONFIG=kubeconfig
- name: Deploy to Kubernetes
run: kubectl apply -f deploy.yaml
What It Does?
- Triggers on every git push to main
- Sets up kubectl to interact with the cluster
- Uses GitHub Secrets (KUBECONFIG) for secure authentication
- Deploys the latest changes to Kubernetes automatically
Why This Matters?
- No more manual deployments
- Instant updates on every push
- Security-first approach with GitHub Secrets
Do you automate your Kubernetes deployments? Let’s discuss best practices in the comments! 
