fabric-operation

This package contains scripts that let you define, create, and test a Hyperledger Fabric network in Kubernetes locally or in a cloud. Supported cloud services include AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. The fabric network can be specified by simple property files of the orderer and peer organizations, e.g., a sample network can be configured by an order organization orderer.env and two peer organizations org1.env and org2.env.

Once the organizations are configured, you can bootstrap the fabric network by using scripts in this repo, and run the network in either docker-compose or kubernetes. All the execution steps are done in docker containers, and thus you can get a Fabric network running without pre-downloading any artifact of Hyperledger Fabric.

This repo uses only bash scripts, and thus it does not depend on any other scripting tool or framework. It supports Hyperledger Fabric applications developed in dovetail, which is a zero-code visual programming tool for modeling Hyperledger Fabric chaincode and client apps. A complete end-to-end sample to deploy a dovetail app in Azure AKS cluster can be found in jabil_aim.

Prerequisites

• Your workstation must support bash shell scripts.

• If you want to create and test a Fabric network on local host, you need to install docker-compose and/or kubernetes locally, i.e.,

  • Install Docker and Docker Compose as described here.
  • Mac user can enable kubernetes as described here.
  • The scripts are not tested with Minikube, although they may work without much change.

• If you want to create and test a Fabric network in a cloud, you would not need to download anything except a CLI required to access the corresponding cloud service. We currently support Amazon EKS, Azure AKS, and Google GKE. Other cloud services may be supported in the future.

  • For AWS, refer the scripts and instructions in the aws folder.
  • For Azure, refer the scripts and instructions in the az folder.
  • For Google cloud, refer the scripts and instructions in the gcp folder

Download Dovetail projects and Hyperledger Fabric samples

To get-started on local development, you can setup the environment as described here.

Start CA server and generate crypto data

Following steps use Docker Desktop Kubernetes on Mac to start fabric-ca PODs and generate crypto data required by the sample network operated by 3 organizations, orderer, org1, and org2.

cd ../ca
./bootstrap.sh -o orderer -p org1 -p org2 -d

It will create crypto data required to support 3 orderers and 2 peers each for org1 and org2 as defined in the org's configuration files. You can edit the configuration files, e.g., orderer.env if you want to use a different organization name, or run more orderer or peer nodes. The generated crypto data will be stored in the local folder /path/to/dovetail-lab/fabric-operation/<org-name>, or in a cloud file system, such as Amazon EFS, Azure Files, or GCP Filestore when the above script is executed on a bastion host of a cloud provider.

Generate MSP definition and genesis block

The following script generates a genesis block for the sample network in Kubernetes using 3 orderers with etcd raft consensus, as well as channel artifacts for creating a test channel mychannel.

cd ../msp
./bootstrap.sh -o orderer -p org1 -p org2

Start the Fabric network

The following script will start and test a sample Fabric network by using the Docker Desktop Kubernetes on a Mac:

cd ./network
./network.sh start -o orderer -p org1 -p org2

Verify that all orderer and peer nodes are running by using kubectl, e.g.,

kubectl get pod,svc --all-namespaces

After the network started up, use kubectl logs orderer-2 -n orderer to check RAFT leader election result. When RAFT leader is elected, the log should show a log similar to the following:

INFO 101 Raft leader changed: 0 -> 2 channel=netop1-channel node=2

Note that the script uses organization names, e.g, org1, as the Kubernetes namespace of corresponding processes, and so it can support multiple organizations. If you want to reset the default namespace docker-desktop, you can use the following command:

kubectl config use-context docker-desktop

Smoke test by using sample chaincode sacc

The smoke test script smoke-test.sh creates a test channel mychannel, makes 4 peer nodes to join the channel, then package, deploy, and invoke the sample chaincode sacc.

cd ./network
./smoke-test.sh

You should see that the chaincode invocation created a ledger record that sets a = 100, and the query afterwards returned the value 100.

If you want to use docker-compose instead of Kubernetes, you can execute the same script with an extra flag -t docker. When docker-compose is used, you can also look at the blockchain states via the CouchDB futon UI at http://localhost:7056/_utils.

Start gateway service and use REST APIs to test chaincode

The gateway service implements a REST API that allows user to invoke any chaincode from a Swagger UI. Refer gateway for more details. The following commands will start the gateway service that exposes a Swagger-UI at http://localhost:30081/swagger.

cd ../service
./gateway.sh config -o orderer -p org1 -p org2
./gateway.sh start -p org1

Deploy Dovetail applications

The scripts are designed to support deploymment of Dovetail applications for Hyperledger Fabric. Refer README for details on build and deployment of Dovetail models for Fabric chaincode and client applications.

More operations for managing Fabric network

The above bootstrap network contains 1 orderer and 2 peer organizations that are pre-configured to run 3 orderer and 4 peer nodes. A network in production will need to scale up and let more organizations join and co-operate. Organizations may create their own Kubernetes networks using the same or different cloud service providers. We provide scripts to support such network activities.

The currently supported operations include

• Create and join new channel;
• Install and instantiate new chaincode;
• Add new peer nodes of a bootstrap peer org;
• Add new orderer nodes of the bootstrap orderer org;
• Add new peer org and peer nodes to the same Kubernetes cluster;

Refer operations for description of these activities. More operations (as described in TODO bellow) will be supported in the future.

Non-Mac users

If you are not using a Mac or Linux PC, you can run these scripts using docker-compose, or in one of the supported cloud platforms, i.e., Amazon EKS, Azure AKS, or Google GKE. Simply add a corresponding -t flag.

For example, when docker-compose is used locally, the commands are as follows:

cd ./ca
./bootstrap.sh -t docker -o orderer -p org1 -p org2 -d

cd ../msp
./bootstrap.sh -t docker -o orderer -p org1 -p org2

cd ../network
./network.sh start -t docker -o orderer -p org1 -p org2
./smoke-test.sh docker

cd ../service
./gateway.sh config -t docker -o orderer -p org1 -p org2
cp ./gateway-darwin ../org1.example.com/gateway
cd ../org1.example.com/gateway
CRYPTO_PATH=${PWD} ./gateway-darwin -network config_mychannel.yaml -matcher matchers.yaml -logtostderr -v 2

TODO

Stay tuned for more updates on the following items:

• Add new orderer org to the same bootstrap Kubernetes cluster for etcd raft consensus;
• Add new orderer org in a different Kubernetes cluster;
• Add new peer org in a different Kubernetes cluster;
• Test multiple org multiple Kubernetes clusters across multiple cloud providers.