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Bring your own Kubernetes (BYOK)

Using your Kubernetes infrastructure

Altinity.Cloud Anywhere uses your Kubernetes infrastructure to host your ClickHouse clusters. Your Kubernetes cluster needs to be set up a certain way; in this section we’ll go over those requirements.

1 - Kubernetes requirements

Configuring your Kubernetes environment

Altinity.Cloud Anywhere operates inside your Kubernetes environment. The general requirements for your Kubernetes environment are:

  • Kubernetes version 1.23 or higher in EKS (AWS) or GKE (GCP)
  • Every Node should have the following labels:
    • node.kubernetes.io/instance-type
    • kubernetes.io/arch
    • topology.kubernetes.io/zone
  • A StorageClass with dynamic provisioning is required
  • LoadBalancer services must be supported

To get the most from Altinity.Cloud Anywhere features:

  • Each StorageClass should preferably allow volume expansion
  • Multiple zones are preferable for high availability
  • Autoscaling is preferable for easier vertical scaling

For platform-specific requirements, see the following sections:

AWS requirements

We recommend setting up karpenter or cluster-autoscaler to launch instances in at least 3 Availability Zones.

If you plan on sharing Kubernetes cluster with other workloads, it’s recommended you label Kubernetes Nodes intended for Altinity.Cloud Anywhere with altinity.cloud/use=anywhere and taint them with dedicated=anywhere:NoSchedule.

Instance types

For Zookeeper infrastructure nodes

  • t3.large or t4g.large*

t4g instances are AWS Graviton2-based (ARM).

For ClickHouse nodes

ClickHouse works best in AWS when using nodes from these instance families:

  • m5
  • m6i
  • m6g*

m6g instances are AWS Graviton2-based (ARM).

Instance sizes from large to 8xlarge are typical.

Storage classes

  • gp2*
  • gp3-encrypted*

We recommend using gp3 storage classes that provide more flexibility and performance over gp2. The gp3 storage classes require the Amazon EBS CSI driver; that driver is not automatically installed. See the AWS CSI driver documentation for details on how to install the driver.

Storage class can be installed with the following manifest:

kind: StorageClass
apiVersion: storage.k8s.io/v1
metadata:
  name: gp3-encrypted
  annotations:
    storageclass.kubernetes.io/is-default-class: 'true'
provisioner: ebs.csi.aws.com
parameters:
  encrypted: 'true'
  fsType: ext4
  type: gp3
reclaimPolicy: Delete
volumeBindingMode: WaitForFirstConsumer
allowVolumeExpansion: true

The default throughput for gp3 is 125MB/s for any volume size. It can be increased in AWS console or using storage class parameters. Here is an example:

kind: StorageClass
apiVersion: storage.k8s.io/v1
metadata:
  name: gp3-encrypted-500
provisioner: ebs.csi.aws.com
parameters:
  encrypted: 'true'
  fsType: ext4
  throughput: '500'
  type: gp3
reclaimPolicy: Delete
volumeBindingMode: WaitForFirstConsumer
allowVolumeExpansion: true

Alternatively, you recommend installing the Altinity EBS parameters controller. That allows you to manage EBS volume throughput dynamically through annotations. This is also integrated to Altinity.Cloud UI (ACM).

GCP requirements

Machine types

For Zookeeper and infrastructure nodes

  • e2-standard-2

For ClickHouse nodes

It’s recommended to taint node pools with dedicated=clickhouse:NoSchedule (in addition to altinity.cloud/use=anywhere:NoSchedule).

  • n2d-standard-2
  • n2d-standard-4
  • n2d-standard-8
  • n2d-standard-16
  • n2d-standard-32

If GCP is out of n2d-standard-* instances in the region of your choice, we recommend substituting them with n2-standard-*.

Storage classes

  • standard-rwo
  • premium-rwo

GKE comes pre-configured with both.

2 - Connecting to Altinity.Cloud Anywhere

Tying everything together

This tutorial explains how to use Altinity.Cloud Anywhere to deploy ClickHouse clusters using your choice of a third-party Kubernetes cloud provider, or using your own hardware or private company cloud. The Altinity.Cloud Manager (ACM) is used to manage your ClickHouse clusters.

If you’re just getting started, you can get a trial account in three steps:

  1. Use your business email address to sign up for a free trial on the Altinity.Cloud Anywhere trial page.
    NOTE: This must be a business email address. Addresses like *@gmail.com or *@yahoo.com are not accepted.
  2. You’ll get an email from Altinity. Follow the instructions to validate your email address.
  3. The final email you’ll get contains a login link to create a password to log in to the Altinity Cloud Manager.

