Accessing cassandra pods with terminal
tags: cassandra, kubernetes, k8s, pods, kubectl, bash
Blog building in-progress, come back again soon as updates are happening here.
How To: Cass-Operator on IKS
In the previous article I introduced the Cass Operator. In this article I am going to jump right in feet first and expose how you can complete the documeted steps for GKE but in the IKS Platform. Now the main point here with a unified system (k8s) is the adminstrative effort should be almost identical across platforms (gke,eks,aks,pks,etc). Ping me to talk about the differences.
What is IKS?
IKS is IBM Cloud’s Kubernetes Engine. I was recently given the opportunity to test out Cass-Operator on GKE and then had an internal ping to support the Cass Operator on IKS. Challenge Accepted! This post is me exposing the steps I had to take to get Cassandra DSE rolled out on IKS.
Creating Kubernetes Cluster on IKS
The IBM Cloud UI was super easy to use. I was able to get a Kubernetes Cluster up and running pretty easy and with some free credits. I was even easily able to get my terminal connected. I wont go into detail here as you can easily find this information after you create your cluster. With a cluster created and your environment setup, the rest is almost too easy.
What Commands Did I Run?
ibmcloud login -u <username> -p <password> -a cloud.ibm.com -r us-south -g Default
ibmcloud ks cluster config --cluster mycluster-dal12-b3c.4x16
helm repo add iks-charts https://icr.io/helm/iks-charts
helm repo update
kubectl create -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/datastax/cass-operator/master/docs/user/cass-operator-manifests-v1.18.yaml
helm install block-storage-plugin iks-charts/ibmcloud-block-storage-plugin -n cass-operator
kubectl create -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ds-steven-matison/cass-operator/master/operator/k8s-flavors/iks/storage-block.yaml
kubectl -n cass-operator create -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ds-steven-matison/cass-operator/master/operator/example-cassdc-yaml/dse-6.8.x/example-cassdc-minimal2.yaml
kubectl -n cass-operator get pods
kubectl get secret -o yaml cluster1-superuser -n cass-operator
echo 'password string' | base64 -d
kubectl exec -n cass-operator -i -t -c cassandra cluster1-dc1-default-sts-0 -- cqlsh -u cluster1-superuser -p <password>
What Were The Sharp Edges?
- IBM IKS documentation is vast volumes of information
- Major functional system differences based on before or after Dec 1, 2020
- The DataStax Kubernetes Operator for Apache Cassandra is BETA
- The differences between documentation (GKE) and IKS are related to storage and networking
- More major differences between Classic and VPC IKS Clusters
What Are Lessons Learned?
- I had to learn how to connect my local environment to IBM Cloud and IKS using IBM Cloud SDK.
- I had to learn to navigate the vast volumes of text at IBM Cloud Docs.
- I needed to utilize the IBM Cloud Slack Community help to resolve some friction.
Cass-Operator + IKS How Tos
Backing up cassandra data on IKS
tags: backup, cassandra, iks, ibm, cloud, storage, s3
Prometheus & Graphana Metrics
tags: grafana, prometheus, iks, cassandra, metrics
Kubernetes Prometheus & Graphana Stack
tags: grafana, prometheus, iks, cassandra, metrics
What’s Next?
Stay tuned for more updates here and additional IKS cass operator topics as I dig in even more with the Datastax Cassandra Operator on IKS. I am currently working on current content updates and new Ingress sections to be posted soon. Additionally my lessons learned and the required differences for IKS will be used to contribue to the Cassandra Operator Knowledge base. Later we should see the Cass Operator documentation updated with IKS as a supported platform.
How can I help you with Kubernetes?
Find me over on the DataStax Community to ask me any questions about Cassandra and Kubernetes. Also let’s chat if you have something kewl you did with Cassandra and Kubernetes and you want me to feature it in my blog. Look below or to the right for more ways to find me.