Orchestrate CockroachDB in a Single Kubernetes Cluster (Insecure)

On this page

Warning:

CockroachDB v19.2 is no longer supported as of May 12, 2021. For more details, refer to the Release Support Policy.

This page shows you how to orchestrate the deployment, management, and monitoring of an insecure 3-node CockroachDB cluster in a single Kubernetes cluster, using the StatefulSet feature directly or via the Helm Kubernetes package manager.

To deploy across multiple Kubernetes clusters in different geographic regions instead, see Kubernetes Multi-Cluster Deployment. Also, for details about potential performance bottlenecks to be aware of when running CockroachDB in Kubernetes and guidance on how to optimize your deployment for better performance, see CockroachDB Performance on Kubernetes.

Warning:

If you plan to use CockroachDB in production, we strongly recommend using a secure cluster instead. Select Secure above for instructions.

Before you begin

Before getting started, it's helpful to review some Kubernetes-specific terminology and current limitations.

Kubernetes terminology
Limitations

Kubernetes terminology

Feature	Description
node	A physical or virtual machine. In this tutorial, you'll create GCE or AWS instances and join them as worker nodes into a single Kubernetes cluster from your local workstation.
pod	A pod is a group of one or more Docker containers. In this tutorial, each pod will run on a separate Kubernetes node and include one Docker container running a single CockroachDB node. You'll start with 3 pods and grow to 4.
StatefulSet	A StatefulSet is a group of pods treated as stateful units, where each pod has distinguishable network identity and always binds back to the same persistent storage on restart. StatefulSets are considered stable as of Kubernetes version 1.9 after reaching beta in version 1.5.
persistent volume	A persistent volume is a piece of networked storage (Persistent Disk on GCE, Elastic Block Store on AWS) mounted into a pod. The lifetime of a persistent volume is decoupled from the lifetime of the pod that's using it, ensuring that each CockroachDB node binds back to the same storage on restart. This tutorial assumes that dynamic volume provisioning is available. When that is not the case, persistent volume claims need to be created manually.

Limitations

Kubernetes version

Kubernetes 1.18 or higher is required in order to use our most up-to-date configuration files. Earlier Kubernetes releases do not support some of the options used in our configuration files. If you need to run on an older version of Kubernetes, we have kept around configuration files that work on older Kubernetes releases in the versioned subdirectories of https://github.com/cockroachdb/cockroach/tree/master/cloud/kubernetes (e.g., v1.7).

Helm version

Helm 3.0 or higher is required when using our instructions to deploy via Helm.

Storage

At this time, orchestrations of CockroachDB with Kubernetes use external persistent volumes that are often replicated by the provider. Because CockroachDB already replicates data automatically, this additional layer of replication is unnecessary and can negatively impact performance. High-performance use cases on a private Kubernetes cluster may want to consider using local volumes.

Step 1. Start Kubernetes

Choose whether you want to orchestrate CockroachDB with Kubernetes using the hosted Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) service, the hosted Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), or manually on Google Compute Engine (GCE) or AWS. The instructions below will change slightly depending on your choice.

Hosted GKE
Hosted EKS
Manual GCE
Manual AWS

Hosted GKE

Complete the Before You Begin steps described in the Google Kubernetes Engine Quickstart documentation.

This includes installing gcloud, which is used to create and delete Kubernetes Engine clusters, and kubectl, which is the command-line tool used to manage Kubernetes from your workstation.

Tip:
The documentation offers the choice of using Google's Cloud Shell product or using a local shell on your machine. Choose to use a local shell if you want to be able to view the CockroachDB Admin UI using the steps in this guide.
From your local workstation, start the Kubernetes cluster:
```
$ gcloud container clusters create cockroachdb --machine-type n1-standard-4
```
```
Creating cluster cockroachdb...done.
```
This creates GKE instances and joins them into a single Kubernetes cluster named cockroachdb. The --machine-type flag tells the node pool to use the n1-standard-4 machine type (4 vCPUs, 15 GB memory), which meets our recommended CPU and memory configuration.

The process can take a few minutes, so do not move on to the next step until you see a Creating cluster cockroachdb...done message and details about your cluster.
Get the email address associated with your Google Cloud account:
```
$ gcloud info | grep Account
```
```
Account: [your.google.cloud.email@example.org]
```
Warning:

This command returns your email address in all lowercase. However, in the next step, you must enter the address using the accurate capitalization. For example, if your address is YourName@example.com, you must use YourName@example.com and not yourname@example.com.

Create the RBAC roles CockroachDB needs for running on GKE, using the address from the previous step:

$ kubectl create clusterrolebinding $USER-cluster-admin-binding \
--clusterrole=cluster-admin \
--user=<your.google.cloud.email@example.org>

clusterrolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/your.username-cluster-admin-binding created

Hosted EKS

Complete the steps described in the EKS Getting Started documentation.

This includes installing and configuring the AWS CLI and eksctl, which is the command-line tool used to create and delete Kubernetes clusters on EKS, and kubectl, which is the command-line tool used to manage Kubernetes from your workstation.
From your local workstation, start the Kubernetes cluster:
```
$ eksctl create cluster \
--name cockroachdb \
--nodegroup-name standard-workers \
--node-type m5.xlarge \
--nodes 3 \
--nodes-min 1 \
--nodes-max 4 \
--node-ami auto
```
This creates EKS instances and joins them into a single Kubernetes cluster named cockroachdb. The --node-type flag tells the node pool to use the m5.xlarge instance type (4 vCPUs, 16 GB memory), which meets our recommended CPU and memory configuration.