Connecting Kubernetes

The first time you log in, you will be directed to the environment setup tab shown in Figure 1. If you have an existing account or restart the installation, just select the Environments tab on the left side of your screen to reach the setup page.

Be sure to select “Provisioned by User” as shown in Figure 1.

Environment - Connection Setup Tab
Figure 1 - The Environments > Connection Setup tab in the Altinity.Cloud Manager.


Connection setup

Highlighted in red in Figure 1 are the steps to complete before you select the PROCEED button.

  1. Install the latest version of Altinity.Cloud connect for your system.

  2. Copy and paste the connection string at the command line.

   altinitycloud-connect login --token=<registration token>

This initiates a TLS handshake that creates a certificate file named cloud-connect.pem on your machine. There is no output at the command line.

  1. Run this command to deploy the connector to your Kubernetes cluster.
   altinitycloud-connect kubernetes | kubectl apply -f -

The altinitycloud-connect kubernetes command generates YAML that includes the .pem file generated in the previous step. This step may take several minutes to complete.


The response will be something like this: 
    namespace/altinity-cloud-system created
    namespace/altinity-cloud-managed-clickhouse created 
    clusterrole.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/altinity-cloud:node-view unchanged
    clusterrole.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/altinity-cloud:node-metrics-view unchanged
    clusterrole.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/altinity-cloud:storage-class-view unchanged
    clusterrole.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/altinity-cloud:persistent-volume-view unchanged
    clusterrole.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/altinity-cloud:cloud-connect unchanged
    serviceaccount/cloud-connect created
    clusterrolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/altinity-cloud:cloud-connect unchanged
    clusterrolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/altinity-cloud:node-view unchanged
    clusterrolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/altinity-cloud:node-metrics-view unchanged
    clusterrolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/altinity-cloud:storage-class-view unchanged
    clusterrolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/altinity-cloud:persistent-volume-view unchanged
    rolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/altinity-cloud:cloud-connect created
    rolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/altinity-cloud:cloud-connect created
    secret/cloud-connect created
    deployment.apps/cloud-connect created

Notice the altinity-cloud-system and altinity-cloud-managed-clickhouse namespaces above. All the resources Altinity.Cloud Anywhere creates are in those namespaces; you should not create anything in those namespaces yourself.

Configuring resources

Once these commands have completed select the PROCEED button. After the connection is made, you will advance to the Resources Configuration screen as shown in Figure 2.

At the Resources Configuration screen, set the resources used for ClickHouse clusters as follows.

  1. Make sure the correct cloud provider is selected. Altinity.Cloud Anywhere should detect this correctly based on the connection you established earlier.
  2. Add Storage Classes names as needed. These are the block storage classes for your nodes. Use the ADD STORAGE CLASS button to add additional storage classes as needed to allocate block storage for nodes in your environment.
  3. In the Node Pools section, Inspect the node pool list to ensure the availability zones and pools you wish to use are listed.
    • In the Used For section, ClickHouse, Zookeeper, and System must be selected at least once in at least one of the node pools. Selecting multiple node pools for ClickHouse nodes is highly recommended.
    • Listed are the Instance Types that are currently in use. Click ADD NODE POOL to add anything that’s missing.

The following Resources Configuration example shows the settings for a Google Cloud Platform environment.

Resources Configuration Tab
Figure 2 - The Resources Configuration setup page for connecting cloudv2-gcp to Altinity.Cloud.

Be aware that you can add more node pools later if needed.

Confirming your settings

The Confirmation screen in Figure 3 displays a JSON representation of the settings you just made. Review these settings; you can edit the JSON directly if needed. When the JSON is correct, select FINISH.

Confirmation Tab
Figure 3 - Confirmation page showing the JSON version of the settings.

It will take a few minutes for all the resources to be provisioned.

Connection completed

Once the connection is fully set up, the ACM Environments dashboard will display your new environment as shown in Figure 4.

Provisioned Environment Tab
Figure 4 - Environment dashboard tab showing your running Anywhere cluster.

If you have any problems, see the Troubleshooting section below.

Administering Altinity.Cloud Anywhere

Once your environment is configured, you use the Altinity Cloud Manager (ACM) to perform common user and administrative tasks. The steps and tools to manage your ClickHouse clusters are the same for Altinity.Cloud Anywhere and Altinity.Cloud.

