👋 Hello there, and welcome to my corner of the digital universe! I'm Sang, an System Engineer at VNG, one of the leading cloud companies in Vietnam. ☁️ My journey in the world of cloud computing began with a fascination for building scalable and robust infrastructure. As an OpenStack Cloud Infrastructure Engineer, I have the opportunity of working with cutting-edge technology to architect, deploy, and manage cloud environments that power businesses and drive innovation.

🎓 I had:

• VMware Certified Technical Associate - Data Center Virtualization: Received in 2022
• Google Professional Cloud Architecture: Obtained in 2022.
• Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA): Achieved in 2021.

📚 Lifelong learning is at the core of who I am. I'm constantly seeking out new knowledge, whether it's through books, courses, or meaningful conversations. After all, growth doesn't happen in stagnation but in the pursuit of understanding and enlightenment.

🌟 Beyond my professional endeavors, I am deeply invested in fostering collaboration and knowledge-sharing within the tech community. Whether it's through guiding colleagues with mentorship, contributing open-source initiatives, or actively engaging in industry events.

When you get as old as I am, you start to realize that you've told most of the good stuff you know to other people anyway.

- Richard Feynman

💬 But enough about me — I want to hear about you! Feel free to reach out:

so we can embark on this journey together.

Thanks for stopping by, and I can't wait to connect with you!

Sang

As modern software development shifts towards cloud-native architectures, service pipelines have become key to deploying, managing, and scaling microservices independently. In this post, we’ll explore the fundamentals of Tekton, a Kubernetes-native framework, is built to automate CI/CD processes for services and the power to build complex workflows.

We'll also discuss why you might want to use Tekton over traditional CI/CD tools like GitLab CI or GitHub Actions.

What is Tekton?​

Tekton is a Kubernetes-based framework for defining, running, and managing CI/CD pipelines. Unlike traditional CI/CD systems that typically handle the deployment of entire applications, Tekton excels at managing service pipelines, which allow individual microservices to be built, tested, and deployed independently. This gives you the ability to release services faster and with more flexibility.

Why Use Tekton for Service Pipelines?​

1. Kubernetes-Native and Cloud-Native Integration​

Tekton is designed specifically for Kubernetes environments, making it a perfect fit for organizations running microservices or cloud-native applications. Unlike GitLab CI or GitHub Actions, which require some integration overhead, Tekton runs directly within Kubernetes clusters, taking full advantage of Kubernetes’ orchestration, scaling, and security features.

2. Fine-Grained Control and Flexibility​

Tekton provides more control over task execution, pipeline structure, and parameterization compared to traditional CI/CD tools. This flexibility allows you to build complex, customized workflows for each microservice, ensuring that each service pipeline can run independently and with the exact configuration you need.

3. Vendor-Neutral, Open-Source Solution​

Tekton is completely open-source and vendor-neutral, meaning you’re not locked into a specific CI/CD ecosystem like GitLab or GitHub. This gives you the freedom to use Tekton in any Kubernetes environment, whether it’s self-hosted, on-prem, or in the cloud, without being tied to a specific platform.

Key Concepts​

• Tasks: Individual units of work, such as running a build or test.
• Pipelines: Collections of tasks that run in sequence or parallel.
• TaskRuns and PipelineRuns: Runtime instances of tasks and pipelines, allowing you to pass parameters dynamically.

Tekton Service Pipeline Example​

Let’s walk through building a service pipeline that retrieves content from a URL, displays it, and then uses that content to generate a personalized message.

Tekton Task​

A Task is the basic building block of a Tekton service pipeline. Below is a task that greets a user based on an input parameter.

cat <<EOF | kubectl apply --validate=false -f -
apiVersion: tekton.dev/v1
kind: Task
metadata:
  name: greet-task
spec:
  params:
  - name: person
    type: string
    description: Who should we greet?
    default: world
  steps:
  - name: greet
    image: alpine
    command:
    - echo
    args:
    - "Hello \$(params.person)!"
EOF

This task uses the Alpine image to echo a personalized greeting, which can be customized by passing a value for the person parameter.

