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Deploying a Pulsar cluster using Helm

Before running helm install, you need to make some decisions about how you will run Pulsar. Options can be specified using Helm's --set option.name=value command line option.

Selecting configuration options​

In each section collect the options that will be combined to use with helm install.

Kubernetes Namespace​

By default, the chart is installed to a namespace called pulsar.


namespace: pulsar

If you decide to install the chart into a different k8s namespace, you can include this option in your Helm install command:


--set namespace=<different-k8s-namespace>

By default, the chart doesn't create the namespace.


namespaceCreate: false

If you want the chart to create the k8s namespace automatically, you can include this option in your Helm install command.


--set namespaceCreate=true

Persistence​

By default the chart creates Volume Claims with the expectation that a dynamic provisioner will create the underlying Persistent Volumes.


volumes:
  persistence: true
  # configure the components to use local persistent volume
  # the local provisioner should be installed prior to enable local persistent volume
  local_storage: false

If you would like to use local persistent volumes as the persistent storage for your Helm release, you can install local-storage-provisioner and include the following option in your Helm install command.


--set volumes.local_storage=true

Important: After initial installation, making changes to your storage settings requires manually editing Kubernetes objects, so it's best to plan ahead before installing your production instance of Pulsar to avoid extra storage migration work.

This chart is designed for production use, To use this chart in a development environment (e.g. minikube), you can disable persistence by including this option in your Helm install command.


--set volumes.persistence=false

Affinity​

By default anti-affinity is turned on to ensure pods of same component can run on different nodes.


affinity:
  anti_affinity: true

If you are planning to use this chart in a development environment (e.g. Minikube), you can disable anti-affinity by including this option in your Helm install command.


--set affinity.anti_affinity=false

Components​

This chart is designed for production usage. It deploys a production-ready Pulsar cluster including Pulsar core components and monitoring components.

You can customize the components to deploy by turning on/off individual components.


## Components
##
## Control what components of Apache Pulsar to deploy for the cluster
components:
  # zookeeper
  zookeeper: true
  # bookkeeper
  bookkeeper: true
  # bookkeeper - autorecovery
  autorecovery: true
  # broker
  broker: true
  # functions
  functions: true
  # proxy
  proxy: true
  # toolset
  toolset: true
  # pulsar manager
  pulsar_manager: true

## Monitoring Components
##
## Control what components of the monitoring stack to deploy for the cluster
monitoring:
  # monitoring - prometheus
  prometheus: true
  # monitoring - grafana
  grafana: true

Docker Images​

This chart is designed to enable controlled upgrades. So it provides the capability to configure independent image versions for components. You can customize the images by setting individual component.


## Images
##
## Control what images to use for each component
images:
  zookeeper:
    repository: apachepulsar/pulsar-all
    tag: 2.5.0
    pullPolicy: IfNotPresent
  bookie:
    repository: apachepulsar/pulsar-all
    tag: 2.5.0
    pullPolicy: IfNotPresent
  autorecovery:
    repository: apachepulsar/pulsar-all
    tag: 2.5.0
    pullPolicy: IfNotPresent
  broker:
    repository: apachepulsar/pulsar-all
    tag: 2.5.0
    pullPolicy: IfNotPresent
  proxy:
    repository: apachepulsar/pulsar-all
    tag: 2.5.0
    pullPolicy: IfNotPresent
  functions:
    repository: apachepulsar/pulsar-all
    tag: 2.5.0
  prometheus:
    repository: prom/prometheus
    tag: v1.6.3
    pullPolicy: IfNotPresent
  grafana:
    repository: streamnative/apache-pulsar-grafana-dashboard-k8s
    tag: 0.0.4
    pullPolicy: IfNotPresent
  pulsar_manager:
    repository: apachepulsar/pulsar-manager
    tag: v0.1.0
    pullPolicy: IfNotPresent
    hasCommand: false

TLS​

This Pulsar Chart can be configured to enable TLS to protect all the traffic between components. Before you enable TLS, you have to provision TLS certificates for the components you have configured to enable TLS.