Cluster provisioning usually takes between 10 and 15 minutes. Do not move on to the next step until you see a message like [✔] EKS cluster "cockroachdb" in "us-east-1" region is ready and details about your cluster.
Open the AWS CloudFormation console to verify that the stacks eksctl-cockroachdb-cluster and eksctl-cockroachdb-nodegroup-standard-workers were successfully created. Be sure that your region is selected in the console.

Manual GCE

From your local workstation, install prerequisites and start a Kubernetes cluster as described in the Running Kubernetes on Google Compute Engine documentation.

The process includes:

Creating a Google Cloud Platform account, installing gcloud, and other prerequisites.
Downloading and installing the latest Kubernetes release.
Creating GCE instances and joining them into a single Kubernetes cluster.
Installing kubectl, the command-line tool used to manage Kubernetes from your workstation.

Manual AWS

From your local workstation, install prerequisites and start a Kubernetes cluster as described in the Running Kubernetes on AWS EC2 documentation.

Step 2. Start CockroachDB

To start your CockroachDB cluster, you can either use our StatefulSet configuration and related files directly, or you can use the Helm package manager for Kubernetes to simplify the process.

From your local workstation, use our cockroachdb-statefulset.yaml file to create the StatefulSet that automatically creates 3 pods, each with a CockroachDB node running inside it.

Download cockroachdb-statefulset.yaml:
```
$ curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cockroachdb/cockroach/master/cloud/kubernetes/cockroachdb-statefulset.yaml
```
Warning:

To avoid running out of memory when CockroachDB is not the only pod on a Kubernetes node, you must set memory limits explicitly. This is because CockroachDB does not detect the amount of memory allocated to its pod when run in Kubernetes. Specify this amount by adjusting resources.requests.memory and resources.limits.memory in cockroachdb-statefulset.yaml. Their values should be identical.

We recommend setting cache and max-sql-memory each to 1/4 of your memory allocation. For example, if you are allocating 8Gi of memory to each CockroachDB node, substitute the following values in this line:
```
--cache 2Gi --max-sql-memory 2Gi
```
Use the file to create the StatefulSet and start the cluster:
```
$ kubectl create -f cockroachdb-statefulset.yaml
```
```
service/cockroachdb-public created
service/cockroachdb created
poddisruptionbudget.policy/cockroachdb-budget created
statefulset.apps/cockroachdb created
```
Alternatively, if you'd rather start with a configuration file that has been customized for performance:
1. Download our performance version of cockroachdb-statefulset-insecure.yaml:
```
$ curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cockroachdb/cockroach/master/cloud/kubernetes/performance/cockroachdb-statefulset-insecure.yaml
```
2. Modify the file wherever there is a TODO comment.
3. Use the file to create the StatefulSet and start the cluster:
```
$ kubectl create -f cockroachdb-statefulset-insecure.yaml
```

Confirm that three pods are Running successfully. Note that they will not be considered Ready until after the cluster has been initialized:

$ kubectl get pods

NAME            READY     STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
cockroachdb-0   0/1       Running   0          2m
cockroachdb-1   0/1       Running   0          2m
cockroachdb-2   0/1       Running   0          2m

Confirm that the persistent volumes and corresponding claims were created successfully for all three pods:

$ kubectl get persistentvolumes

NAME                                       CAPACITY   ACCESSMODES   RECLAIMPOLICY   STATUS    CLAIM                           REASON    AGE
pvc-52f51ecf-8bd5-11e6-a4f4-42010a800002   1Gi        RWO           Delete          Bound     default/datadir-cockroachdb-0             26s
pvc-52fd3a39-8bd5-11e6-a4f4-42010a800002   1Gi        RWO           Delete          Bound     default/datadir-cockroachdb-1             27s
pvc-5315efda-8bd5-11e6-a4f4-42010a800002   1Gi        RWO           Delete          Bound     default/datadir-cockroachdb-2             27s

Use our cluster-init.yaml file to perform a one-time initialization that joins the CockroachDB nodes into a single cluster:
```
$ kubectl create \
-f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cockroachdb/cockroach/master/cloud/kubernetes/cluster-init.yaml
```
```
job.batch/cluster-init created
```

Confirm that cluster initialization has completed successfully. The job should be considered successful and the Kubernetes pods should soon be considered Ready:

$ kubectl get job cluster-init

NAME           COMPLETIONS   DURATION   AGE
cluster-init   1/1           7s         27s

$ kubectl get pods

NAME                 READY   STATUS      RESTARTS   AGE
cluster-init-cqf8l   0/1     Completed   0          56s
cockroachdb-0        1/1     Running     0          7m51s
cockroachdb-1        1/1     Running     0          7m51s
cockroachdb-2        1/1     Running     0          7m51s

Tip:

The StatefulSet configuration sets all CockroachDB nodes to log to stderr, so if you ever need access to a pod/node's logs to troubleshoot, use kubectl logs <podname> rather than checking the log on the persistent volume.

Install the Helm client (version 3.0 or higher) and add the cockroachdb chart repository:
```
$ helm repo add cockroachdb https://charts.cockroachdb.com/
```
```
"cockroachdb" has been added to your repositories
```
Update your Helm chart repositories to ensure that you're using the latest CockroachDB chart:
```
$ helm repo update
```
Modify our Helm chart's values.yaml parameters for your deployment scenario.