Here are some common tasks from the ACM documentation:

The ACM documentation includes:

Testing ClickHouse inside a ClickHouse pod

This section shows you how to use your machine to log in to the Clickhouse Cluster you created in Altinity Cloud Manager.

Prerequisite

Connection String

The connection string comes from your cluster (Example: test-gcp-anyw) Connection Details link. The Copy/Paste for client connections string highlighted in red in Figure 5 is used in your terminal (you supply the password; Example: adminpassword)

Finding the connection string
Figure 5 - Using the Cluster > EXPLORE > Query tab to create and query ClickHouse databases and tables.

  1. Find your pod name:
kubectl -n altinity-cloud-managed-clickhouse get all

# Response
NAME                                               READY   STATUS    RESTARTS        AGE
pod/chi-test-anywhere-6-johndoe-anywhere-6-0-0-0   2/2     Running   8 (3h25m ago)   2d17h
  1. On your command line terminal, login to that pod using the name you got from step 1:
kubectl -n altinity-cloud-managed-clickhouse exec -it pod/chi-test-anywhere-6-johndoe-anywhere-6-0-0-0 -- bash

# Response
Defaulted container "clickhouse-pod" out of: clickhouse-pod, clickhouse-backup
clickhouse@chi-test-anywhere-6-johndoe-anywhere-6-0-0-0:/$
  1. Login to your ClickHouse database using the clickhouse-client command to get the :) happy face prompt:
clickhouse@chi-test-anywhere-6-johndoe-anywhere-6-0-0-0:/$ 
clickhouse@chi-test-anywhere-6-johndoe-anywhere-6-0-0-0:/$ clickhouse-client

# Response
<jemalloc>: MADV_DONTNEED does not work (memset will be used instead)
<jemalloc>: (This is the expected behaviour if you are running under QEMU)
ClickHouse client version 22.8.13.21.altinitystable (altinity build).
Connecting to localhost:9000 as user default.
Connected to ClickHouse server version 22.8.13 revision 54460.

test-anywhere-6 :)
  1. Run a show tables sql command:
test-anywhere-6 :) show tables

# Response

SHOW TABLES

Query id: da01133d-0130-4b98-9090-4ebc6fa4b568

┌─name─────────┐
│ events       │
│ events_local │
└──────────────┘

2 rows in set. Elapsed: 0.013 sec.
  1. Run SQL query to show data in the events table:
test-anywhere-6 :) SELECT * FROM events;

# Response

SELECT * 
FROM events

Query id: 00fef876-e9b0-44b1-b768-9e662eda0483

┌─event_date─┬─event_type─┬─article_id─┬─title───┐
│ 2023-03-24 │          1 │         13 │ Example │
└────────────┴────────────┴────────────┴─────────┘

1 row in set. Elapsed: 0.023 sec. 

test-anywhere-6 :)

Troubleshooting

Q-1. Altinity.Cloud Anywhere endpoint not reachable

Problem

  • By default, the altinitycloud-connect command connects to host anywhere.altinity.cloud on port 443. If this host is not reachable, the following error message appears.

    altinitycloud-connect login --token=<token>
Error: Post "https://anywhere.altinity.cloud/sign":
   dial tcp: lookup anywhere.altinity.cloud on 127.0.0.53:53: no such host

Solution

  • Make sure the name is available in DNS and that the resolved IP address is reachable on port 443 (UDP and TCP), then try again. The altinitycloud-connect command has a --url option if you need to specify a different URL.

Q-2. Insufficient Kubernetes privileges

Problem

  • Your Kubernetes account has insufficient permissions.

Solution

  • Look at the output from the altinitycloud-connect kubernetes | kubectl apply -f - command to see what actions failed, then adjust the permissions for your Kubernetes account accordingly. At a minimum, set the following permissions:

    • cluster-admin for initial provisioning only (it can be revoked afterward)
    • Give full access to the altinity-cloud-system and altinity-cloud-managed-clickhouse namespaces
    • A few optional read-only cluster-level permissions (for observability only)

Q-3. Help! I messed up the resource configuration

Problem

  • The resource configuration settings are not correct.

Solution

  1. From the Environment tab, in the Environment Name column, select the link to your environment.
  2. Select the menu function ACTIONS 》Reconfigure Anywhere.
  3. Rerun the Environment 》Connection Setup and enter the correct values.

Q-4 One of my pods won’t spin up

When you reboot your machine, the Anywhere cluster in your ACM has not started.

