Converting a MongoDB Docker Compose file to a Kubernetes Deployment

It’s pretty straighforward to convert a Docker compose file to a Kubernetes deployment. I used the kompose tool to do the conversion. Kompose is an official Kubernetes project. https://github.com/kubernetes/kompose

First step is to download kompose. Here is the command to install in a Mac. For other operating systems, check out the kompose website.

curl -L https://github.com/kubernetes/kompose/releases/download/v1.11.0/kompose-darwin-amd64 -o kompose

chmod +x kompose
sudo mv ./kompose /usr/local/bin/kompose

Here is the docker compose file which I needed to convert.

docker-compose.yml (MongoDB)

version: '3'
services:
  mongodb:
    image: mongo
    ports:
      - "27017:27017"
    volumes:
      - "mongodata:/data/db"
    networks:
      - network1

volumes:
   mongodata:

networks:
   network1:

Here is the very simple command I used!

kompose convert -f docker-compose.yaml

It will create 3 files

1. mongodata-persistentvolumeclaim.yaml - this is the configuration which creates the peristent volume to be used by the MongoDB container

   apiVersion: v1
   kind: PersistentVolumeClaim
   metadata:
   creationTimestamp: null
   labels:
   io.kompose.service: mongodata
   name: mongodata
   spec:
   accessModes:

2. ReadWriteOnce resources: requests: storage: 100Mi status: {}

3. mongodb-deployment.yaml - this is the deployment configuration which describes the deployment - which container to create and how many replicas, port info, volume links, etc.

   apiVersion: extensions/v1beta1
   kind: Deployment
   metadata:
   annotations:
   kompose.cmd: kompose convert -f docker-compose.yml
   kompose.version: 1.11.0 (39ad614)
   creationTimestamp: null
   labels:
   io.kompose.service: mongodb
   name: mongodb
   spec:
   replicas: 1
   strategy:
   type: Recreate
   template:
   metadata:
     creationTimestamp: null
     labels:
       io.kompose.service: mongodb
   spec:
     containers:
     - image: mongo
       name: mongodb
       ports:
       - containerPort: 27017
       resources: {}
       volumeMounts:
       - mountPath: /data/db
         name: mongodata
     restartPolicy: Always
     volumes:
     - name: mongodata
       persistentVolumeClaim:
         claimName: mongodata
   status: {}

4. mongodb-service.yaml - this config describes the service to be created

   apiVersion: v1
   kind: Service
   metadata:
   annotations:
   kompose.cmd: kompose convert -f docker-compose.yml
   kompose.version: 1.11.0 (39ad614)
   creationTimestamp: null
   labels:
   io.kompose.service: mongodb
   name: mongodb
   spec:
   ports:

5. name: “27017” port: 27017 targetPort: 27017 selector: io.kompose.service: mongodb status: loadBalancer: {}

All of these files can also be found in my github repo. https://github.com/donvito/learngo/tree/master/mongo-microservice/mongodb

Once the configuration has been converted, you can now use these to create the service in the Kubernetes cluster. I am using Minikube since I am not able to make it work with Docker CE with Kubernetes support. Not sure if it’s because I am using the Edge version. Anyway, to keep things simple, I just started minikube in my laptop and switched the kubectl context to use minikube.

To learn how to install and run Minikube, check out the documentation https://kubernetes.io/docs/getting-started-guides/minikube/

Once you have your minikube cluster up, just create the deployment.

kubectl create -f mongodata-persistentvolumeclaim.yaml
kubectl create -f mongodb-deployment.yaml
kubectl create -f mongodb-service.yaml

Once the service is up, you need to expose the deployment so you can access the MongoDB running in your Kubernetes cluster.

kubectl expose deployment mongodb --type=LoadBalancer

To get the IP address and port to connect to, just use this command. It will open up a browser and will show you which IP and port to connect to.

minikube service mongodb

Use this IP and port to connect to MongoDB. I am using RoboMongo to connect.

That’s it! We now have a converted Docker compose file of a MongoDB service and we were able to run it in a Kubernetes cluster.

Shameless plug! If you like this blog post, please follow me in Twitter @donvito. I tweet about Docker, Kubernetes, GoLang, Cloud, DevOps, Agile and Startups. Would love to connect in GitHub and LinkedIn as well!