TaskRun Definition​

The TaskRun below executes the task, allowing us to pass a specific value to the person parameter.

cat <<EOF | kubectl apply --validate=false -f -
apiVersion: tekton.dev/v1
kind: TaskRun
metadata:
  name: greet-task-run-1
spec:
  params:
  - name: person
    value: "future engineers"
  taskRef:
    name: greet-task
EOF

Applying this task, we can see the output in pod log:

$ kubectl get pod | grep greet-task-run-1
greet-task-run-1-pod        0/1     Completed   0              34s

$ kubectl logs greet-task-run-1-pod
Defaulted container "step-greet" out of: step-greet, prepare (init)
Hello future engineers!

Tekton Pipeline and PipelineRun​

Now, let’s define a service pipeline that uses multiple tasks. We’ll use the Curl task to fetch content from the internet and then pass that content into our greeting task.

Install the Curl Task​

First, install the curl community task from Tekton Hub:

kubectl apply -f https://api.hub.tekton.dev/v1/resource/tekton/task/curl/0.1/raw

Verify with kubectl get task we'll see the new curl Task.

Pipeline Definition​

The following pipeline defines a sequence of tasks: fetching content from a URL, displaying that content, and greeting the user with the content as a message.

cat <<EOF | kubectl apply --validate=false -f -
apiVersion: tekton.dev/v1
kind: Pipeline
metadata:
  name: greet-service-pipeline
  annotations:
    description: |
      Fetch content using curl, display it, and greet the user.
spec:
  params:
  - name: sourceUrl
    description: The URL to fetch the content from
    type: string
    default: ""
  workspaces:
  - name: storage
  tasks:
  - name: fetch-content
    taskRef:
      name: curl
    params:
    - name: url
      value: "$(params.sourceUrl)"
    - name: output
      value: "/workspace/storage/content.txt"
    workspaces:
    - name: output
      workspace: storage
  - name: display-content
    runAfter: [fetch-content]
    workspaces:
    - name: output
      workspace: storage
    taskSpec:
      workspaces:
      - name: output
      steps:
      - name: cat-content
        image: busybox
        script: |
          #!/bin/sh
          cat /workspace/output/content.txt | tee /tekton/results/fetchedContent
      results:
      - name: fetchedContent
        description: The content fetched from the URL
  - name: greet-with-content
    runAfter: [display-content]
    taskRef:
      name: greet-task
    params:
    - name: person
      value: "$(tasks.display-content.results.fetchedContent)"
EOF

In this pipeline:

• Fetch Content: Uses curl to download content from a URL and store it in a workspace.
• Display Content: Reads the content and outputs it as a pipeline result.
• Greet with Content: Passes the fetched content as the greeting message in the final task.

PipelineRun Definition​

Here’s how you run the pipeline using a PipelineRun, specifying a URL to fetch content from:

cat <<EOF | kubectl apply --validate=false -f -
apiVersion: tekton.dev/v1
kind: PipelineRun
metadata:
  name: greet-service-pipeline-run-1
spec:
  workspaces:
  - name: storage
    volumeClaimTemplate:
      spec:
        accessModes:
        - ReadWriteOnce
        resources:
          requests:
            storage: 2Mi
  params:
  - name: sourceUrl
    value: "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nhatsangvn/nhatsangvn/refs/heads/main/README.md"
  pipelineRef:
    name: greet-service-pipeline
EOF

Applying this pipeline will fetch the content from the specified URL, display it, and greet the user with it.

kubectl apply -f greet-service-pipeline.yaml
kubectl apply -f greet-service-pipeline-run.yaml

Conclusion​

In this blog post, we’ve covered the basics of Tekton and how it can be used to build service pipelines tailored for microservices and cloud-native architectures. By leveraging Tekton, you gain the flexibility, control, and scalability needed to manage independent service deployments, allowing for faster and more frequent updates. Whether you're building for Kubernetes, looking to decouple CI/CD processes, or need a vendor-agnostic solution, Tekton's service pipeline approach is a strong candidate for modern DevOps workflows.

Stay tuned for more advanced topics on Tekton in future posts!

In recent years, the term Open Telementry (Otel) has been hotter than ever. One of the popular components in that ecosystem is Open Telementry Collector (otel-collector), designed to facilitate the collection, processing, and exporting of telemetry data such as metrics, traces, and logs.

In this article, we focus mainly on logging 🧾.

When working with Ansible, processing task results to extract meaningful information is often necessary. This article demonstrates how to filter attributes and extract a field from any Ansible variables / outputs.

Have you ever thought about how to read your Ceph cluster CRUSH map?

If so then this blog post is for you.