Frequently Asked Questions¶

Why do we need to follow “the Kubernetes way” when Kubernetes was never intended to run databases?¶

As it is well known, the Kubernetes approach is targeted at stateless applications but provides ways to store state (in Persistent Volumes, etc.) if the application needs it. Generally, a stateless mode of operation is supposed to provide better safety, sustainability, and scalability, it makes the already-deployed components interchangeable. You can find more about substantial benefits brought by Kubernetes to databases in this blog post.

The architecture of state-centric applications (like databases) should be composed in a right way to avoid crashes, data loss, or data inconsistencies during hardware failure. Percona Operator for PostgreSQL provides out-of-the-box functionality to automate provisioning and management of highly available PostgreSQL database clusters on Kubernetes.

How can I contact the developers?¶

The best place to discuss Percona Operator for PostgreSQL with developers and other community members is the community forum.

If you would like to report a bug, use the Percona Operator for PostgreSQL project in JIRA.

How can I analyze PostgreSQL logs with pgBadger?¶

pgBadger is a report generator for PostgreSQL, which can analyze PostgreSQL logs and provide you web-based representation with charts and various statistics. You can configure it via the pgBadger Section in the deploy/cr.yaml file. The most important option there is pgBadger.enabled, which is off by default. When enabled, a separate pgBadger sidecar container with a specialized HTTP server is added to each PostgreSQL Pod.

You can generate the log report and access it through an exposed port (10000 by default) and an /api/badgergenerate endpoint: http://<Pod-address>:10000/api/badgergenerate. Also, this report is available in the appropriate pgBadger container as a /report/index.html file.

How can I set the Operator to control PostgreSQL in several namespaces?¶

Sometimes it is convenient to have one Operator watching for PostgreSQL Cluster custom resources in several namespaces.

You can set additional namespace to be watched by the Operator as follows:

First of all clean up the installer artifacts:

$ kubectl delete -f deploy/operator.yaml

Make changes in the deploy/operator.yaml file:

Find the pgo-deployer-cm ConfigMap. It contains the values.yaml configuration file. Find the namespace key in this file (it is set to "pgo" by default) and append your additional namespace to it in a comma-separated list.
```
...
apiVersion: v1
kind: ConfigMap
metadata:
  name: pgo-deployer-cm
data:
  values.yaml: |-
    ...
    namespace: "pgo,myadditionalnamespace"
    ...
```

Find the pgo-deploy container template in the pgo-deploy job spec. It has env element named DEPLOY_ACTION, which you should change from install to update:

...
apiVersion: batch/v1
kind: Job
metadata:
name: pgo-deploy
...
    containers:
      - name: pgo-deploy
      ...
      env:
        - name: DEPLOY_ACTION
          value: update
          ...

Now apply your changes as usual:
```
$ kubectl apply -f deploy/operator.yaml
```
Note

You need to perform cleanup between each DEPLOY_ACTION activity, which can be either install, update, or uninstall.

How can I store backups on S3-compatible storage with self-issued certificates?¶

The Operator allows you to store backups on any S3-compatible storage including your private one (for example, a local MinIO installation). Backup and restore with a private S3-compatible storage can be done following the official instruction except the case when you use self-signed certificates and would like to skip TLS verification (which can be reasonable when both your database and storage are located in the same Kubernetes cluster or in the same protected intranet segment).

The backup.storages. option in the deploy/cr.yaml configuration file allows you to skip TLS verification for specific S3-compatible storage. Setting it to true is enough to make a backup.

Restoring a backup without TLS requires you to make two changes in the parameters subsection of the deploy/restore.yaml file:

set backrest-s3-verify-tls option to false,
add --no-repo1-storage-verify-tls value to backrest-restore-opts field.

The following example shows how the resulting parameters section may look like:

...
parameters:
 backrest-restore-from-cluster: cluster1
 backrest-restore-opts: --type=time --target="2022-05-03 15:22:42" --no-repo1-storage-verify-tls
 backrest-storage-type: "s3"
 backrest-s3-verify-tls: "false"
tasktype: restore

Get expert help¶

If you need assistance, visit the community forum for comprehensive and free database knowledge, or contact our Percona Database Experts for professional support and services. Join K8S Squad to benefit from early access to features and “ask me anything” sessions with the Experts.

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