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Percona Operators Documentation

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Enabling multi-cluster Services

Kubernetes multi-cluster Services (MCS) is a cross-cluster discovery and invocation of Services. MCS-enabled Services become discoverable and accessible across clusters with a virtual IP address.

This feature allows splitting applications into multiple clusters combined in one fleet, which can be useful to separate logically standalone parts (i.e. stateful and stateless ones), or to address privacy and scalability requirements, etc.

Multi-cluster Services should be supported by the cloud provider. It is supported by Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) , and by Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) .

Configuring your cluster for multi-cluster Services includes two parts:

  • configure MCS with your cloud provider,
  • make needed preparations with the Operator.

To set up MCS for a specific cloud provider you should follow official guides, for example ones from Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) , or from Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) .

Warning

For EKS, you also need to create ClusterProperty objects prior to enabling multi-cluster services.

apiVersion: about.k8s.io/v1alpha1
  kind: ClusterProperty
metadata:
  name: cluster.clusterset.k8s.io
spec:
  value: [Your Cluster identifier]
---
apiVersion: about.k8s.io/v1alpha1
kind: ClusterProperty
metadata:
  name: clusterset.k8s.io
spec:
  value: [Your ClusterSet identifier]

Check AWS MCS controller repository for more information.

Setting up the Operator for MCS results in registering Services for export to other clusters using the ServiceExport object , and using ServiceImport one to import external services. Set the following options in the multiCluster subsection of the deploy/cr.yaml configuration file to make it happen:

  • multiCluster.enabled should be set to true,
  • multiCluster.DNSSuffix string should be equal to the cluster domain suffix for multi-cluster Services used by Kubernetes (svc.clusterset.local by default ).

The following example in the deploy/cr.yaml configuration file is rather straightforward:

...
multiCluster:
  enabled: true
  DNSSuffix: svc.clusterset.local
...

Apply changes as usual with the kubectl apply -f deploy/cr.yaml command.

Note

If you want to enable multi-cluster services in a new cluster, we recommended deploying the cluster first with multiCluster.enabled set to false and enable it after replset is initialized. Having MCS enabled from the start is prone to errors on replset initialization.

The initial ServiceExport creation and sync with the clusters of the fleet takes approximately five minutes. You can check the list of services for export and import with the following commands:

$ kubectl get serviceexport
Expected output 
NAME                     AGE
my-cluster-name-cfg      22m
my-cluster-name-cfg-0    22m
my-cluster-name-cfg-1    22m
my-cluster-name-cfg-2    22m
my-cluster-name-mongos   22m
my-cluster-name-rs0      22m
my-cluster-name-rs0-0    22m
my-cluster-name-rs0-1    22m
my-cluster-name-rs0-2    22m

$ kubectl get serviceimport
Expected output 
NAME                     TYPE           IP                  AGE
my-cluster-name-cfg      Headless                           22m
my-cluster-name-cfg-0    ClusterSetIP   ["10.73.200.89"]    22m
my-cluster-name-cfg-1    ClusterSetIP   ["10.73.192.104"]   22m
my-cluster-name-cfg-2    ClusterSetIP   ["10.73.207.254"]   22m
my-cluster-name-mongos   ClusterSetIP   ["10.73.196.213"]   22m
my-cluster-name-rs0      Headless                           22m
my-cluster-name-rs0-0    ClusterSetIP   ["10.73.206.24"]    22m
my-cluster-name-rs0-1    ClusterSetIP   ["10.73.207.20"]    22m
my-cluster-name-rs0-2    ClusterSetIP   ["10.73.193.92"]    22m

Note

ServiceExport objects are created automatically by the Percona Server for MongoDB Operator. ServiceImport objects, on the other hand, are not controlled by the operator. If you need to troubleshoot ServiceImport objects you must check the MCS controller installed by your cloud provider.

After ServiceExport object is created, exported Services can be resolved from any Pod in any fleet cluster as SERVICE_EXPORT_NAME.NAMESPACE.svc.clusterset.local.

Note

This means that ServiceExports with the same name and namespace will be recognized as a single combined Service.

MCS can charge cross-site replication with additional limitations specific to the cloud provider. For example, GKE demands all participating Pods to be in the same project . Also, default Namespace should be used with caution: your cloud provider may not allow exporting Services from it to other clusters.

Applying MCS to an existing cluster

Additional actions are needed to turn on MCS for the already-existing non-MCS cluster.

  • You need to restart the Operator after editing the multiCluster subsection keys and applying deploy/cr.yaml. Find the Operator’s Pod name in the output of the kubectl get pods command (it will be something like percona-server-mongodb-operator-d859b69b6-t44vk) and delete it as follows:

    $ kubectl delete percona-server-mongodb-operator-d859b69b6-t44vk

  • If you are enabling MCS for a running cluster after upgrading from the Operator version 1.11.0 or below, you need rotating multi-domain (SAN) certificates. Do this by pausing the cluster and deleting TLS Secrets.

Last update: 2025-04-16