Problem

One of the pods won’t start. In the listing below, pod edge-proxy-66d44f7465-lxjjn in the altinity-cloud-system namespace has not started:

    ┌──────────────── Pods(altinity-cloud-system)[8] ──────────────────────────┐
    │ NAME↑                                PF READY RESTARTS STATUS            │
 1  │ cloud-connect-d6ff8499f-bkc5k        ●  1/1       3    Running           │
 2  │ crtd-665fd5cb85-wqkkk                ●  1/1       3    Running           │
 3  │ edge-proxy-66d44f7465-lxjjn          ●  1/2       7    CrashLoopBackOff  │
 4  │ grafana-5b466574d-4scjc              ●  1/1       1    Running           │
 5  │ kube-state-metrics-58d86c747c-7hj79  ●  1/1       6    Running           │
 6  │ node-exporter-762b5                  ●  1/1       3    Running           │
 7  │ prometheus-0                         ●  1/1       3    Running           │
 8  │ statuscheck-f7c9b4d98-2jlt6          ●  1/1       3    Running           │
    └──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Solution

Delete the pod using the kubectl delete pod command and it will regenerate.

kubectl -n altinity-cloud-system delete pod edge-proxy-66d44f7465-lxjjn

3 - Setting up logging

Configuring storage for logging

In order for Altinity.Cloud Anywhere to gather/store/query logs, you need to configure access to an S3 or GCS bucket. Cloud-specific instructions provided below.

EKS (AWS)

The recommended way is to use IRSA.

apiVersion: v1
kind: ServiceAccount
metadata:
  name: log-storage
  namespace: altinity-cloud-system
  annotations:
    eks.amazonaws.com/role-arn: "arn:aws:iam::<aws_account_id>:role/<role_arn>"

Alternatively, you can use a custom Instance Profile or explicit credentials (shown below).

# create bucket
aws s3api create-bucket --bucket REPLACE_WITH_BUCKET_NAME --region REPLACE_WITH_AWS_REGION

# create user with access to the bucket
aws iam create-user --user-name REPLACE_WITH_USER_NAME
aws iam put-user-policy \
    --user-name REPLACE_WITH_USER_NAME \
    --policy-name REPLACE_WITH_POLICY_NAME \
    --policy-document \
'{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Action": [
                "s3:ListBucket",
                "s3:PutObject",
                "s3:GetObject",
                "s3:DeleteObject"
            ],
            "Resource": [
                "arn:aws:s3:::REPLACE_WITH_BUCKET_NAME",
                "arn:aws:s3:::REPLACE_WITH_BUCKET_NAME/*"
            ],
            "Effect": "Allow"
        }
    ]
}'

# generate access key
aws iam create-access-key --user-name REPLACE_WITH_USER_NAME |
  jq -r '"AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID="+(.AccessKey.AccessKeyId)+"\nAWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY="+(.AccessKey.SecretAccessKey)+"\n"' > credentials.env

# create altinity-cloud-system/log-storage-aws secret containing AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID & AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY
kubectl create secret -n altinity-cloud-system generic log-storage-aws \
  --from-env-file=credentials.env

rm -i credentials.env

Use your private customer Slack channel to send the bucket name to Altinity in order to finish configuration.

GKE (GCP)

The recommended way is to use Workload Identity.

apiVersion: v1
kind: ServiceAccount
metadata:
  name: log-storage
  namespace: altinity-cloud-system
  annotations:
    iam.gke.io/gcp-service-account: "<gcp_sa_name>@<project_id>.iam.gserviceaccount.com"

Alternatively, you can use GCP service account for instance or explicit credentials (shown below).

# create bucket
gsutil mb gs://REPLACE_WITH_BUCKET_NAME

# create GCP SA with access to the bucket
gcloud iam service-accounts create REPLACE_WITH_GCP_SA_NAME \
  --project=REPLACE_WITH_PROJECT_ID \
  --display-name "REPLACE_WITH_DISPLAY_NAME"
gsutil iam ch \
  serviceAccount:REPLACE_WITH_GCP_SA_NAME@REPLACE_WITH_PROJECT_ID.iam.gserviceaccount.com:roles/storage.admin \
  gs://REPLACE_WITH_BUCKET_NAME

# generate GCP SA key
gcloud iam service-accounts keys create credentials.json \
--iam-account=REPLACE_WITH_GCP_SA_NAME@REPLACE_WITH_PROJECT_ID.iam.gserviceaccount.com \
--project=REPLACE_WITH_PROJECT_ID

# create altinity-cloud-system/log-storage-gcp secret containing credentials.json
kubectl create secret -n altinity-cloud-system generic log-storage-gcp \
  --from-file=credentials.json

rm -i credentials.json

Use your private customer Slack channel to send the bucket name to Altinity in order to finish configuration.

