Helm

Helm is the preferred way to install MariaDB Enterprise Operator in Kubernetes clusters. This documentation aims to provide guidance on how to manage the installation and upgrades of both the CRDs and the operator via Helm charts.

Table of contents

• Prerequisites
• Charts
• Control-plane
• Installing CRDs
• Installing the operator
• Deployment modes
• Updates
• Operator high availability
• Uninstalling
• Operator helm values

Prerequisites

Configure your customer credentials as described in the documentation to be able to pull images.

Charts

MariaDB Enterprise Operator is splitted into two different helm charts for better convenience:

• mariadb-enterprise-operator-crds: Bundles the CustomResourceDefinitions required by the operator.
• mariadb-enterprise-operator: Contains all the template manifests required to install the operator. Refer to the operator helm values section for detailed information about the supported values.

Control-plane

The operator extends the Kubernetes control plane and consists of the following components deployed via Helm:

• operator: The mariadb-enterprise-operator itself that performs the CRD reconciliation.
• webhook: The Kubernetes control-plane delegates CRD validations to this HTTP server. Kubernetes requires TLS to communicate with the webhook server.
• cert-controller: Provisions TLS certificates for the webhook. You can see it as a minimal cert-manager that is intended to work only with the webhook. It is optional and can be replaced by cert-manager.

Installing CRDs

Helm has certain limitations when it comes to manage CRDs. To address this, we are providing the CRDs in a separate chart, as recommended by the official Helm documentation. This allows us to manage the installation and updates of the CRDs independently from the operator. For example, you can uninstall the operator without impacting your existing MariaDB CRDs.

CRDs can be installed in your cluster by running the following commands

helm repo add mariadb-enterprise-operator https://operator.mariadb.com
helm install mariadb-enterprise-operator-crds mariadb-enterprise-operator/mariadb-enterprise-operator-crds

Installing the operator

The first step is to prepare a values.yaml file to specify your previously configured customer credentials:

imagePullSecrets:
  - name: mariadb-enterprise

webhook:
  imagePullSecrets:
      - name: mariadb-enterprise

certController:
  imagePullSecrets:
    - name: mariadb-enterprise

Then, you can proceed to install the operator:

helm repo add mariadb-enterprise-operator https://operator.mariadb.com
helm install mariadb-enterprise-operator mariadb-enterprise-operator/mariadb-enterprise-operator \
  -f values.yaml

If you have the prometheus operator and cert-manager already installed in your cluster, it is recommended to leverage them to scrape the operator metrics and provision the webhook certificate respectively:

helm repo add mariadb-enterprise-operator https://operator.mariadb.com
helm install mariadb-enterprise-operator mariadb-enterprise-operator/mariadb-enterprise-operator \
  -f values.yaml \
  --set metrics.enabled=true --set webhook.cert.certManager.enabled=true

Refer to the operator helm values section for detailed information about the supported values.

Deployment modes

The following deployment modes are supported:

Cluster-wide

The operator watches CRDs in all namespaces and requires cluster-wide RBAC permissions to operate. This is the default deployment mode, enabled through the default configuration values:

helm repo add mariadb-enterprise-operator https://operator.mariadb.com
helm install mariadb-enterprise-operator mariadb-enterprise-operator/mariadb-enterprise-operator

Single namespace

By setting currentNamespaceOnly=true, the operator will only watch CRDs within the namespace it is deployed in, and the RBAC permissions will be restricted to that namespace as well:

helm repo add mariadb-enterprise-operator https://operator.mariadb.com
helm install mariadb-enterprise-operator \
  -n databases --create-namespace \
  -f values.yaml \
  --set currentNamespaceOnly=true \
  mariadb-enterprise-operator/mariadb-enterprise-operator

Updates

IMPORTANT Make sure you read and understand the updates documentation before proceeding to update the operator.

The first step is upgrading the CRDs that the operator depends on:

helm repo update mariadb-enterprise-operator
helm upgrade --install mariadb-enterprise-operator-crds \
  --version <new-version> \
  mariadb-enterprise-operator/mariadb-enterprise-operator-crds

Once updated, you may proceed to upgrade the operator:

helm repo update mariadb-enterprise-operator
helm upgrade --install mariadb-enterprise-operator \
  --version <new-version> \
  mariadb-enterprise-operator/mariadb-enterprise-operator

Whenever a new version of the operator is released, an upgrade guide is linked in the release notes if additional upgrade steps are required. Be sure to review the release notes and follow the version-specific upgrade guides accordingly.

Operator high availability

The operator can run in high availability mode to prevent downtime during updates and ensure continuous reconciliation of your CRs, even if the node where the operator runs goes down. To achieve this, you need:

• Multiple replicas
• Configure Pod anti-affinity
• Configure PodDisruptionBudgets

You can achieve this by providing the following values to the helm chart:

ha:
  enabled: true
  replicas: 3

affinity:
  podAntiAffinity:
    requiredDuringSchedulingIgnoredDuringExecution:
    - labelSelector:
        matchExpressions:
        - key: app.kubernetes.io/name
          operator: In
          values:
          - mariadb-enterprise-operator
        - key: app.kubernetes.io/instance
          operator: In
          values:
          - mariadb-enterprise-operator
      topologyKey: kubernetes.io/hostname

pdb:
  enabled: true
  maxUnavailable: 1

You may similarly configure the webhook and cert-controller components to run in high availability mode by providing the same values to their respective sections. Refer to the operator helm values for detailed information.

Uninstalling

CAUTION Uninstalling the mariadb-enterprise-operator-crds Helm chart will remove the CRDs and their associated resources, resulting in downtime.

First, uninstall the mariadb-enterprise-operator Helm chart. This action will not delete your CRDs, so your operands (i.e. MariaDB and MaxScale) will continue to run without the operator's reconciliation.

helm uninstall mariadb-enterprise-operator

At this point, if you also want to delete CRDs and the operands running in your cluster, you may proceed to uninstall the mariadb-enterprise-operator-crds Helm chart:

helm uninstall mariadb-enterprise-operator-crds

Operator helm values