This document describes how a new seed cluster can be added to an existing KKP master cluster.
For smaller scale setups it’s possible to use the existing master cluster as a seed cluster (a “shared” cluster installation). In this case both master and seed components will run on the same cluster and in the same namespace. It is however not possible to use the same cluster for multiple seeds.
Please refer to the architecture diagrams for more information about the cluster relationships.
KKP performs regular backups of user clusters by snapshotting the etcd of each cluster. Default configuration uses in-cluster object storage provided by Minio. It can be installed using minio Helm chart provided with the KKP installer.
If you wish to use a different S3-compatible solution for storage of backups, it can be configured within the KubermaticConfiguration object. Refer to the KubermaticConfiguration documentation for an example of .spec.backup fields and values. Following content assumes you’re using the provided minio Helm chart.
Minio requires a storage class, which will be used as a backend for the exposed object storage. You can view the storage classes available on the cluster using the following command:
kubectl get storageclasses
Output will be similar to this:
#NAME PROVISIONER AGE
#kubermatic-fast kubernetes.io/aws-ebs 195d
#kubermatic-backup kubernetes.io/aws-ebs 195d
#standard (default) kubernetes.io/aws-ebs 2y43d
If you cluster does not have a default storage class configured, you have to configure Minio to use a specific one. We’ll follow up with creating a storage class named kubermatic-backup and setting Minio up to use it.
As Minio does not require any of the SSD’s advantages, we can use HDD-backed storage. It’s recommended that Minio uses a separate storage class with a different location/security level. For a cluster running on AWS, an example class could look as follows:
apiVersion: storage.k8s.io/v1
kind: StorageClass
metadata:
name: kubermatic-backup
provisioner: kubernetes.io/aws-ebs
parameters:
type: sc1
To configure the storage class to use and the size of backing storage, edit minio section in your values.yaml file. For more information about the Minio options, take a look at minio chart values.yaml and the min.io documentation - S3 gateway.
minio:
storeSize: '200Gi'
# specified storageClass will be used as a storage provider for minio
# which will be used store the etcd backup of the seed hosted user clusters
storageClass: kubermatic-backup
# access key/secret for the exposed minio S3 gateway
credentials:
# generated access key length should be at least 3 characters
accessKey: "YOUR-ACCESS-KEY"
# generated secret key length should be at least 8 characters
secretKey: "YOUR-SECRET-KEY"
As a good practice, we also recommend installing the s3-exporter Helm chart, which provides metrics regarding user cluster backups.
After configuring the required options, you can install the charts:
Helm 3
helm --namespace minio upgrade --install --wait --values /path/to/your/helm-values.yaml minio charts/minio/
helm --namespace kube-system upgrade --install --wait --values /path/to/your/helm-values.yaml s3-exporter charts/s3-exporter/
If you are installing seed separately, its important to install kubermatic CRDs. Run below in Seed Cluster
Please execute:
# change into kkp installer directory
kubectl apply -f charts/kubermatic-operator/crd/
Run below in MASTER Cluster
To connect the new seed cluster with the master, you need to create a kubeconfig Secret and a Seed resource. This allows the KKP components in the master cluster to communicate with the seed cluster and reconcile user-cluster control planes.
To make sure that the kubeconfig stays valid forever, it must not contain temporary login tokens. Depending on the
cloud provider, the default kubeconfig that is provided may not contain username+password / a client certificate, but instead
try to talk to local token helper programs like aws-iam-authenticator for AWS or gcloud for the Google Cloud (GKE).
These kubeconfig files will not work for setting up Seeds.
The kubermatic-installer tool provides a command convert-kubeconfig that can be used to prepare a kubeconfig for
usage in Kubermatic. The script will create a ServiceAccount in the seed cluster, bind it to the cluster-admin role
and then put the ServiceAccount’s token into the kubeconfig file. Afterwards the file can be used in KKP.