4 - Setting up backups

Configuring storage for backups

In order for Altinity.Cloud Anywhere to work with backups, you need to configure access to an S3 or GCS bucket. Cloud-specific instructions are provided below.

EKS (AWS)

Use a custom Instance Profile or explicit credentials (shown below).

# create bucket
aws s3api create-bucket --bucket REPLACE_WITH_BUCKET_NAME --region REPLACE_WITH_AWS_REGION

# create user with access to the bucket
aws iam create-user --user-name REPLACE_WITH_USER_NAME
aws iam put-user-policy \
    --user-name REPLACE_WITH_USER_NAME \
    --policy-name REPLACE_WITH_POLICY_NAME \
    --policy-document \
'{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Action": [
                "s3:GetObject",
                "s3:DeleteObject",
                "s3:PutObject",
                "s3:AbortMultipartUpload",
                "s3:ListMultipartUploadParts",
                "s3:PutObjectTagging"
            ],
            "Resource": [
                "arn:aws:s3:::REPLACE_WITH_BUCKET_NAME",
                "arn:aws:s3:::REPLACE_WITH_BUCKET_NAME/*"            
            ],
            "Effect": "Allow"
        }
    ]
}'

# generate access key
aws iam create-access-key --user-name REPLACE_WITH_USER_NAME |
  jq -r '"AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID="+(.AccessKey.AccessKeyId)+"\nAWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY="+(.AccessKey.SecretAccessKey)+"\n"' > credentials.env
  
# create altinity-cloud-system/clickhouse-backup secret containing AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID & AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY
kubectl create secret -n altinity-cloud-system generic clickhouse-backup \
  --from-env-file=credentials.env

rm -i credentials.env

Use your private customer Slack channel to send the bucket name to Altinity in order to finish configuration.

GKE (GCP)

Use a GCP service account for the instance or explicit credentials (shown below).

# create bucket
gsutil mb gs://REPLACE_WITH_BUCKET_NAME

# create GCP SA with access to the bucket
gcloud iam service-accounts create REPLACE_WITH_GCP_SA_NAME \
  --project=REPLACE_WITH_PROJECT_ID \
  --display-name "REPLACE_WITH_DISPLAY_NAME"
gsutil iam ch \
  serviceAccount:REPLACE_WITH_GCP_SA_NAME@REPLACE_WITH_PROJECT_ID.iam.gserviceaccount.com:roles/storage.admin \
  gs://REPLACE_WITH_BUCKET_NAME

# generate GCP SA key
gcloud iam service-accounts keys create credentials.json \
--iam-account=REPLACE_WITH_GCP_SA_NAME@REPLACE_WITH_PROJECT_ID.iam.gserviceaccount.com \
--project=REPLACE_WITH_PROJECT_ID

# create altinity-cloud-system/clickhouse-backup secret containing GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS 
kubectl create secret -n altinity-cloud-system generic clickhouse-backup \
  --from-file=GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS=credentials.json
  
rm -i credentials.json

Use your private customer Slack channel to send the bucket name to Altinity in order to finish configuration.

5 - Disconnecting from Altinity.Cloud Anywhere

Using ClickHouse without Altinity.Cloud Anywhere

Even if you disconnect from Altinity.Cloud Anywhere altogether, your ClickHouse cluster can continue running in your Kubernetes environment. In this section we’ll show you how to do that.

Disconnecting your environment from Altinity.Cloud Anywhere

You can disconnect Altinity Cloud Manager from your Kubernetes environment and the ClickHouse clusters running inside it. This does not delete your running ClickHouse clusters, it merely disconnects them from the Altinity Cloud Manager. Your ClickHouse clusters continue running as usual.

This command disconnects your ClickHouse cluster:

altinitycloud-connect kubernetes-disconnect | kubectl delete -f -

After this command completes, Altinity.Cloud Anywhere will no longer be able to see or connect to your Kubernetes environment.