Create a my-values.yaml file to override the defaults in values.yaml, substituting your own values in this example based on the guidelines below.
```
statefulset:
  resources:
    limits:
      memory: "8Gi"
    requests:
      memory: "8Gi"
conf:
  cache: "2Gi"
  max-sql-memory: "2Gi"
```
1. To avoid running out of memory when CockroachDB is not the only pod on a Kubernetes node, you must set memory limits explicitly. This is because CockroachDB does not detect the amount of memory allocated to its pod when run in Kubernetes. We recommend setting conf.cache and conf.max-sql-memory each to 1/4 of the memory allocation specified in statefulset.resources.requests and statefulset.resources.limits.
  
  Tip:
  
  For example, if you are allocating 8Gi of memory to each CockroachDB node, allocate 2Gi to cache and 2Gi to max-sql-memory.
2. You may want to modify storage.persistentVolume.size and storage.persistentVolume.storageClass for your use case. This chart defaults to 100Gi of disk space per pod. For more details on customizing disks for performance, see these instructions.
  
  Note:
  
  If necessary, you can expand disk size after the cluster is live.
Install the CockroachDB Helm chart.

Provide a "release" name to identify and track this particular deployment of the chart, and override the default values with those in my-values.yaml.

Note:

This tutorial uses my-release as the release name. If you use a different value, be sure to adjust the release name in subsequent commands. Also be sure to start and end the name with an alphanumeric character and otherwise use lowercase alphanumeric characters, -, or . so as to comply with CSR naming requirements.
```
$ helm install my-release --values my-values.yaml cockroachdb/cockroachdb
```
Behind the scenes, this command uses our cockroachdb-statefulset.yaml file to create the StatefulSet that automatically creates 3 pods, each with a CockroachDB node running inside it, where each pod has distinguishable network identity and always binds back to the same persistent storage on restart.

Confirm that CockroachDB cluster initialization has completed successfully, with the pods for CockroachDB showing 1/1 under READY and the pod for initialization showing COMPLETED under STATUS:

$ kubectl get pods

NAME                                READY     STATUS      RESTARTS   AGE
my-release-cockroachdb-0            1/1       Running     0          8m
my-release-cockroachdb-1            1/1       Running     0          8m
my-release-cockroachdb-2            1/1       Running     0          8m
my-release-cockroachdb-init-hxzsc   0/1       Completed   0          1h

Confirm that the persistent volumes and corresponding claims were created successfully for all three pods:

$ kubectl get pv

NAME                                       CAPACITY   ACCESS MODES   RECLAIM POLICY   STATUS    CLAIM                                      STORAGECLASS   REASON    AGE
pvc-71019b3a-fc67-11e8-a606-080027ba45e5   100Gi      RWO            Delete           Bound     default/datadir-my-release-cockroachdb-0   standard                 11m
pvc-7108e172-fc67-11e8-a606-080027ba45e5   100Gi      RWO            Delete           Bound     default/datadir-my-release-cockroachdb-1   standard                 11m
pvc-710dcb66-fc67-11e8-a606-080027ba45e5   100Gi      RWO            Delete           Bound     default/datadir-my-release-cockroachdb-2   standard                 11m

Tip:

Step 3. Use the built-in SQL client

Launch a temporary interactive pod and start the built-in SQL client inside it:

$ kubectl run cockroachdb -it \
--image=cockroachdb/cockroach:v19.2.12 \
--rm \
--restart=Never \
-- sql \
--insecure \
--host=cockroachdb-public

$ kubectl run cockroachdb -it \
--image=cockroachdb/cockroach:v19.2.12 \
--rm \
--restart=Never \
-- sql \
--insecure \
--host=my-release-cockroachdb-public

Run some basic CockroachDB SQL statements:

> CREATE DATABASE bank;

> CREATE TABLE bank.accounts (
    id UUID PRIMARY KEY DEFAULT gen_random_uuid(),
      balance DECIMAL
  );

> INSERT INTO bank.accounts (balance)
  VALUES
      (1000.50), (20000), (380), (500), (55000);

> SELECT * FROM bank.accounts;

                   id                  | balance
+--------------------------------------+---------+
  6f123370-c48c-41ff-b384-2c185590af2b |     380
  990c9148-1ea0-4861-9da7-fd0e65b0a7da | 1000.50
  ac31c671-40bf-4a7b-8bee-452cff8a4026 |     500
  d58afd93-5be9-42ba-b2e2-dc00dcedf409 |   20000
  e6d8f696-87f5-4d3c-a377-8e152fdc27f7 |   55000
(5 rows)

Exit the SQL shell and delete the temporary pod:
```
> \q
```

Step 4. Access the Admin UI

To access the cluster's Admin UI:

In a new terminal window, port-forward from your local machine to one of the pods:
```
$ kubectl port-forward cockroachdb-0 8080
```
```
$ kubectl port-forward my-release-cockroachdb-0 8080
```
```
Forwarding from 127.0.0.1:8080 -> 8080
```
Note:
The port-forward command must be run on the same machine as the web browser in which you want to view the Admin UI. If you have been running these commands from a cloud instance or other non-local shell, you will not be able to view the UI without configuring kubectl locally and running the above port-forward command on your local machine.
Go to http://localhost:8080.
In the UI, verify that the cluster is running as expected:
- Click View nodes list on the right to ensure that all nodes successfully joined the cluster.
- Click the Databases tab on the left to verify that bank is listed.

Step 5. Simulate node failure

Based on the replicas: 3 line in the StatefulSet configuration, Kubernetes ensures that three pods/nodes are running at all times. When a pod/node fails, Kubernetes automatically creates another pod/node with the same network identity and persistent storage.