./kubermatic-installer convert-kubeconfig <ORIGINAL-KUBECONFIG-FILE> > my-kubeconfig-file
The Seed resource itself needs to be called kubermatic (for the Community Edition) and needs to reference the new
kubeconfig Secret like so:
apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
name: kubeconfig-kubermatic
namespace: kubermatic
type: Opaque
data:
# You can use `base64 -w0 my-kubeconfig-file` to encode the
# kubeconfig properly for inserting into this Secret.
kubeconfig: <base64 encoded kubeconfig>
---
apiVersion: kubermatic.k8s.io/v1
kind: Seed
metadata:
# The Seed *must* be named "kubermatic".
name: kubermatic
namespace: kubermatic
spec:
# these two fields are only informational
country: DE
location: Hamburg
# list of datacenters where this seed cluster is allowed to create clusters in
datacenters: {}
# reference to the kubeconfig to use when connecting to this seed cluster
kubeconfig:
name: kubeconfig-kubermatic
namespace: kubermatic
Refer to the Seed CRD documentation for a complete example of the Seed CustomResource and all possible datacenters.
You can override the global Expose Strategy at Seed level if you wish to.
Apply the manifest above in the master cluster and KKP will pick up the new Seed and begin to
reconcile it by installing the required KKP components. You can watch the progress by using
kubectl and watch:
kubectl apply -f seed-with-secret.yaml
Output will be similar to this:
Secret/kubeconfig-kubermatic created.
Seed/kubermatic created.
watch kubectl -n kubermatic get pods
Output will be similar to this:
#NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE
#kubermatic-api-55765568f7-br9jl 1/1 Running 0 5m4s
#kubermatic-api-55765568f7-xbvz2 1/1 Running 0 5m13s
#kubermatic-dashboard-5d784d586b-f46f8 1/1 Running 0 35m
#kubermatic-dashboard-5d784d586b-rgl29 1/1 Running 0 35m
#kubermatic-master-controller-manager-f58d4df59-w7rkz 1/1 Running 0 5m13s
#kubermatic-operator-7f6957869d-89g55 1/1 Running 0 5m37s
#nodeport-proxy-envoy-6d8bb6fbff-9z57l 2/2 Running 0 5m6s
#nodeport-proxy-envoy-6d8bb6fbff-dl58l 2/2 Running 0 4m54s
#nodeport-proxy-envoy-6d8bb6fbff-k4gp8 2/2 Running 0 4m44s
#nodeport-proxy-updater-7fd55f948-cll8n 1/1 Running 0 4m44s
#seed-proxy-kubermatic-6dd5cc95cf-r6wvb 1/1 Running 0 80m
Depending on the chosen Expose Strategy, the control planes of all user clusters
running in the Seed cluster will be exposed by the nodeport-proxy or using
services of type NodePort directly.
By default each user cluster gets a virtual domain name like
[cluster-id].[seed-name].[kubermatic-domain], e.g. hdu328tr.kubermatic.kubermatic.example.com
for the Seed from the previous step with kubermatic.example.com being the main domain where the
KKP dashboard/API are available.
A wildcard DNS record *.[seed-name].[kubermatic-domain] must be created.
The target of the DNS wildcard record should be the EXTERNAL-IP of the nodeport-proxy service
in the kubermatic namespace or a set of seed nodes IPs.
When your cloud provider supports LoadBalancers, you can find the target IP / hostname by looking at the
nodeport-proxy Service:
kubectl -n kubermatic get services
Output will be similar to this:
#NAME TYPE CLUSTER-IP EXTERNAL-IP PORT(S) AGE
#nodeport-proxy LoadBalancer 10.47.248.232 8.7.6.5 80:32014/TCP,443:30772/TCP 449d
The EXTERNAL-IP is what we need to put into the DNS record.
Without a LoadBalancer, you will need to point to one or many of the seed cluster’s nodes. You can get a list of external IPs like so:
kubectl get nodes -o wide
Output will be similar to this:
#NAME STATUS ROLES AGE VERSION INTERNAL-IP EXTERNAL-IP
#worker-node-cbd686cd-50nx Ready <none> 3h36m v1.15.8-gke.3 10.156.0.36 8.7.6.4
#worker-node-cbd686cd-59s2 Ready <none> 21m v1.15.8-gke.3 10.156.0.14 8.7.6.3
#worker-node-cbd686cd-90j3 Ready <none> 45m v1.15.8-gke.3 10.156.0.22 8.7.6.2
Create an A or CNAME record as needed pointing to the target:
*.kubermatic.kubermatic.example.com. IN A 8.7.6.5
or, for a CNAME:
*.kubermatic.kubermatic.example.com. IN CNAME myloadbalancer.example.com.