Achievements and Future Steps

Congratulations!

You've successfully completed the Cloud-Native DevOps workshop! Your application is now:

✓ Publicly accessible via HTTPS
✓ Protected with a valid SSL certificate from Let's Encrypt
✓ Automatically secured and renewed by cert-manager
✓ Routed efficiently by Traefik
✓ Running on a production-ready Kubernetes cluster

Testing Your Complete CI/CD Pipeline

Now let's test your entire pipeline by making a code change and watching it flow through your CI/CD system!

Step 1: Make a Code Change

Let's personalize your FurNet animal! Edit your animal configuration:

# Navigate to your furnet directory
cd ~/furnet

# Open the animal config file
vim backend/config.py

Find the AnimalConfig class and customize your animal:

class AnimalConfig:
    # Animal Identity - Fixed Fields (Required)
    animal_name: str = "Your Animal Name"  # Change this!
    animal_species: str = "Your Species"   # Change this!
    animal_description: str = "A description of your animal"  # Change this!

    # Optional Fields - customize these too!
    animal_habitat: Optional[str] = "Where your animal lives"
    animal_diet: Optional[str] = "What your animal eats"
    animal_fun_fact: Optional[str] = "Something interesting about your animal"
    animal_emoji: Optional[str] = "🦊"  # Pick your favorite emoji!
    animal_color: Optional[str] = "your-color"

Save the file (Ctrl+O, Enter, Ctrl+X in nano).

Step 2: Commit and Push

Now commit your changes and push them to GitHub:

# Check what changed
git status
git diff backend/config.py

# Stage and commit your changes
git add backend/config.py
git commit -m "feat: update animal configuration to [Your Animal]"

# Push to GitHub (this triggers the CI/CD pipeline!)
git push origin main

What happens now: Your push to main triggers the GitHub Actions workflow to build new Docker images.

Step 3: Watch the GitHub Action Build

Open your browser and watch the build process:

Go to your GitHub repository
Click on the Actions tab
You should see a new workflow run called "Build and Push Docker Images"
Click on it to watch the progress

You'll see these steps execute:

✓ Checkout repository
✓ Set up Docker Buildx
✓ Log in to GitHub Container Registry
✓ Extract metadata for Backend/Frontend
✓ Build and push Backend Docker image
✓ Build and push Frontend Docker image

Wait for the green checkmark! This means your new images are built and pushed to GitHub Container Registry.

Step 4: Deploy the New Images to k3s

Your new images are built, but your k3s cluster is still running the old ones. Let's update it!

SSH into your cloud VM:

# Replace 0 with your participant number (0, 1, 2, etc.)
ssh ubuntu@dj-viscon-workshop-0.vsos.ethz.ch

Why is this step needed? Your Kubernetes deployment is configured with imagePullPolicy: Always, which means it will always try to pull the latest image. However, Kubernetes doesn't automatically know when a new image with the same tag (like latest) has been pushed to the registry. The rollout restart command tells Kubernetes to recreate the pods, which triggers a fresh image pull.

Now trigger a rollout restart to pull the new images:

# Restart the backend deployment (contains your animal config)
kubectl rollout restart deployment furnet-backend

# Restart the frontend too (for good measure)
kubectl rollout restart deployment furnet-frontend

What this does: Kubernetes will gracefully terminate the old pods and create new ones. During pod creation, it pulls the latest images from GitHub Container Registry (ghcr.io) with your updated animal configuration.

Watch the rollout happen:

# Watch pods being recreated
kubectl get pods -w

# Press Ctrl+C when you see the new pods running

You should see:

Old pods terminating (Terminating state)
New pods being created (ContainerCreating state)
New pods running (Running state)

Step 5: Verify Your Changes

Visit your application in the browser:

https://dj-viscon-workshop-0.vsos.ethz.ch

Check the /api/me endpoint to see your updated animal:

https://dj-viscon-workshop-0.vsos.ethz.ch/api/me

You should see your new animal configuration! 🎉

Troubleshooting:

Still seeing old config? Check that the GitHub Action completed successfully
Pods not starting? Run kubectl describe pod <pod-name> to see errors
Can't pull image? Verify the image exists in GitHub Container Registry

Understanding the Full Pipeline

You just experienced a complete CI/CD flow:

Code Change → Edit backend/config.py
Version Control → git commit and git push
Continuous Integration → GitHub Actions builds Docker images
Container Registry → Images pushed to GitHub Container Registry (ghcr.io)
Continuous Deployment → kubectl rollout restart pulls new images
Live Application → Your changes are now running in production!

What You've Accomplished

Through this workshop, you've built a complete DevOps pipeline from scratch:

Infrastructure: Set up a k3s Kubernetes cluster on a cloud VM
CI/CD: Automated Docker image builds with GitHub Actions
Deployment: Created Kubernetes Deployments and Services
Networking: Exposed your application with Traefik Ingress
Security: Automated SSL certificate management with cert-manager
Pipeline Testing: Successfully deployed code changes through the entire stack!

Next Steps

Want to take your DevOps skills further? Here are some ideas:

Full Automation:

Automatically rollout the new images in k3s

Monitoring & Observability:

Install Prometheus and Grafana for metrics

Thank You!

Thank you for participating in the VIScon 2025 Cloud-Native DevOps workshop! You now have real-world skills and a working pipeline you can use for your own projects. Keep experimenting, keep building, and most importantly—keep learning!

Questions or feedback? Reach out on GitHub or at future VIScon events!

Step 7 - Achievements and Future Steps - VIScon 2025 Workshop