Factorio kubernetes game server

In a previous post I deployed a factorio game server using docker. The same image can be deployed onto kubernetes.

Installing factorio on Kubernetes

Requirements

In order to proceed, you must have a k8s platform, the kubectl command line utility, and a persistent provider. If you are not familiar with kubernetes, check out a previous post to get started.

Deployment to k8s

In order to deploy factorio onto a kubernetes cluster, the deployment needs to be configured in YAML format document.

factorio manifests

factorio-pvc.yaml

This file will request persistent storage for the container(s). This will utilize the longhorn storage provider. For more information, see a previous post on the topic.

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apiVersion: v1
kind: PersistentVolumeClaim
metadata:
  name: factorio-pvc
spec:
  accessModes:
    - ReadWriteOnce
  storageClassName: longhorn
  resources:
    requests:
      storage: 5Gi

factorio-deploy.yaml

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apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  labels:
    app: factorio
  name: factorio
spec:
  replicas: 1
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: factorio
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: factorio
    spec:
      containers:
        - name: factorio-container
          image: factoriotools/factorio:stable
          env:
            - name: UPDATE_MODS_ON_START
              value: 'true'
          ports:
            - containerPort: 34197
              protocol: UDP
              name: "factorio-port"
          volumeMounts:
            - mountPath: "/factorio"
              name: factorio-storage
      volumes:
        - name: factorio-storage
          persistentVolumeClaim:
            claimName: factorio-pvc

Install to your cluster

To install these on your cluster, use kubectl. I recommend creating a dedicated namespace in the cluster for this game server.

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kubectl create namespace factorio

kubectl apply -f factorio-pvc.yaml -n factorio

kubectl apply -f factorio-deploy.yaml -n factorio

Verify it worked:

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kubectl get all -n factorio

Create an in cluster service object

Enter the following command with the kubectl utility to create a cluster service object that can be used to route traffic to the pods.

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kubectl expose deployment factorio --type=NodePort

View the newly created object:

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kubectl describe svc factorio

The output should be similar:

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Name:                     factorio
Namespace:                factorio
Labels:                   app=factorio
Annotations:              <none>
Selector:                 app=factorio
Type:                     NodePort
IP Family Policy:         SingleStack
IP Families:              IPv4
IP:                       10.43.73.110
IPs:                      10.43.73.110
Port:                     <unset>  34197/UDP
TargetPort:               34197/UDP
NodePort:                 <unset>  32069/UDP
Endpoints:                10.42.4.30:34197
Session Affinity:         None
External Traffic Policy:  Cluster
Events:                   <none>

Take note of the NodePort as this will be the entrypoint to connect to the game server.

Any worker node on the cluster will accept traffic to this port and route it to the factorio pod. Do not run multiple replicas of the server because the map storage is similar to a database, multiple processes modifying the map at the same time will cause corruption.

Game server configuration files can be found inside the factorio pod under /factorio. If you make changes, you will need to scale the pods to 0 and then scale back up to effectively restart the game server.

Scaling the server pod

Enter this to get the factorio replicaset:

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kubectl get rs

Take the name of the ReplicaSet and apply it to the following command to update the replica count:

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kubectl scale --replicas=0 rs/factorio-abcdef123

Mods

In order to move mods onto the container’s persistent storage, you will need to copy the files from your game’s mods directory onto the server using kubectl cp

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kubectl cp mods/ factorio/factorio-57c96d8b8d-7rcf9:/factorio/

Replace with the name of your factorio pod: kubectl get po -n factorio

Once the mods are copied, delete the pod to reload the server with the mods.

Next steps

To delete these resources, delete the objects created for the factorio server: Deployment , Service, PersistentVolumeClaim and PersistentVolume if your storage class does not automatically delete unclaimed volumes.

Troubleshooting

If you have trouble accessing the game server from the game itself, check that there is not a firewall blocking the port exposed as a NodePort.

The logs of the factorio pod may also provide information as to what might be wrong:

kubectl get logs factorio-foobar

Replace with the name of your factorio pod: kubectl get po -n factorio.