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four43
Asked: 2015-10-21 11:56:09 +0800 CST

Kubernetes - Specify env_file

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We are using Kubernetes v1.1.0-beta and I am curious if Kubernetes supports env_file, like Docker Compose? On Pod/ReplicationController creation it would read in the file specified by env_file and set the variables on that pod. Is this a thing or just env map?

environment-variables

2 Answers

  1. No. Kubernetes does not support evv_file as of now. You will have to specify key=value pairs for env variables.

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  2. You can use a config map to achieve this. So you deploy a configmap with the key value pairs you want, this stays stable across deployments. You can even deploy multiple config maps, so you could have different values for different environments.

    Then in your pod yaml file, you would do something like this to expose the configmap values as an env variable

          env:
        # Define the environment variable
        - name: SPECIAL_LEVEL_KEY
          valueFrom:
            configMapKeyRef:
              # The ConfigMap containing the value you want to assign to SPECIAL_LEVEL_KEY
              name: special-config
              # Specify the key associated with the value
              key: special.how

    Read more here: https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/configure-pod-container/configure-pod-configmap/#define-container-environment-variables-using-configmap-data

    If there is any sensitive data (like passwords, db connection URIs etc), you should use secrets instead. Unlike configmaps, secrets are obscured.

    More info here -> https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/configuration/secret/

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