Deleting managed ClickHouse environments in Kubernetes

If you want to delete the ClickHouse clusters in your environment, enter these two commands in the order shown below.

kubectl -n altinity-cloud-managed-clickhouse delete chi --all
altinitycloud-connect kubernetes | kubectl delete -f -

The first command deletes every ClickHouse installation (chi) that Altinity.Cloud Anywhere created. Those are in the altinity-cloud-managed-clickhouse namespace. With the ClickHouse clusters deleted, the second command deletes the two Altinity namespaces and any remaining resources they contain.

WARNING: If you delete the namespaces before deleting the ClickHouse installations (chi), the operation will hang due to missing finalizers on chi resources. Should this occur, use the kubectl edit command on each ClickHouse installation and remove the finalizer manually from the resource specification. Here is an example:

 kubectl -n altinity-cloud-managed-clickhouse edit clickhouseinstallations.clickhouse.altinity.com/maddie-ch

You can now delete the finalizer from the resource:

# Please edit the object below. Lines beginning with a '#' will be ignored,
# and an empty file will abort the edit. If an error occurs while saving this file will be
# reopened with the relevant failures.
#
apiVersion: clickhouse.altinity.com/v1
kind: ClickHouseInstallation
metadata:
  creationTimestamp: "2023-08-29T17:03:58Z"
  finalizers:
  - finalizer.clickhouseinstallation.altinity.com
  generation: 3
  name: maddie-ch
  
. . .

6 - Appendix: Using Altinity.Cloud Anywhere with minikube

For testing and development use only

This guide covers setting up minikube so that you can use Altinity.Cloud Anywhere to provision ClickHouse clusters inside minikube. Any computer or cloud instance that can run minikube and support the resource requirements of the Kubernetes cluster we describe here should work.

Note that while minikube is okay to use for development purposes, it should not be used for production. Seriously. We can’t stress that enough. It’s great for development, but don’t use it for production.

Server requirements

In the deployment you’ll do here, you’ll build a minikube cluster with seven nodes. Using the Docker runtime on a MacBook Pro M2 Max, the system provisioned 6 vCPUs and 7.7 GB of RAM per node, along with roughly 60 GB of disk space per node. It’s unlikely all of your nodes will run at capacity, but there’s no guarantee your machine will have enough resources to do whatever you want to do in your minikube cluster. (Did we mention it’s not for production use?) And, of course, the default provisioning may be different on other operating systems, hardware architectures, or virtualization engines.

Before you get started, you’ll need to sign up for an Altinity.Cloud Anywhere trial account. At the end of that process, you’ll have an email with a link to the Altinity Cloud Manager (ACM). You’ll use that link to set up the connection between minikube and Altinity.

Finally, of course, you’ll need to install minikube itself. See the minikube start page for complete install instructions. Just install the software at this point; we’ll talk about how to start minikube in the next section.

Starting minikube

If you’ve used minikube on your machine before, we recommend that you delete its existing configuration:

minikube delete

Now start a minikube cluster with seven nodes:

minikube start --nodes 7 --kubernetes-version=v1.22.8

You’ll see results like this:

😄  minikube v1.30.1 on Darwin 13.5.2 (arm64)

✨  Automatically selected the docker driver. Other choices: qemu2, parallels, ssh
📌  Using Docker Desktop driver with root privileges
👍  Starting control plane node minikube in cluster minikube
🚜  Pulling base image ...
🔥  Creating docker container (CPUs=2, Memory=3500MB) ...
🐳  Preparing Kubernetes v1.22.8 on Docker 23.0.2 ...
❌  Unable to load cached images: loading cached images: stat /Users/dougtidwell/.minikube/cache/images/arm64/registry.k8s.io/kube-apiserver_v1.22.8: no such file or directory
    ▪ Generating certificates and keys ...
    ▪ Booting up control plane ...
    ▪ Configuring RBAC rules ...
🔗  Configuring CNI (Container Networking Interface) ...
    ▪ Using image gcr.io/k8s-minikube/storage-provisioner:v5
🌟  Enabled addons: storage-provisioner, default-storageclass
🔎  Verifying Kubernetes components...

👍  Starting worker node minikube-m02 in cluster minikube
🚜  Pulling base image ...
🔥  Creating docker container (CPUs=2, Memory=3500MB) ...
🌐  Found network options:
    ▪ NO_PROXY=192.168.49.2
🐳  Preparing Kubernetes v1.22.8 on Docker 23.0.2 ...
    ▪ env NO_PROXY=192.168.49.2
🔎  Verifying Kubernetes components...

. . .