To see this in action:

Terminate one of the CockroachDB nodes:

$ kubectl delete pod cockroachdb-2

pod "cockroachdb-2" deleted

$ kubectl delete pod my-release-cockroachdb-2

pod "my-release-cockroachdb-2" deleted

In the Admin UI, the Cluster Overview will soon show one node as Suspect. As Kubernetes auto-restarts the node, watch how the node once again becomes healthy.

Back in the terminal, verify that the pod was automatically restarted:

$ kubectl get pod cockroachdb-2

NAME            READY     STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
cockroachdb-2   1/1       Running   0          12s

$ kubectl get pod my-release-cockroachdb-2

NAME                       READY     STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
my-release-cockroachdb-2   1/1       Running   0          44s

Step 6. Monitor the cluster

Despite CockroachDB's various built-in safeguards against failure, it is critical to actively monitor the overall health and performance of a cluster running in production and to create alerting rules that promptly send notifications when there are events that require investigation or intervention.

Configure Prometheus

Every node of a CockroachDB cluster exports granular timeseries metrics formatted for easy integration with Prometheus, an open source tool for storing, aggregating, and querying timeseries data. This section shows you how to orchestrate Prometheus as part of your Kubernetes cluster and pull these metrics into Prometheus for external monitoring.

This guidance is based on CoreOS's Prometheus Operator, which allows a Prometheus instance to be managed using built-in Kubernetes concepts.

Note:

If you're on Hosted GKE, before starting, make sure the email address associated with your Google Cloud account is part of the cluster-admin RBAC group, as shown in Step 1. Start Kubernetes.

From your local workstation, edit the cockroachdb service to add the prometheus: cockroachdb label:
```
$ kubectl label svc cockroachdb prometheus=cockroachdb
```
```
service/cockroachdb labeled
```
This ensures that there is a Prometheus job and monitoring data only for the cockroachdb service, not for the cockroach-public service.
```
$ kubectl label svc my-release-cockroachdb prometheus=cockroachdb
```
```
service/my-release-cockroachdb labeled
```
This ensures that there is a Prometheus job and monitoring data only for the my-release-cockroachdb service, not for the my-release-cockroach-public service.

Install CoreOS's Prometheus Operator:

$ kubectl apply \
-f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/coreos/prometheus-operator/release-0.20/bundle.yaml

clusterrolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/prometheus-operator created
clusterrole.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/prometheus-operator created
serviceaccount/prometheus-operator created
deployment.apps/prometheus-operator created

Confirm that the prometheus-operator has started:

$ kubectl get deploy prometheus-operator

NAME                  READY   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   AGE
prometheus-operator   1/1     1            1           27s

Use our prometheus.yaml file to create the various objects necessary to run a Prometheus instance:

Tip:

This configuration defaults to using the Kubernetes CA for authentication.

$ kubectl apply \
-f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cockroachdb/cockroach/master/cloud/kubernetes/prometheus/prometheus.yaml

serviceaccount/prometheus created
clusterrole.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/prometheus created
clusterrolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/prometheus created
servicemonitor.monitoring.coreos.com/cockroachdb created
prometheus.monitoring.coreos.com/cockroachdb created

Access the Prometheus UI locally and verify that CockroachDB is feeding data into Prometheus:
1. Port-forward from your local machine to the pod running Prometheus:
```
$ kubectl port-forward prometheus-cockroachdb-0 9090
```
2. Go to http://localhost:9090 in your browser.
3. To verify that each CockroachDB node is connected to Prometheus, go to Status > Targets. The screen should look like this:
4. To verify that data is being collected, go to Graph, enter the sys_uptime variable in the field, click Execute, and then click the Graph tab. The screen should like this:
Tip:

Prometheus auto-completes CockroachDB time series metrics for you, but if you want to see a full listing, with descriptions, port-forward as described in Access the Admin UI and then point your browser to http://localhost:8080/_status/vars.

For more details on using the Prometheus UI, see their official documentation.

Configure Alertmanager

Active monitoring helps you spot problems early, but it is also essential to send notifications when there are events that require investigation or intervention. This section shows you how to use Alertmanager and CockroachDB's starter alerting rules to do this.

Download our alertmanager-config.yaml configuration file:

$ curl -OOOOOOOOO \
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cockroachdb/cockroach/master/cloud/kubernetes/prometheus/alertmanager-config.yaml

Edit the alertmanager-config.yaml file to specify the desired receivers for notifications. Initially, the file contains a placeholder web hook.
Add this configuration to the Kubernetes cluster as a secret, renaming it to alertmanager.yaml and labelling it to make it easier to find:
```
$ kubectl create secret generic alertmanager-cockroachdb \
--from-file=alertmanager.yaml=alertmanager-config.yaml
```
```
secret/alertmanager-cockroachdb created
```
```
$ kubectl label secret alertmanager-cockroachdb app=cockroachdb
```
```
secret/alertmanager-cockroachdb labeled
```
Warning:

The name of the secret, alertmanager-cockroachdb, must match the name used in the alertmanager.yaml file. If they differ, the Alertmanager instance will start without configuration, and nothing will happen.

