Blockchain Automation Framework And Minikube.

2 min readApr 4, 2022

Recently, I deployed HLF 2.4 version based chaincode on minikube with blockchain automation framework. Here, I am going to describe the steps followed to step on a ubuntu 10 based system. Clone the github repo https://github.com/fly2plan/baf-minikube and follow the steps.

Prerequisites

Make sure you have the following on your local system:-

Python v3.6^
node v17^
minikube v1.24
Kubernetes v1.21^
Docker
helm v3.7^

Use the prereq.sh script in the Github repo to install all the other prerequisites.

Getting Started.

You can use the following link https://blockchain-automation-framework.readthedocs.io/en/develop/developer/dev_prereq.html to set up your git repo . Once you finish setting up the git repo, you can use the following commands to add a new local branch to your machine.

git checkout -b local.
git push — set-upstream origin local.

You have to repeat the following steps, each time you deploy the network.

Setting up vault server.

Go to the cloned repo base directory, open a terminal, and run the following command.

vault server -config=config.hcl

This will bring up the server. you can interact with it by opening the browser at http://localhost:8200/. You can refer https://blockchain-automation-framework.readthedocs.io/en/develop/developer/dev_prereq.html link and initialize the Vault by providing your choice of key shares and threshold.

Once you get the root token, add it to the VAULT_TOKEN variable in the deploykube.sh script. You should add your machine IP to the VAULT_ADDRESS variable in the same script.

Editing the network.yaml file.

Add the vault token and IP address to the vault section in network.yaml file [./build/network.yaml].
Replace the placeholders in the file with appropriate values

Editing the Deployment.yaml file

Since we are deploying the chaincodes externally, the details of the external chaincode docker image should be mentioned in the deployment.yaml file [./platforms/hyperledger-fabric/charts/external_chaincode/templates/deployment.yaml]
The same information should also be given in the nested_cc_deploy.yaml file [./platforms/hyperledger-fabric/configuration/roles/create/external-chaincode/tasks/nested_cc_deploy.yaml]

Starting up minikube.

Once you added the vault token and IP to the deploykube.sh script, you can save it and run the script in order to start minikube locally.

Deploying the network

use the run.sh script to deploy the network.

Stopping and tearing down the network

You can use ctrl + c to stop the network.
Once you stop the network, use the teardown.sh script to prune all persisted network data and cache.

Adding New Org to Existing Network

Once you have a fabric network up and running, you can add a new org to the network using the following steps.

Update the new-org-network.yaml file from the build directory, add the details of the new organization in the “channel” and “organizations” section
Make sure that the org_status of the new organization is set to “new”, while the others are set to “existing”
Once all the appropriate details are given in the new-org-network.yaml file, save it and run the addNewOrg.sh script
This will add a new org to an existing fabric network
Since we are deploying the chaincodes externally, the details of the external chaincode docker image should be mentioned in the deployment.yaml file [./platforms/hyperledger-fabric/charts/external_chaincode/templates/deployment.yaml]
The same information should also be given in the nested_cc_deploy.yaml file [./platforms/hyperledger-fabric/configuration/roles/create/external-chaincode/tasks/nested_cc_deploy.yaml]