Use Helm to Create an Aerospike Cluster on Kubernetes

Follow these instructions to use the Operator to deploy the Aerospike cluster using Helm.

Requirements

Before deploying your Aerospike cluster using Helm, you must use Helm to install the Aerospike Kubernetes Operator on your cluster.

note

For Kubernetes 1.23 version or later, Pod Security Admission (PSA) is enabled by default. Make sure the namespace where the Aerospike Cluster is deployed has either baseline or privileged Pod Security Standard level set. The restricted level is not supported by Aerospike. The default Pod Security Standard level in Kubernetes 1.23 is privileged. For more details, see Apply Pod Security Standards

Configure Persistent Storage

The Aerospike Operator works with dynamically-provisioned storage classes. Aerospike Server pods may have different storage volumes associated with each service.

Persistent storage on the pods uses these storage class provisioners.

Apply a sample storage class based on your Kubernetes environment:

• EKS: kubectl apply -f eks_ssd_storage_class.yaml
• GCE: kubectl apply -f gce_ssd_storage_class.yaml
• Microk8s: kubectl apply -f microk8s_filesystem_storage_class.yaml

See Storage Provisioning for more details on configuring persistent storage.

Create Secrets

Next, create Secrets to set up features like the license file (features.conf), Aerospike authentication, TLS, and the cluster admin password. See the Manage TLS Certificates section for more details.

The example Secrets directory includes a collection of example TLS certificates, security credentials, and more. Download these files into a local folder called secrets, then apply them as a Kubernetes Secret:

kubectl  -n aerospike create secret generic aerospike-secret --from-file=secrets

Create a Secret containing the password for the Aerospike cluster admin:

kubectl  -n aerospike create secret generic auth-secret --from-literal=password='admin123'

Get the Helm Charts

To get the Helm charts, clone the aerospike/aerospike-kubernetes-operator repository.

git clone https://github.com/aerospike/aerospike-kubernetes-operator.git

The charts are in the aerospike-kubernetes-operator/helm-charts folder.

cd aerospike-kubernetes-operator/helm-charts

Deploy the Cluster

Create a Secret containing the Aerospike feature key file features.conf.

kubectl create secret generic aerospike-license --from-file=[path to your features.conf file]

Install the chart.

helm install aerospike ./aerospike-cluster \
    --set devMode=true

tip

This command assumes few defaults, and deploys an Aerospike cluster in "dev" mode with no data persistence. We recommend you create a custom YAML file with your required configurations, and apply it with helm install.

helm install aerospike ./aerospike-cluster/ \
    -f [custom YAML file]

Configurations

For more details on these configurations, see the Aerospike Cluster Configuration Settings.

Name	Description	Default
replicas	Aerospike cluster size.	3
image.repository	Aerospike Server container image repository.	aerospike/aerospike-server-enterprise
image.tag	Aerospike Server container image tag.	5.5.0.9
imagePullSecrets	Secrets containing credentials to pull Aerospike container image from a private registry.	{} (nil)
aerospikeAccessControl	Aerospike access control configuration. Define users and roles to be created on the cluster.	{} (nil)
aerospikeConfig	Aerospike configuration.	{} (nil)
aerospikeNetworkPolicy	Network policy (client access configuration).	{} (nil)
commonName	Base string for naming pods, services, stateful sets, and so forth.	Release name truncated to 63 characters without hyphens
podSpec	Aerospike pod spec configuration.	{} (nil)
rackConfig	Aerospike rack configuration.	{} (nil)
storage	Aerospike pod storage configuration.	{} (nil)
validationPolicy	Validation policy.	{} (nil)
operatorClientCert	Client certificates to connect to Aerospike.	{} (nil)
seedsFinderServices	Service (e.g. loadbalancer) for Aerospike cluster discovery.	{} (nil)
devMode	Deploy Aerospike cluster in dev mode.	false

Default Values in "dev" Mode

These values are set as defaults when the cluster is deployed in "dev" mode (devMode=true).

aerospikeConfig:
  service:
    feature-key-file: /etc/aerospike/secrets/features.conf

  security:
    enable-security: false

  network:
    service:
      port: 3000
    fabric:
      port: 3001
    heartbeat:
      port: 3002

  namespaces:
    - name: test
      memory-size: 1073741824 # 1GiB
      replication-factor: 2
      storage-engine:
        type: memory

podSpec:
  multiPodPerHost: true

storage:
  volumes:
  - name: aerospike-config-secret
    source:
      secret:
        secretName: aerospike-license
    aerospike:
      path: /etc/aerospike/secrets

validationPolicy:
  skipWorkDirValidate: true
  skipXdrDlogFileValidate: true