Use our alertmanager.yaml file to create the various objects necessary to run an Alertmanager instance, including a ClusterIP service so that Prometheus can forward alerts:

$ kubectl apply \
-f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cockroachdb/cockroach/master/cloud/kubernetes/prometheus/alertmanager.yaml

alertmanager.monitoring.coreos.com/cockroachdb created
service/alertmanager-cockroachdb created

Verify that Alertmanager is running:
1. Port-forward from your local machine to the pod running Alertmanager:
```
$ kubectl port-forward alertmanager-cockroachdb-0 9093
```
2. Go to http://localhost:9093 in your browser. The screen should look like this:
Ensure that the Alertmanagers are visible to Prometheus by opening http://localhost:9090/status. The screen should look like this:

Add CockroachDB's starter alerting rules:

$ kubectl apply \
-f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cockroachdb/cockroach/master/cloud/kubernetes/prometheus/alert-rules.yaml

prometheusrule.monitoring.coreos.com/prometheus-cockroachdb-rules created

Ensure that the rules are visible to Prometheus by opening http://localhost:9090/rules. The screen should look like this:
Verify that the TestAlertManager example alert is firing by opening http://localhost:9090/alerts. The screen should look like this:
To remove the example alert:
1. Use the kubectl edit command to open the rules for editing:
```
$ kubectl edit prometheusrules prometheus-cockroachdb-rules
```
2. Remove the dummy.rules block and save the file:
```
- name: rules/dummy.rules
  rules:
  - alert: TestAlertManager
    expr: vector(1)
```

Add nodes

Your Kubernetes cluster includes 3 worker nodes, or instances, that can run pods. A CockroachDB node runs in each pod. As recommended in our production best practices, you should ensure that two pods are not placed on the same worker node.

To do this, add a new worker node and then edit your StatefulSet configuration to add another pod for the new CockroachDB node.

Add a worker node, bringing the total from 3 to 4:
- On GKE, resize your cluster.
- On EKS, resize your Worker Node Group.
- On GCE, resize your Managed Instance Group.
- On AWS, resize your Auto Scaling Group.

Add a pod for the new CockroachDB node:

$ kubectl scale statefulset cockroachdb --replicas=4

statefulset.apps/cockroachdb scaled

Tip:

If you aren't using the Kubernetes CA to sign certificates, you can now skip to step 6.

$ helm upgrade \
my-release \
cockroachdb/cockroachdb \
--set statefulset.replicas=4 \
--reuse-values

Release "my-release" has been upgraded. Happy Helming!
LAST DEPLOYED: Tue May 14 14:06:43 2019
NAMESPACE: default
STATUS: DEPLOYED

RESOURCES:
==> v1beta1/PodDisruptionBudget
NAME                           AGE
my-release-cockroachdb-budget  51m

==> v1/Pod(related)

NAME                               READY  STATUS     RESTARTS  AGE
my-release-cockroachdb-0           1/1    Running    0         38m
my-release-cockroachdb-1           1/1    Running    0         39m
my-release-cockroachdb-2           1/1    Running    0         39m
my-release-cockroachdb-3           0/1    Pending    0         0s
my-release-cockroachdb-init-nwjkh  0/1    Completed  0         39m

...

Verify that a fourth pod was added successfully:
```
$ kubectl get pods
```

Remove nodes

To safely remove a node from your cluster, you must first decommission the node and only then adjust the spec.replicas value of your StatefulSet configuration to permanently remove it. This sequence is important because the decommissioning process lets a node finish in-flight requests, rejects any new requests, and transfers all range replicas and range leases off the node.

Warning:

If you remove nodes without first telling CockroachDB to decommission them, you may cause data or even cluster unavailability. For more details about how this works and what to consider before removing nodes, see Decommission Nodes.

Launch a temporary interactive pod and use the cockroach node status command to get the internal IDs of nodes:

$ kubectl run cockroachdb -it \
--image=cockroachdb/cockroach:v19.2.12 \
--rm \
--restart=Never \
-- node status \
--insecure \
--host=cockroachdb-public

  id |               address                                     | build  |            started_at            |            updated_at            | is_available | is_live
+----+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------+--------+----------------------------------+----------------------------------+--------------+---------+
   1 | cockroachdb-0.cockroachdb.default.svc.cluster.local:26257 | v19.2.12 | 2018-11-29 16:04:36.486082+00:00 | 2018-11-29 18:24:24.587454+00:00 | true         | true
   2 | cockroachdb-2.cockroachdb.default.svc.cluster.local:26257 | v19.2.12 | 2018-11-29 16:55:03.880406+00:00 | 2018-11-29 18:24:23.469302+00:00 | true         | true
   3 | cockroachdb-1.cockroachdb.default.svc.cluster.local:26257 | v19.2.12 | 2018-11-29 16:04:41.383588+00:00 | 2018-11-29 18:24:25.030175+00:00 | true         | true
   4 | cockroachdb-3.cockroachdb.default.svc.cluster.local:26257 | v19.2.12 | 2018-11-29 17:31:19.990784+00:00 | 2018-11-29 18:24:26.041686+00:00 | true         | true
(4 rows)

