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.

You’ll also need to install minikube itself. See the minikube start page for complete instructions.

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=v1.27.7

You’ll see results like this:

😄  minikube v1.32.0 on Darwin 14.4.1 (arm64)
✨  Automatically selected the docker driver. Other choices: parallels, qemu2, 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 v1.27.7 on Docker 24.0.7 ...
    ▪ Generating certificates and keys ...
    ▪ Booting up control plane ...
    ▪ Configuring RBAC rules ...
🔗  Configuring CNI (Container Networking Interface) ...
🔎  Verifying Kubernetes components...
    ▪ Using image gcr.io/k8s-minikube/storage-provisioner:v5
🌟  Enabled addons: storage-provisioner, default-storageclass

👍  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 v1.27.7 on Docker 24.0.7 ...
    ▪ env NO_PROXY=192.168.49.2
🔎  Verifying Kubernetes components...

👍  Starting worker node minikube-m03 in cluster minikube
. . . 
👍  Starting worker node minikube-m04 in cluster minikube
. . .
👍  Starting worker node minikube-m05 in cluster minikube
. . . 
👍  Starting worker node minikube-m06 in cluster minikube
. . .
👍  Starting worker node minikube-m07 in cluster minikube
. . . 
🏄  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   25m   v1.27.7
minikube-m02   Ready    <none>          25m   v1.27.7
minikube-m03   Ready    <none>          24m   v1.27.7
minikube-m04   Ready    <none>          24m   v1.27.7
minikube-m05   Ready    <none>          24m   v1.27.7
minikube-m06   Ready    <none>          24m   v1.27.7
minikube-m07   Ready    <none>          24m   v1.27.7

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-zonea 
kubectl --context=minikube label nodes minikube-m02 \
  node.kubernetes.io/instance-type=minikube-node \
  topology.kubernetes.io/zone=minikube-zonea 
kubectl --context=minikube label nodes minikube-m03 \
  node.kubernetes.io/instance-type=minikube-node \
  topology.kubernetes.io/zone=minikube-zonea
kubectl --context=minikube label nodes minikube-m04 \
  node.kubernetes.io/instance-type=minikube-node \
  topology.kubernetes.io/zone=minikube-zoneb
kubectl --context=minikube label nodes minikube-m05 \
  node.kubernetes.io/instance-type=minikube-node \
  topology.kubernetes.io/zone=minikube-zoneb
kubectl --context=minikube label nodes minikube-m06 \
  node.kubernetes.io/instance-type=minikube-node \
  topology.kubernetes.io/zone=minikube-zonec
kubectl --context=minikube label nodes minikube-m07 \
  node.kubernetes.io/instance-type=minikube-node \
  topology.kubernetes.io/zone=minikube-zonec

You’ll see these results:

node/minikube labeled
node/minikube-m02 labeled
node/minikube-m03 labeled
node/minikube-m04 labeled
node/minikube-m05 labeled
node/minikube-m06 labeled
node/minikube-m07 labeled

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 -

The local-path storage class is created:

namespace/local-path-storage created
serviceaccount/local-path-provisioner-service-account created
clusterrole.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/local-path-provisioner-role created
clusterrolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/local-path-provisioner-bind created
deployment.apps/local-path-provisioner created
storageclass.storage.k8s.io/local-path created
configmap/local-path-config created

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"}}}'

The two storage classes are updated:

storageclass.storage.k8s.io/standard patched
storageclass.storage.k8s.io/local-path patched

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. You’ll need an Altinity.Cloud Anywhere account to get started, of course.

If you DON’T have an Altinity.Cloud Anywhere account

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. Clicking the link takes you to Figure 4 in Step 1. Setting up the tunnel.

If you DO have an Altinity.Cloud Anywhere account

You’ll need to create a new Environment inside the ACM and connect that Environment to minikube. Start by selecting the Environments tab to load the list of Environments:

Figure 1 - The Environments tab

At the top of the list of Environments, click the button to get started. Click the down arrow to see the list of environment types:

Figure 2 - Choosing an Environment Type

Select Altinity.Cloud Anywhere Bring Your Own Kubernetes (BYOK) and enter a name for the environment:

Figure 3 - Naming the Environment

Clicking OK takes you to Figure 4 in Step 1. Setting up the tunnel.

Step 1. Setting up the tunnel

First we need to set up the TLS tunnel between minikube and Altinity. Whether you’re a new customer who followed an email link from your welcome email or an existing customer who clicked OK after creating a new environment, you’ll see this screen:

Figure 4 - 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 4. Make sure that the --url parameter matches the --url parameter on the first line of text in the “2. Connect to Altinity.Cloud” text area. The URL 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 5.

Figure 5 - 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 10. The boxes for ClickHouse, Zookeeper, and System must be checked.

Click Proceed to go to the Confirmation tab.

Step 3. The Confirmation tab

This screen displays a status bar as the ACM finalizes the connection.

Figure 6 - The Confirmation screen

It’s quite likely the status bar will reach the end before everything is configured. Just keep clicking CONTINUE WAITING until things are finished. At that point, you’ll see this screen:

Figure 6 - Environment is created, but no node types are defined

The problem here is that no Node Types are defined for the minikube environment. Click the NODE TYPES tab at the top of the screen. You’ll see the empty Node List view; click the button to create a new Node Type:

Figure 7 - Defining a new Node Type

Create the following Node Types:

ch-node - Scope is ClickHouse, 1024 MB of memory, 2 CPUs
sys-node - Scope is System, 1024 MB of memory, 1 CPU
zk-node - Scope is Zookeeper, 1024 MB of memory, 1 CPU

When you’re done, the list of Node Types should look like this:

Figure 8 - The list of Node Types for this environment

Click the back button to return to the cluster view:

Figure 9 - The Cluster View

Notice that now you have three Node Types defined.

At this point you would normally click the CLUSTERS tab at the top of the Cluster view and use the Cluster Launch Wizard to create a new cluster. Unfortunately, ACM support for minikube is limited at the moment, so you’ll need to go through the example explained in the instructions for using the ACM API.

Here’s a sample curl command to create a Cluster:

curl -X POST https://acm.altinity.cloud/api/213/cluster-launch \
-d '{"name": "minikube-test", "adminPass": "mypassword1234", "adminUser": "admin", "https_port": 8443, "instanceType": "ch-node", "nodes": 2, "replicas": 2, "secure": true, "shards": 1, "size": 100, "tcp_port_secure": 9440, "version": "23.8.8.21.altinitystable", "zookeeper": "launch", "zookeeperOptions": {"tag": "", "size": "single"}}' \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-H "X-Auth-Token: xTuE9ijQa4DWVkSX5WkFdi2wf5Jzhmf88AYrFZXKgRmnpP5PbD"

The environment parameter (212 in this example) will be different, as will your security token. Also be sure to specify ch-node as the value for instanceType.

In a few minutes, you’ll have a ClickHouse cluster running inside minikube on your machine. 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 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: