postgres operator

The Postgres operator manages Postgres clusters in Kubernetes using the operator pattern. During the initial run it registers the Third Party Resource (TPR) for Postgres. The Postgresql TPR is essentially the schema that describes the contents of the manifests for deploying individual Postgres clusters using Statefulsets and Patroni.

Once the operator is running, it performs the following actions:

• watches for new Postgres cluster manifests and deploys corresponding clusters.
• watches for updates to existing manifests and changes corresponding properties of the running clusters.
• watches for deletes of the existing manifests and deletes corresponding database clusters.
• acts on an update to the operator definition itself and changes the running clusters when necessary (i.e. when the docker image inside the operator definition has been updated.)
• periodically checks running clusters against the manifests and acts on the differences found.

For instance, when the user creates a new custom object of type postgresql by submitting a new manifest with kubectl, the operator fetches that object and creates the corresponding kubernetes structures (StatefulSets, Services, Secrets) according to its definition.

Another example is changing the docker image inside the operator. In this case, the operator first goes to all Statefulsets it manages and updates them with the new docker images; afterwards, all pods from each Statefulset are killed one by one (rolling upgrade) and the replacements are spawned automatically by each Statefulset with the new docker image.

Status

This project is currently in development. It is used internally by Zalando in order to run staging databases on Kubernetes. Please, report any issues discovered to https://github.com/zalando-incubator/postgres-operator/issues.

Setting up Go

Postgres operator is written in Go. Use the installation instructions if you don't have Go on your system. You won't be able to compile the operator with Go older than 1.7. We recommend installing the latest one.

Go projects expect their source code and all the dependencies to be located under the GOPATH. Normally, one would create a directory for the GOPATH (i.e. ~/go) and place the source code under the ~/go/src subdirectories.

Given the schema above, the postgres operator source code located at github.com/zalando-incubator/postgres-operator should be put at -~/go/src/github.com/zalando-incubator/postgres-operator.

$ export GOPATH=~/go
$ mkdir -p ${GOPATH}/src/github.com/zalando-incubator/
$ cd ${GOPATH}/src/github.com/zalando-incubator/ && git clone https://github.com/zalando-incubator/postgres-operator.git

Building the operator

You need Glide to fetch all dependencies. Install it with:

$ make tools

Next, install dependencies with glide by issuing:

$ make deps

This would take a while to complete. You have to redo make deps every time you dependencies list changes, i.e. after adding a new library dependency.

Build the operator docker image and pushing it to Pier One:

$ make docker push

You may define the TAG variable to assign an explicit tag to your docker image and the IMAGE to set the image name. By default, the tag is computed with git describe --tags --always --dirty and the image is pierone.stups.zalan.do/acid/postgres-operator

Building the operator binary (for testing the out-of-cluster option):

$ make

The binary will be placed into the build directory.

Testing the operator

The best way to test the operator is to run it in minikube. Minikube is a tool to run Kubernetes cluster locally.

Installing and starting minikube

See minikube installation guide

Make sure you use the latest version of Minikube. After the installation, issue the

$ minikube start

Note: if you are running on a Mac, make sure to use the xhyve driver instead of the default docker-machine one for performance reasons.

One you have it started successfully, use the quickstart guide in order to test your that your setup is working.

Note: if you use multiple kubernetes clusters, you can switch to minikube with kubectl config use-context minikube

Deploy etcd

Etcd is required to deploy the operator.

$ kubectl --context minikube  create -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/coreos/etcd/master/hack/kubernetes-deploy/etcd.yml

Create ConfigMap

ConfigMap is used to store configuration of the operator

$ kubectl --context minikube  create -f manifests/configmap.yaml

Deploy fake Teams API

Teams API is used as a source of human users.

$ kubectl --context minikube  create -f manifests/fake-teams-api.yaml

Deploying the operator

You need to install the service account definition in your minikube cluster. You can run without it, but then you have to change the service account references in the postgres-operator manifest as well.

$ kubectl --context minikube create -f manifests/serviceaccount.yaml

The fastest way to run your docker image locally is to reuse the docker from minikube. That way, there is no need to pull docker images from pierone or push them, as the image is essentially there once you build it. The following steps will get you the docker image built and deployed.

$ eval $(minikube docker-env)
$ export TAG=$(git describe --tags --always --dirty)
$ make docker
$ sed -e "s/\(image\:.*\:\).*$/\1$TAG/" manifests/postgres-operator.yaml|kubectl --context minikube create  -f -

The last line changes the docker image tag in the manifest to the one the operator image has been built with and removes the serviceAccountName definition, as the ServiceAccount is not defined in minikube (neither it should, as one has admin permissions there).

Check if ThirdPartyResource has been registered

$ kubectl --context minikube   get thirdpartyresources

NAME                       DESCRIPTION                   VERSION(S)
postgresql.acid.zalan.do   Managed PostgreSQL clusters   v1

Create a new spilo cluster

$ kubectl --context minikube  create -f manifests/testpostgresql.yaml

Watch Pods being created

$ kubectl --context minikube  get pods -w --show-labels

Connect to PostgreSQL

We can use the generated secret of the postgres robot user to connect to our acid-testcluster master running in Minikube:

$ export HOST_PORT=$(minikube service acid-testcluster --url | sed 's,.*/,,')
$ export PGHOST=$(echo $HOST_PORT | cut -d: -f 1)
$ export PGPORT=$(echo $HOST_PORT | cut -d: -f 2)
$ export PGPASSWORD=$(kubectl --context minikube get secret postgres.acid-testcluster.credentials.postgresql.acid.zalan.do -o 'jsonpath={.data.password}' | base64 -d)
$ psql -U postgres