$ kubectl run cockroachdb -it \
--image=cockroachdb/cockroach:v19.2.12 \
--rm \
--restart=Never \
-- node status \
--insecure \
--host=my-release-cockroachdb-public

  id |                                     address                                     | build  |            started_at            |            updated_at            | is_available | is_live
+----+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------+--------+----------------------------------+----------------------------------+--------------+---------+
   1 | my-release-cockroachdb-0.my-release-cockroachdb.default.svc.cluster.local:26257 | v19.2.12 | 2018-11-29 16:04:36.486082+00:00 | 2018-11-29 18:24:24.587454+00:00 | true         | true
   2 | my-release-cockroachdb-2.my-release-cockroachdb.default.svc.cluster.local:26257 | v19.2.12 | 2018-11-29 16:55:03.880406+00:00 | 2018-11-29 18:24:23.469302+00:00 | true         | true
   3 | my-release-cockroachdb-1.my-release-cockroachdb.default.svc.cluster.local:26257 | v19.2.12 | 2018-11-29 16:04:41.383588+00:00 | 2018-11-29 18:24:25.030175+00:00 | true         | true
   4 | my-release-cockroachdb-3.my-release-cockroachdb.default.svc.cluster.local:26257 | v19.2.12 | 2018-11-29 17:31:19.990784+00:00 | 2018-11-29 18:24:26.041686+00:00 | true         | true
(4 rows)

Note the ID of the node with the highest number in its address (in this case, the address including cockroachdb-3) and use the cockroach node decommission command to decommission it:

Note:

It's important to decommission the node with the highest number in its address because, when you reduce the replica count, Kubernetes will remove the pod for that node.

$ kubectl run cockroachdb -it \
--image=cockroachdb/cockroach:v19.2.12 \
--rm \
--restart=Never \
-- node decommission <node ID> \
--insecure \
--host=cockroachdb-public

$ kubectl run cockroachdb -it \
--image=cockroachdb/cockroach:v19.2.12 \
--rm \
--restart=Never \
-- node decommission <node ID> \
--insecure \
--host=my-release-cockroachdb-public

You'll then see the decommissioning status print to stderr as it changes:

 id | is_live | replicas | is_decommissioning | is_draining  
+---+---------+----------+--------------------+-------------+
  4 |  true   |       73 |        true        |    false     
(1 row)

Once the node has been fully decommissioned and stopped, you'll see a confirmation:

 id | is_live | replicas | is_decommissioning | is_draining  
+---+---------+----------+--------------------+-------------+
  4 |  true   |        0 |        true        |    false     
(1 row)

No more data reported on target nodes. Please verify cluster health before removing the nodes.

Once the node has been decommissioned, remove a pod from your StatefulSet:

$ kubectl scale statefulset cockroachdb --replicas=3

statefulset "cockroachdb" scaled

$ helm upgrade \
my-release \
cockroachdb/cockroachdb \
--set statefulset.replicas=3 \
--reuse-values

Expand disk size

You can expand certain types of persistent volumes (including GCE Persistent Disk and Amazon Elastic Block Store) by editing their persistent volume claims. Increasing disk size is often beneficial for CockroachDB performance. Read our Kubernetes performance guide for guidance on disks.

Get the persistent volume claims for the volumes:

$ kubectl get pvc

NAME                               STATUS   VOLUME                                     CAPACITY   ACCESS MODES   STORAGECLASS   AGE
datadir-my-release-cockroachdb-0   Bound    pvc-75dadd4c-01a1-11ea-b065-42010a8e00cb   100Gi      RWO            standard       17m
datadir-my-release-cockroachdb-1   Bound    pvc-75e143ca-01a1-11ea-b065-42010a8e00cb   100Gi      RWO            standard       17m
datadir-my-release-cockroachdb-2   Bound    pvc-75ef409a-01a1-11ea-b065-42010a8e00cb   100Gi      RWO            standard       17m

NAME                    STATUS   VOLUME                                     CAPACITY   ACCESS MODES   STORAGECLASS   AGE
datadir-cockroachdb-0   Bound    pvc-75dadd4c-01a1-11ea-b065-42010a8e00cb   100Gi      RWO            standard       17m
datadir-cockroachdb-1   Bound    pvc-75e143ca-01a1-11ea-b065-42010a8e00cb   100Gi      RWO            standard       17m
datadir-cockroachdb-2   Bound    pvc-75ef409a-01a1-11ea-b065-42010a8e00cb   100Gi      RWO            standard       17m

In order to expand a persistent volume claim, AllowVolumeExpansion in its storage class must be true. Examine the storage class:

$ kubectl describe storageclass standard

Name:                  standard
IsDefaultClass:        Yes
Annotations:           storageclass.kubernetes.io/is-default-class=true
Provisioner:           kubernetes.io/gce-pd
Parameters:            type=pd-standard
AllowVolumeExpansion:  False
MountOptions:          <none>
ReclaimPolicy:         Delete
VolumeBindingMode:     Immediate
Events:                <none>

If necessary, edit the storage class:

$ kubectl patch storageclass standard -p '{"allowVolumeExpansion": true}'

storageclass.storage.k8s.io/standard patched

Edit one of the persistent volume claims to request more space:

Note:

The requested storage value must be larger than the previous value. You cannot use this method to decrease the disk size.

$ kubectl patch pvc datadir-my-release-cockroachdb-0 -p '{"spec": {"resources": {"requests": {"storage": "200Gi"}}}}'

persistentvolumeclaim/datadir-my-release-cockroachdb-0 patched

$ kubectl patch pvc datadir-cockroachdb-0 -p '{"spec": {"resources": {"requests": {"storage": "200Gi"}}}}'

persistentvolumeclaim/datadir-cockroachdb-0 patched

Check the capacity of the persistent volume claim:

$ kubectl get pvc datadir-my-release-cockroachdb-0

NAME                               STATUS   VOLUME                                     CAPACITY   ACCESS MODES   STORAGECLASS   AGE
datadir-my-release-cockroachdb-0   Bound    pvc-75dadd4c-01a1-11ea-b065-42010a8e00cb   100Gi      RWO            standard       18m

$ kubectl get pvc datadir-cockroachdb-0

NAME                    STATUS   VOLUME                                     CAPACITY   ACCESS MODES   STORAGECLASS   AGE
datadir-cockroachdb-0   Bound    pvc-75dadd4c-01a1-11ea-b065-42010a8e00cb   100Gi      RWO            standard       18m

If the PVC capacity has not changed, this may be because AllowVolumeExpansion was initially set to false or because the volume has a file system that has to be expanded. You will need to start or restart a pod in order to have it reflect the new capacity.

