Deploy CockroachDB in a Single Kubernetes Cluster (Insecure)

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This page shows you how to start and stop a 3-node CockroachDB insecure test cluster in a single Kubernetes cluster, using one of the following:

• Manual StatefulSet configuration

• Helm package manager for Kubernetes

The steps below demonstrate how to quickly deploy and interact with an insecure test cluster. To learn about authenticating, configuring, scaling, and upgrading a CockroachDB cluster on Kubernetes, see Kubernetes Overview.

Before you begin

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

• Kubernetes terminology
• Limitations

Kubernetes terminology

Limitations

Kubernetes version

To deploy CockroachDB v23.1, Kubernetes 1.18 or higher is required. Cockroach Labs strongly recommends that you use a Kubernetes version that is eligible for patch support by the Kubernetes project.

Kubernetes Operator

• The CockroachDB Kubernetes Operator currently deploys clusters in a single region. For multi-region deployments using manual configs, see Orchestrate CockroachDB Across Multiple Kubernetes Clusters.

• Using the Operator, you can give a new cluster an arbitrary number of labels. However, a cluster's labels cannot be modified after it is deployed. To track the status of this limitation, refer to #993 in the Operator project's issue tracker.

Helm version

The CockroachDB Helm chart requires Helm 3.0 or higher. If you attempt to use an incompatible Helm version, an error like the following occurs:

Error: UPGRADE FAILED: template: cockroachdb/templates/tests/client.yaml:6:14: executing "cockroachdb/templates/tests/client.yaml" at <.Values.networkPolicy.enabled>: nil pointer evaluating interface {}.enabled

The CockroachDB Helm chart is currently not under active development, and no new features are planned. However, Cockroach Labs remains committed to fully supporting the Helm chart by addressing defects, providing security patches, and addressing breaking changes due to deprecations in Kubernetes APIs.

A deprecation notice for the Helm chart will be provided to customers a minimum of 6 months in advance of actual deprecation.

Network

Service Name Indication (SNI) is an extension to the TLS protocol which allows a client to indicate which hostname it is attempting to connect to at the start of the TCP handshake process. The server can present multiple certificates on the same IP address and TCP port number, and one server can serve multiple secure websites or API services even if they use different certificates.

Due to its order of operations, the PostgreSQL wire protocol's implementation of TLS is not compatible with SNI-based routing in the Kubernetes ingress controller. Instead, use a TCP load balancer for CockroachDB that is not shared with other services.

Resources

When starting Kubernetes, select machines with at least 4 vCPUs and 16 GiB of memory, and provision at least 2 vCPUs and 8 Gi of memory to CockroachDB per pod. These minimum settings are used by default in this deployment guide, and are appropriate for testing purposes only. On a production deployment, you should adjust the resource settings for your workload. For details, see Resource management.

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

You can use the hosted Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) service or the hosted Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) to quickly start Kubernetes.

Hosted GKE

1. 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 DB Console using the steps in this guide.

2. From your local workstation, start the Kubernetes cluster, specifying one of the available regions (e.g., us-east1):

   Tip:

   Since this region can differ from your default gcloud region, be sure to include the --region flag to run gcloud commands against this cluster.

   $ gcloud container clusters create cockroachdb --machine-type n2-standard-4 --region {region-name} --num-nodes 1
   

   Creating cluster cockroachdb...done.
   

   This creates GKE instances and joins them into a single Kubernetes cluster named cockroachdb. The --region flag specifies a regional three-zone cluster, and --num-nodes specifies one Kubernetes worker node in each zone.

   The --machine-type flag tells the node pool to use the n2-standard-4 machine type (4 vCPUs, 16 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.

3. 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.

4. 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

1. 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.

   Note:

   If you are running EKS-Anywhere, CockroachDB requires that you configure your default storage class to auto-provision persistent volumes. Alternatively, you can define a custom storage configuration as required by your install pattern.

2. From your local workstation, start the Kubernetes cluster:

   Tip:

   To ensure that all 3 nodes can be placed into a different availability zone, you may want to first confirm that at least 3 zones are available in the region for your account.

   $ 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.

3. 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.

Step 2. Start CockroachDB

Choose how you want to deploy and maintain the CockroachDB cluster.

Step 3. Use the built-in SQL client

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

   $ kubectl run cockroachdb -it \
   --image=cockroachdb/cockroach:v23.1.23 \
   --rm \
   --restart=Never \
   -- sql \
   --insecure \
   --host=cockroachdb-public
   

   $ kubectl run cockroachdb -it \
   --image=cockroachdb/cockroach:v23.1.23 \
   --rm \
   --restart=Never \
   -- sql \
   --insecure \
   --host=my-release-cockroachdb-public
   

2. 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)
   

3. Exit the SQL shell and delete the temporary pod:

   > \q
   

Step 4. Access the DB Console

To access the cluster's DB Console:

1. In a new terminal window, port-forward from your local machine to the cockroachdb-public service:

   $ kubectl port-forward service/cockroachdb-public 8080
   

   $ kubectl port-forward service/cockroachdb-public 8080
   

   $ kubectl port-forward service/my-release-cockroachdb-public 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 DB Console. 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.

2. Go to http://localhost:8080.

3. In the UI, verify that the cluster is running as expected:

   • View the Node List 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:

1. Terminate one of the CockroachDB nodes:

   $ kubectl delete pod cockroachdb-2
   

   pod "cockroachdb-2" deleted
   

   $ kubectl delete pod cockroachdb-2
   

   pod "cockroachdb-2" deleted
   

   $ kubectl delete pod my-release-cockroachdb-2
   

   pod "my-release-cockroachdb-2" deleted
   

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

3. 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 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. Stop the cluster

This procedure shuts down the CockroachDB cluster and deletes the resources you just created, including the logs. This command intentionally does not delete the persistent volumes that were attached to the pods or any secrets you may have created. Before deleting a cluster's persistent volumes, be sure to back them up. For more information, refer to Delete a Cluster's Persistent Volumes and Managing Secrets Using kubectl in the Kubernetes project's documentation.

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

$ helm uninstall my-release

release "my-release" deleted

Delete a cluster's persistent volumes

If you need to free up the storage used by CockroachDB, you can optionally delete the persistent volumes that were attached to the pods, after first backing up your data.

Refer to the Kubernetes project's documentation for more information and recommendations.

Stop Kubernetes

To delete the Kubernetes cluster:

• 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
  

See also

• Kubernetes Overview
• Deploy CockroachDB on Kubernetes
• Cluster monitoring
• Kubernetes Multi-Cluster Deployment
• Kubernetes Performance Guide
• Production Checklist

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