🏄  Done! kubectl is now configured to use "minikube" cluster and "default" namespace by default

NOTE: Defining the environment variable MINIKUBE_IN_STYLE=0 disables the emojis that appear in front of every minikube message. You’re welcome.

At this point minikube is up and running. The kubectl get nodes command shows our seven nodes:

NAME           STATUS   ROLES                  AGE     VERSION
minikube       Ready    control-plane,master   4m22s   v1.22.8
minikube-m02   Ready    <none>                 4m2s    v1.22.8
minikube-m03   Ready    <none>                 3m48s   v1.22.8
minikube-m04   Ready    <none>                 3m33s   v1.22.8
minikube-m05   Ready    <none>                 3m17s   v1.22.8
minikube-m06   Ready    <none>                 3m2s    v1.22.8
minikube-m07   Ready    <none>                 2m46s   v1.22.8

When using Altinity.Cloud Anywhere with a traditional cloud vendor, there are node types, availability zones, and storage classes. We need to label our minikube nodes to simulate those things. First, run these commands to define the node types and availability zones:

kubectl --context=minikube label nodes minikube \
  node.kubernetes.io/instance-type=minikube-node \
  topology.kubernetes.io/zone=minikube-zone-a 
kubectl --context=minikube label nodes minikube-m02 \
  node.kubernetes.io/instance-type=minikube-node \
  topology.kubernetes.io/zone=minikube-zone-a 
kubectl --context=minikube label nodes minikube-m03 \
  node.kubernetes.io/instance-type=minikube-node \
  topology.kubernetes.io/zone=minikube-zone-a
kubectl --context=minikube label nodes minikube-m04 \
  node.kubernetes.io/instance-type=minikube-node \
  topology.kubernetes.io/zone=minikube-zone-b
kubectl --context=minikube label nodes minikube-m05 \
  node.kubernetes.io/instance-type=minikube-node \
  topology.kubernetes.io/zone=minikube-zone-b
kubectl --context=minikube label nodes minikube-m06 \
  node.kubernetes.io/instance-type=minikube-node \
  topology.kubernetes.io/zone=minikube-zone-c
kubectl --context=minikube label nodes minikube-m07 \
  node.kubernetes.io/instance-type=minikube-node \
  topology.kubernetes.io/zone=minikube-zone-c

Now all of our minikube nodes are defined to be of type minikube-node; we’ll see that node type again later. We’ve also defined availability zones named minikube-zone-a, minikube-zone-b, and minikube-zone-c.

On to our storage classes. We want to use the local-path storage class instead of minikube’s default standard storage class. This command defines the new storage class:

curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rancher/local-path-provisioner/v0.0.22/deploy/local-path-storage.yaml | \
  sed 's/\/opt\/local-path-provisioner/\/var\/opt\/local-path-provisioner/ ' | \
  kubectl --context=minikube apply -f -

Now that we’ve defined the new storage class, we need to tell minikube that the local-path class is the default:

kubectl --context=minikube patch storageclass standard \
  -p '{"metadata": {"annotations":{"storageclass.kubernetes.io/is-default-class":"false"}}}'
kubectl --context=minikube patch storageclass local-path \
  -p '{"metadata": {"annotations":{"storageclass.kubernetes.io/is-default-class":"true"}}}'

Running kubectl get storageclasses shows the new default class:

NAME                   PROVISIONER                RECLAIMPOLICY   VOLUMEBINDINGMODE      ALLOWVOLUMEEXPANSION   AGE
local-path (default)   rancher.io/local-path      Delete          WaitForFirstConsumer   false                  36s
standard               k8s.io/minikube-hostpath   Delete          Immediate              false                  15m

Connecting Altinity.Cloud Anywhere to minikube

Now that we have the minikube cluster running and configured, it’s time to connect it to Altinity.Cloud Anywhere. That’s the final step for enabling Altinity to provision ClickHouse clusters in minikube.

Step 1. Setting up the tunnel

First we need to set up the TLS tunnel between minikube and Altinity. Click the emailed link you got when you signed up for an Altinity.Cloud Anywhere account. You’ll see this screen:

The Connection Setup screen
Figure 1 - The Connection Setup screen

Make sure the “Provisioned by User” box is selected at the top of the page, and make sure you’ve installed altinitycloud-connect from the link beneath it.

Copy and paste the text in the center box at the command line and run it. This doesn’t generate any output at the command line, but it does create a cloud-connect.pem file in the current directory.