Tip:

Running kubectl get pv will display the persistent volumes with their requested capacity and not their actual capacity. This can be misleading, so it's best to use kubectl get pvc.

Examine the persistent volume claim. If the volume has a file system, you will see a FileSystemResizePending condition with an accompanying message:
```
$ kubectl describe pvc datadir-my-release-cockroachdb-0
```
```
$ kubectl describe pvc datadir-cockroachdb-0
```
```
Waiting for user to (re-)start a pod to finish file system resize of volume on node.
```
Delete the corresponding pod to restart it:
```
$ kubectl delete pod my-release-cockroachdb-0
```
```
$ kubectl delete pod cockroachdb-0
```
The FileSystemResizePending condition and message will be removed.

View the updated persistent volume claim:

$ kubectl get pvc datadir-my-release-cockroachdb-0

NAME                               STATUS   VOLUME                                     CAPACITY   ACCESS MODES   STORAGECLASS   AGE
datadir-my-release-cockroachdb-0   Bound    pvc-75dadd4c-01a1-11ea-b065-42010a8e00cb   200Gi      RWO            standard       20m

$ kubectl get pvc datadir-cockroachdb-0

NAME                    STATUS   VOLUME                                     CAPACITY   ACCESS MODES   STORAGECLASS   AGE
datadir-cockroachdb-0   Bound    pvc-75dadd4c-01a1-11ea-b065-42010a8e00cb   200Gi      RWO            standard       20m

The CockroachDB cluster needs to be expanded one node at a time. Repeat steps 3 - 6 to increase the capacities of the remaining volumes by the same amount.

Upgrade the cluster

As new versions of CockroachDB are released, it's strongly recommended to upgrade to newer versions in order to pick up bug fixes, performance improvements, and new features. The general CockroachDB upgrade documentation provides best practices for how to prepare for and execute upgrades of CockroachDB clusters, but the mechanism of actually stopping and restarting processes in Kubernetes is somewhat special.

Kubernetes knows how to carry out a safe rolling upgrade process of the CockroachDB nodes. When you tell it to change the Docker image used in the CockroachDB StatefulSet, Kubernetes will go one-by-one, stopping a node, restarting it with the new image, and waiting for it to be ready to receive client requests before moving on to the next one. For more information, see the Kubernetes documentation.

Decide how the upgrade will be finalized.

Note:

This step is relevant only when upgrading from v19.1.x to v19.2. For upgrades within the v19.2.x series, skip this step.

By default, after all nodes are running the new version, the upgrade process will be auto-finalized. This will enable certain performance improvements and bug fixes introduced in v19.2. After finalization, however, it will no longer be possible to perform a downgrade to v19.1. In the event of a catastrophic failure or corruption, the only option will be to start a new cluster using the old binary and then restore from one of the backups created prior to performing the upgrade.

We recommend disabling auto-finalization so you can monitor the stability and performance of the upgraded cluster before finalizing the upgrade:
1. Launch a temporary interactive pod and start the built-in SQL client inside it:
```
$ kubectl run cockroachdb -it \
--image=cockroachdb/cockroach \
--rm \
--restart=Never \
-- sql \
--insecure \
--host=cockroachdb-public
```
```
$ kubectl run cockroachdb -it \
--image=cockroachdb/cockroach \
--rm \
--restart=Never \
-- sql \
--insecure \
--host=my-release-cockroachdb-public
```
2. Set the cluster.preserve_downgrade_option cluster setting:
```
> SET CLUSTER SETTING cluster.preserve_downgrade_option = '19.1';
```
3. Exit the SQL shell and delete the temporary pod:
```
> \q
```

Kick off the upgrade process by changing the desired Docker image:

$ kubectl patch statefulset cockroachdb \
--type='json' \
-p='[{"op": "replace", "path": "/spec/template/spec/containers/0/image", "value":"cockroachdb/cockroach:v19.2.12"}]'

statefulset.apps/cockroachdb patched

Note:

For Helm, you must remove the cluster initialization job from when the cluster was created before the cluster version can be changed.

$ kubectl delete job my-release-cockroachdb-init

$ helm upgrade \
my-release \
cockroachdb/cockroachdb \
--set image.tag=v19.2.12 \
--reuse-values

If you then check the status of your cluster's pods, you should see them being restarted:

$ kubectl get pods

NAME            READY     STATUS        RESTARTS   AGE
cockroachdb-0   1/1       Running       0          2m
cockroachdb-1   1/1       Running       0          2m
cockroachdb-2   1/1       Running       0          2m
cockroachdb-3   0/1       Terminating   0          1m
...

NAME                                READY     STATUS              RESTARTS   AGE
my-release-cockroachdb-0            1/1       Running             0          2m
my-release-cockroachdb-1            1/1       Running             0          3m
my-release-cockroachdb-2            1/1       Running             0          3m
my-release-cockroachdb-3            0/1       ContainerCreating   0          25s
my-release-cockroachdb-init-nwjkh   0/1       ContainerCreating   0          6s
...

