CTFd Helm Chart

This is a Helm chart for deploying CTFd on Kubernetes. It deploys the official CTFd Docker image. HA and Autoscaling + MariaDB + Redis + S3 Storage. Also supports using external MariaDB/Redis/S3.

Add the helm repo

helm repo add ctfd https://scribblercoder.github.io/CTFd-Helm

Install

helm install ctfd ctfd/ctfd
# OR
helm install ctfd ctfd/ctfd -f values.yaml

Install from source

Build helm dependencies (MariaDB/Redis/SeaweedFS) before installing the chart.

helm dependency update

Set the values in values.yaml to your desired configuration. Then install

helm install release-name . -f values.yaml --create-namespace --namespace ctfd

Uninstall

helm uninstall release-name --namespace ctfd

Info

• CTFd SECRET_KEY is automatically generated during installation/upgrade. You can find it in the secret release-name-ctfd-secret-key. This secret is injected as environment variable in all CTFd pods.
• Redis in this chart uses single master with multiple workers.
• This chart deploys SeaweedFS S3 as an uploadprovider. You can use AWS S3 or any other external S3 compatible storage as an upload provider. Just set seaweedfs.enabled to false and configure the external S3 provider in ctfd.uploadprovider.s3.
• This chart intentionally refrains from supporting filesystem uploadprovider. This needs ReadWriteMany PVCs which are expensive in cloud providers and not recommended for production use. S3 is fast and cheap.

Values examples

Deploy Bitnami MariaDB/Redis and SeaweedFS S3

ctfd:
  image:
    tag: "3.7.3"
  autoscaling:
    enabled: true
    minReplicas: 2
    maxReplicas: 10
mariadb:
  enabled: true
  architecture: standalone
  primary:
    size: 2Gi
redis:
  enabled: true
seaweedfs:
  enabled: true
  s3:
    enabled: true

Configure your own external DB/Redis/S3

ctfd:
  image:
    tag: "3.7.3"
  autoscaling:
    enabled: true
    minReplicas: 2
    maxReplicas: 10
  uploadprovider:
    s3:
      bucket: ""
      endpoint_url: ""
      secret_access_key: ""
      access_key_id: ""
mariadb:
  enabled: false
  external:
    port: 3306
    host: ""
    username: ""
    password: ""
    database: ""
redis:
  enabled: false
  external:
    port: 6379
    host: ""
    username: ""
    password: ""
seaweedfs:
  enabled: false

Disable CTFd autoscaling

ctfd:
  image:
    tag: "3.7.3"
  replicas: 2
  autoscaling:
    enabled: false
  resources:
    limits:
      cpu: "2"
      memory: 2Gi
    requests:
      cpu: "1"
      memory: 1Gi

Features

• [x] HA and horizontal autoscaling with CPU and memory metrics
• [x] Configurable CPU/memory requests and limits
• [x] Deploys bitnami Redis, bitnami MariaDB and SeaweedFS S3 as Helm dependencies
• [X] Option to use AWS S3 or any other external S3 compatible storage as an upload provider
• [x] Option to use external Redis and MariaDB (e.g., AWS RDS, ElastiCache)
• [x] Customizable CTFd configuration
• [x] Adjustable configurations for Redis and MariaDB
• [x] Integration with external storage as upload provider (AWS S3 or SeaweedFS or any S3 compatible storage)
• [x] Liveness and Readiness checks
• [x] Affinity/Toleration/nodeSelector rules
• [x] Automatically rolls out config updates to CTFd pods (Using checksum annotation)
• [ ] Deploys self-hosted mail server for CTFd email notifications as a helm dependency
• [ ] Automated backups (CTFd export. This could be done with batch/v1 CronJob)
• [ ] Deploys postgres db as a helm dependency (ctfd.io doesn't actively support it so this is a low priority)
• [ ] Support for custom CTFd themes/plugin (using initContainers?)

To Do

• [ ] Performance testing to verify autoscaling capabilities + e2e testing for verification
• [x] Fine tune cpu/mem requests and limits
• [ ] Chaos testing to verify HA capabilities
• [x] Add Pod Disruption budget and rolling strategy
• [ ] Security testing to verify deployment security
• [x] Helm linting and testing with GitHub Actions
• [ ] Publish Helm chart to Artifact Hub or to Github Pages
• [x] Custom NOTES.txt (post-installation message)
• [ ] Support custom metrics for autoscaling
• [x] README.md with badges and detailed information
• [x] Add Chart Values table to README.md
• [ ] Support custom CTFd themes/plugin

Requirements

Values

Autogenerated from chart metadata using helm-docs