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Operator and Cluster

Details at https://cloudnative-pg.io/.

For people not familiar with PostgreSQL, there is a popular tool for managing PostgreSQL databases called pgAdmin. https://www.pgadmin.org/

Install operator​

Add repo

helm repo add cnpg https://cloudnative-pg.github.io/charts

This install cnpg operator in the single namespace mode

helm upgrade --install cnpg cnpg/cloudnative-pg \
--version 0.23.2 \
--namespace cnpg-system --create-namespace \
--values k8s/cnpg-system/cnpg-values.yaml

Remote backups​

For the purpose of remote data copy, I'm running an Amazon S3 compatible Minio Server on premise. The Minio Server setup isn't part of this guide.

Feel free to use any S3 compatible object storage. The instructions won't change except for the endpoint URL and your specific keys.

Ensure you have a bucket named cnpg-backup in your S3 compatible storage or adapt accordingly.

Create secret in OpenBao

kubectl exec -ti openbao-0 -n openbao -- bao kv put -mount=kv cnpg-backup-s3-creds \
    ACCESS_KEY_ID="{REPLACE_WITH_ACCESS_KEY_ID}" \
    ACCESS_SECRET_KEY="{REPLACE_WITH_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY}" \
    ENDPOINT_URL="{REPLACE_WITH_S3_ENDPOINT_URL}"

Create external secret

kubectl apply -f k8s/cnpg-system/cnpg-backup-s3-creds-external-secret.yaml

Export endpoint URL variable of Amazon S3 or other S3 compatible storage.

export CNPG_BACKUP_S3_ENDPOINT_URL=$(kubectl get secret cnpg-backup-s3-creds -n cnpg-system -o jsonpath="{.data.ENDPOINT_URL}" | base64 --decode)
warning

Altough we are using Rook Ceph as data store which is replicated 3 times, it is not advisible to skip remote backups. But in case you wish to do so you can set the parameter backups.enabled: false in k8s/cnpg-system/cnpg-cluster-values.yaml which will skip the whole backup configuration.

Cluster setup​

Superuser credentials are created in the previous step.

We can proceed with cluster setup as follows:

envsubst < k8s/cnpg-system/cnpg-cluster-values.yaml | \
helm upgrade --install cnpg-cluster cnpg/cluster \
--version 0.2.1 \
--namespace cnpg-system --create-namespace \
--values -

Accessing the database​

You can use any Postgres client to access the database. For example, you can use psql command line tool. Or the great pgAdmin tool mentioned earlier.

Run the following command to get the information needed to connect to the database.

echo "---- PostgreSQL Connection Info ----"
echo "User: postgres"
echo "Password: $(kubectl get secret cnpg-superuser-secret -n cnpg-system -o jsonpath="{.data.password}" | base64 --decode)"
kubectl port-forward -n cnpg-system svc/cnpg-cluster-rw 5432:5432

cnpg plugin​

https://cloudnative-pg.io/documentation/1.15/cnpg-plugin/

Install cnpg plugin

curl -sSfL \
  https://github.com/cloudnative-pg/cloudnative-pg/raw/main/hack/install-cnpg-plugin.sh | \
  sudo sh -s -- -b /usr/local/bin

Check cluster status

kubectl cnpg status cnpg-cluster -n cnpg-system

You can, for example, restart cluster to apply any configuration changes

kubectl cnpg restart cnpg-cluster -n cnpg-system

Ad-hoc backups​

If you didn't make any updates we schedule a daily backup every midnight. You can test the backups by running an ad-hoc backup (optional):

kubectl cnpg backup cnpg-cluster -n cnpg-system

You can list backups with the following cmd:

kubectl get backups -n cnpg-system --selector cnpg.io/cluster=cnpg-cluster