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Install Percona XtraDB Cluster in multi-namespace (cluster-wide) mode

Difference between single-namespace and multi-namespace Operator deployment

By default, Percona Operator for MySQL based on Percona XtraDB Cluster functions in a specific Kubernetes namespace. You can create one during installation (like it is shown in the installation instructions) or just use the default namespace. This approach allows several Operators to co-exist in one Kubernetes-based environment, being separated in different namespaces:

image

Still, sometimes it is more convenient to have one Operator watching for Percona XtraDB Cluster custom resources in several namespaces.

We recommend running Percona Operator for MySQL in a traditional way, limited to a specific namespace. But it is possible to run it in so-called cluster-wide mode, one Operator watching several namespaces, if needed:

image

Note

Please take into account that if several Operators are configured to watch the same namespace, it is entirely unpredictable which one will get ownership of the Custom Resource in it, so this situation should be avoided.

Installing the Operator in cluster-wide mode

To use the Operator in such cluster-wide mode, you should install it with a different set of configuration YAML files, which are available in the deploy folder and have filenames with a special cw- prefix: e.g. deploy/cw-bundle.yaml.

While using this cluster-wide versions of configuration files, you should set the following information there:

  • subjects.namespace option should contain the namespace which will host the Operator,
  • WATCH_NAMESPACE key-value pair in the env section should have value equal to a comma-separated list of the namespaces to be watched by the Operator (or just a blank string to make the Operator deal with all namespaces in a Kubernetes cluster).

    Note

    The list of namespaces to watch is fully supported by the Operator starting from the version 1.7 (in the version 1.6 you can only use cluster-wide mode with empty WATCH_NAMESPACE key to watch all namespaces). Also, prior to the version 1.12.0 it was necessary to mention the Operator’s own namespace in the list of watched namespaces.

The following simple example shows how to install Operator cluster-wide on Kubernetes.

  1. First of all, clone the percona-xtradb-cluster-operator repository:

    $ git clone -b v1.15.1 https://github.com/percona/percona-xtradb-cluster-operator
    $ cd percona-xtradb-cluster-operator
    
  2. Let’s suppose that Operator’s namespace should be the pxc-operator one. Create it as follows:

    $ kubectl create namespace pxc-operator
    

    Namespaces to be watched by the Operator should be created in the same way if not exist. Let’s say the Operator should watch the pxc namespace:

    $ kubectl create namespace pxc
    
  3. Edit the deploy/cw-bundle.yaml configuration file to set proper namespaces:

    ...
    subjects:
    - kind: ServiceAccount
      name: percona-xtradb-cluster-operator
      namespace: "pxc"
    ...
    env:
             - name: WATCH_NAMESPACE
               value: "pxc"
    ...
    
  4. Apply the deploy/cw-bundle.yaml file with the following command:

    $ kubectl apply --server-side -f deploy/cw-bundle.yaml -n pxc-operator
    
  5. After the Operator is started, Percona XtraDB Cluster can be created at any time by applying the deploy/cr.yaml configuration file, like in the case of normal installation:

    $ kubectl apply -f deploy/cr.yaml -n pxc
    

    The creation process will take some time. When the process is over your cluster will obtain the ready status. You can check it with the following command:

    $ kubectl get pxc
    
    Expected output
    NAME       ENDPOINT                   STATUS   PXC   PROXYSQL   HAPROXY   AGE
    cluster1   cluster1-haproxy.default   ready    3                3         5m51s
    

Verifying the cluster operation

It may take ten minutes to get the cluster started. When kubectl get pxc command finally shows you the cluster status as ready, you can try to connect to the cluster.

  1. You will need the login and password for the admin user to access the cluster. Use kubectl get secrets command to see the list of Secrets objects (by default the Secrets object you are interested in has cluster1-secrets name). You can use the following command to get the password of the root user:

    $ kubectl get secrets --namespace=pxc cluster1-secrets --template='{{.data.root | base64decode}}{{"\n"}}'
    
  2. Run a container with mysql client and connect its console output to your terminal. The following command will do this, naming the new Pod percona-client:

    $ kubectl run -i --rm --tty percona-client --image=percona:5.7 --restart=Never --env="POD_NAMESPACE=pxc" -- bash -il
    

    Executing it may require some time to deploy the correspondent Pod.

    Now run mysql tool in the percona-client command shell using the password obtained from the secret instead of the <root_password> placeholder. The command will look different depending on whether your cluster provides load balancing with HAProxy (the default choice) or ProxySQL:

    $ mysql -h cluster1-haproxy -uroot -p'<root_password>'
    
    $ mysql -h cluster1-proxysql -uroot -p'<root_password>'
    

Note

Some Kubernetes-based environments are specifically configured to have communication across Namespaces is not allowed by default network policies. In this case, you should specifically allow the Operator communication across the needed Namespaces. Following the above example, you would need to allow ingress traffic for the pxc-operator Namespace from the pxc Namespace, and also from the default Namespace. You can do it with the NetworkPolicy resource, specified in the YAML file as follows:

apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: NetworkPolicy
metadata:
  name: percona
  namespace: pxc-operator
spec:
  ingress:
  - from:
    - namespaceSelector:
        matchLabels:
          kubernetes.io/metadata.name: pxc
    - namespaceSelector:
        matchLabels:
          kubernetes.io/metadata.name: default
  podSelector: {}
  policyTypes:
  - Ingress

Don’t forget to apply the resulting file with the usual kubectl apply command.

You can find more details about Network Policies in the official Kubernetes documentation .

Upgrading the Operator in cluster-wide mode

Cluster-wide Operator is upgraded similarly to a single-namespace one. Both deployment variants provide you with the same three upgradable components:

To upgrade the cluster-wide Operator you follow the standard upgrade scenario concerning the Operator’s namespace and a different YAML configuration file: the one with a special cw- prefix, deploy/cw-rbac.yaml. The resulting steps will look as follows.

  1. Update the Custom Resource Definition for the Operator, taking it from the official repository on Github, and do the same for the Role-based access control:

    $ kubectl apply --server-side -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/percona/percona-xtradb-cluster-operator/v1.15.1/deploy/crd.yaml
    $ kubectl apply --server-side -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/percona/percona-xtradb-cluster-operator/v1.15.1/deploy/cw-rbac.yaml
    
  2. Now you should apply a patch to your deployment, supplying the necessary image name with a newer version tag. You can find the proper image name for the current Operator release in the list of certified images (for older releases, please refer to the old releases documentation archive ). For example, updating to the 1.15.1 version in the pxc-operator namespace should look as follows.

    $ kubectl patch deployment percona-xtradb-cluster-operator \
      -p'{"spec":{"template":{"spec":{"containers":[{"name":"percona-xtradb-cluster-operator","image":"percona/percona-xtradb-cluster-operator:1.15.1"}]}}}}' -n pxc-operator
    
  3. The deployment rollout will be automatically triggered by the applied patch. You can track the rollout process in real time with the kubectl rollout status command with the name of your cluster:

    $ kubectl rollout status deployments percona-xtradb-cluster-operator -n pxc-operator
    

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Last update: 2024-10-29