Now that you have the cloud-connect.pem file, run the following command to set up the TLS tunnel:

altinitycloud-connect kubernetes --url=https://anywhere.altinity.cloud --release=latest-master | kubectl --context=minikube apply -f -

Note: The command you run is different from the one in the text box at the bottom of Figure 1. Make sure that the --url parameter matches the URL in that text box, as it is dependent on the Altinity.Cloud Anywhere endpoint you’re using.

The altinitycloud-connect kubernetes command generates YAML that has configuration information along with the keys from the .pem file. That YAML data is passed to kubectl.

You’ll see results similar to this:

namespace/altinity-cloud-system created
namespace/altinity-cloud-managed-clickhouse created
clusterrole.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/altinity-cloud:node-view created
clusterrole.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/altinity-cloud:node-metrics-view created
clusterrole.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/altinity-cloud:storage-class-view created
clusterrole.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/altinity-cloud:persistent-volume-view created
clusterrole.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/altinity-cloud:cloud-connect created
serviceaccount/cloud-connect created
clusterrolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/altinity-cloud:cloud-connect created
clusterrolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/altinity-cloud:node-view created
clusterrolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/altinity-cloud:node-metrics-view created
clusterrolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/altinity-cloud:storage-class-view created
clusterrolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/altinity-cloud:persistent-volume-view created
rolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/altinity-cloud:cloud-connect created
rolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/altinity-cloud:cloud-connect created
secret/cloud-connect created
deployment.apps/cloud-connect created

Another note: Altinity creates all ClickHouse-related assets in the altinity-cloud-system and altinity-cloud-managed-clickhouse namespaces. You should not create anything in those namespaces yourself.

Click Proceed to go to the next step.

Step 2. Configuring your minikube resources

Next we’ll define aspects of the minikube environment to Altinity. Use the values highlighted in red in Figure 2.

The Resources Configuration screen
Figure 2 - The Resources Configuration screen

The specific values to use are:

  • Cloud Provider: Not Specified (minikube is a special case)
  • Region: minikube-zone (we defined that with a label earlier)
  • Number of AZs: 3
  • Storage Classes: local-path (defined as the default storageclass earlier)
  • Node Pools: A single node pool named minikube-node with a capacity of 2. The boxes for ClickHouse and Zookeeper must be checked.

Click Proceed to go to the Confirmation screen.

Step 3. Confirming your choices

A JSON description of all of your choices appears in the text box at the top of Figure 3:

The Confirmation screen
Figure 3 - The Confirmation screen

You can edit the JSON as needed; currently you need to change the names of the availability zones. Using the values specified in the previous step, the generated availability zones will be minikube-zonea, minikube-zoneb, and minikube-zonec. They should be minikube-zone-a, minikube-zone-b, and minikube-zone-c.

Once everything is correct, click Finish. This begins the process of creating a ClickHouse cluster inside minikube. You’ll see a status bar similar to Figure 4:

The status bar
Figure 4 - The status bar

It’s quite likely the status bar will reach the end before everything is configured. Just keep clicking Finish until things are, well, finished:

Click Finish again to keep waiting
Figure 5 - Click Finish again to keep waiting

When things are finished, you’ll see this screen:

Altinity.Cloud Anywhere is up and running
Figure 6 - Altinity.Cloud Anywhere is up and running

With everything up and running, kubectl get pods -n altinity-cloud-managed-clickhouse shows the pods Altinity.Cloud Anywhere created:

NAME                                   READY   STATUS    RESTARTS        AGE
chi-minikube-ch1-minikube-ch1-0-0-0    2/2     Running   3 (3m12s ago)   4m54s
chi-minikube-ch1-minikube-ch1-0-1-0    2/2     Running   3 (3m23s ago)   4m42s
clickhouse-operator-85c8855c56-qn98x   2/2     Running   0               4m31s
zookeeper-1638-0                       1/1     Running   0               4m43s
zookeeper-1638-1                       1/1     Running   0               2m54s
zookeeper-1638-2                       1/1     Running   0               4m56s

There are two pods for ClickHouse itself, a pod for the Altinity ClickHouse Operator, and three pods for Zookeeper. These pods are managed for you by Altinity.

Working with Altinity.Cloud Anywhere

Now that your environment is configured, you use the Altinity Cloud Manager (ACM) to perform common user and administrative tasks. The steps and tools to manage your ClickHouse clusters are the same for Altinity.Cloud Anywhere and Altinity.Cloud.

Here are some common tasks from the ACM documentation:

The ACM documentation includes:

At the command line you can also connect to a running pod and work with ClickHouse directly.