Note:

Ignore the pod for cluster initialization. It is re-created as a byproduct of the StatefulSet configuration but does not impact your existing cluster.

This will continue until all of the pods have restarted and are running the new image. To check the image of each pod to determine whether they've all be upgraded, run:

$ kubectl get pods \
-o jsonpath='{range .items[*]}{.metadata.name}{"\t"}{.spec.containers[0].image}{"\n"}'

cockroachdb-0   cockroachdb/cockroach:v19.2.12
cockroachdb-1   cockroachdb/cockroach:v19.2.12
cockroachdb-2   cockroachdb/cockroach:v19.2.12
cockroachdb-3   cockroachdb/cockroach:v19.2.12
...

my-release-cockroachdb-0    cockroachdb/cockroach:v19.2.12
my-release-cockroachdb-1    cockroachdb/cockroach:v19.2.12
my-release-cockroachdb-2    cockroachdb/cockroach:v19.2.12
my-release-cockroachdb-3    cockroachdb/cockroach:v19.2.12
...

You can also check the CockroachDB version of each node in the Admin UI:

Version in UI after upgrade

Finish the upgrade.

Note:

This step is relevant only when upgrading from v19.1.x to v19.2. For upgrades within the v19.2.x series, skip this step.

If you disabled auto-finalization in step 1 above, monitor the stability and performance of your cluster for as long as you require to feel comfortable with the upgrade (generally at least a day). If during this time you decide to roll back the upgrade, repeat the rolling restart procedure with the old binary.

Once you are satisfied with the new version, re-enable auto-finalization:
1. Launch a temporary interactive pod and start the built-in SQL client inside it:
```
$ kubectl run cockroachdb -it \
--image=cockroachdb/cockroach \
--rm \
--restart=Never \
-- sql \
--insecure \
--host=cockroachdb-public
```
```
$ kubectl run cockroachdb -it \
--image=cockroachdb/cockroach \
--rm \
--restart=Never \
-- sql \
--insecure \
--host=my-release-cockroachdb-public
```
2. Re-enable auto-finalization:
```
> RESET CLUSTER SETTING cluster.preserve_downgrade_option;
```
3. Exit the SQL shell and delete the temporary pod:
```
> \q
```

Stop the cluster

To shut down the CockroachDB cluster:

Delete all of the resources you created, including the logs and remote persistent volumes:

$ kubectl delete pods,statefulsets,services,persistentvolumeclaims,persistentvolumes,poddisruptionbudget,jobs,rolebinding,clusterrolebinding,role,clusterrole,serviceaccount,alertmanager,prometheus,prometheusrule,serviceMonitor -l app=cockroachdb

pod "cockroachdb-0" deleted
pod "cockroachdb-1" deleted
pod "cockroachdb-2" deleted
pod "cockroachdb-3" deleted
service "alertmanager-cockroachdb" deleted
service "cockroachdb" deleted
service "cockroachdb-public" deleted
persistentvolumeclaim "datadir-cockroachdb-0" deleted
persistentvolumeclaim "datadir-cockroachdb-1" deleted
persistentvolumeclaim "datadir-cockroachdb-2" deleted
persistentvolumeclaim "datadir-cockroachdb-3" deleted
poddisruptionbudget "cockroachdb-budget" deleted
job "cluster-init" deleted
clusterrolebinding "prometheus" deleted
clusterrole "prometheus" deleted
serviceaccount "prometheus" deleted
alertmanager "cockroachdb" deleted
prometheus "cockroachdb" deleted
prometheusrule "prometheus-cockroachdb-rules" deleted
servicemonitor "cockroachdb" deleted

$ helm uninstall my-release

release "my-release" deleted

Stop Kubernetes:
- Hosted GKE:
```
$ gcloud container clusters delete cockroachdb
```
- Hosted EKS:
```
$ eksctl delete cluster --name cockroachdb
```
- Manual GCE:
```
$ cluster/kube-down.sh
```
- Manual AWS:
```
$ cluster/kube-down.sh
```
Warning:

If you stop Kubernetes without first deleting the persistent volumes, they will still exist in your cloud project.

Cockroach
University

Docs Hub

Orchestrate CockroachDB in a Single Kubernetes Cluster (Insecure)

Before you begin

Kubernetes terminology

Limitations

Kubernetes version

Helm version

Storage

Step 1. Start Kubernetes

Hosted GKE

Hosted EKS

Manual GCE

Manual AWS

Step 2. Start CockroachDB

Step 3. Use the built-in SQL client

Step 4. Access the Admin UI

Step 5. Simulate node failure

Step 6. Monitor the cluster

Configure Prometheus

Configure Alertmanager

Step 7. Maintain the cluster

Add nodes

Remove nodes

Expand disk size

Upgrade the cluster

Stop the cluster

See also

Cockroach University

Docs Hub

Cockroach University

Docs Hub

Orchestrate CockroachDB in a Single Kubernetes Cluster (Insecure)

Before you begin

Kubernetes terminology

Limitations

Kubernetes version

Helm version

Storage

Step 1. Start Kubernetes

Hosted GKE

Hosted EKS

Manual GCE

Manual AWS

Step 2. Start CockroachDB

Step 3. Use the built-in SQL client

Step 4. Access the Admin UI

Step 5. Simulate node failure

Step 6. Monitor the cluster

Configure Prometheus

Configure Alertmanager

Step 7. Maintain the cluster

Add nodes

Remove nodes

Expand disk size

Upgrade the cluster

Stop the cluster

See also

Cockroach
University

Cockroach
University