Provision TLS certs using cert-manager​

In order to using cert-manager to provision the TLS certificates, you have to install cert-manager before installing the Pulsar chart. After successfully install cert manager, you can then set certs.internal_issuer.enabled to true. So the Pulsar chart will use cert-manager to generate selfsigning TLS certs for the configured components.


certs:
  internal_issuer:
    enabled: false
    component: internal-cert-issuer
    type: selfsigning

You can also customize the generated TLS certificates by configuring the fields as the following.


tls:
  # common settings for generating certs
  common:
    # 90d
    duration: 2160h
    # 15d
    renewBefore: 360h
    organization:
      - pulsar
    keySize: 4096
    keyAlgorithm: rsa
    keyEncoding: pkcs8

Enable TLS​

After installing cert-manager, you can then set tls.enabled to true to enable TLS encryption for the entire cluster.


tls:
  enabled: false

You can also control whether to enable TLS encryption for individual component.


tls:
  # settings for generating certs for proxy
  proxy:
    enabled: false
    cert_name: tls-proxy
  # settings for generating certs for broker
  broker:
    enabled: false
    cert_name: tls-broker
  # settings for generating certs for bookies
  bookie:
    enabled: false
    cert_name: tls-bookie
  # settings for generating certs for zookeeper
  zookeeper:
    enabled: false
    cert_name: tls-zookeeper
  # settings for generating certs for recovery
  autorecovery:
    cert_name: tls-recovery
  # settings for generating certs for toolset
  toolset:
    cert_name: tls-toolset

Authentication​

Authentication is disabled by default. You can set auth.authentication.enabled to true to turn on authentication. Currently this chart only supports JWT authentication provider. You can set auth.authentication.provider to jwt to use JWT authentication provider.


# Enable or disable broker authentication and authorization.
auth:
  authentication:
    enabled: false
    provider: "jwt"
    jwt:
      # Enable JWT authentication
      # If the token is generated by a secret key, set the usingSecretKey as true.
      # If the token is generated by a private key, set the usingSecretKey as false.
      usingSecretKey: false
  superUsers:
    # broker to broker communication
    broker: "broker-admin"
    # proxy to broker communication
    proxy: "proxy-admin"
    # pulsar-admin client to broker/proxy communication
    client: "admin"

If you decide to enable authentication, you can run prepare helm release to generate token secret keys and tokens for three super users specified in auth.superUsers field. The generated token keys and super user tokens are uploaded and stored as kubernetes secrets prefixed with <pulsar-release-name>-token-. You can use following command to find those secrets.


kubectl get secrets -n <k8s-namespace>

Authorization​

Authorization is disabled by default. Authorization can be enabled only if Authentication is enabled.


auth:
  authorization:
    enabled: false

You can include this option to turn on authorization.


--set auth.authorization.enabled=true

CPU and RAM resource requirements​

The resource requests, and number of replicas for the Pulsar components in this Chart are set by default to be adequate for a small production deployment. If you are trying to deploy a non-production instance, you can reduce the defaults in order to fit into a smaller cluster.

Once you have all of your configuration options collected, we need to install dependent charts before proceeding to install the Pulsar Chart.

Install Dependent Charts​

Install Local Storage Provisioner​

If you decide to use local persistent volumes as the persistent storage, you need to install a storage provisioner for local persistent volumes.

One of the easiest way to get started is to use the local storage provisioner provided along with the Pulsar Helm chart.


helm repo add streamnative https://charts.streamnative.io
helm repo update
helm install pulsar-storage-provisioner streamnative/local-storage-provisioner

Install Cert Manager​

The Pulsar Chart uses cert-manager to automate provisioning and managing TLS certificates. If you decide to enable TLS encryption for brokers or proxies, you need to install cert-manager first.

You can follow the official instructions to install cert-manager.

Alternatively, we provide a bash script install-cert-manager.sh to install a cert-manager release to namespace cert-manager.


git clone https://github.com/apache/pulsar-helm-chart
cd pulsar-helm-chart
./scripts/cert-manager/install-cert-manager.sh

Prepare the Helm Release​

Once you have install all the dependent charts and collected all of your configuration options, you can run prepare_helm_release.sh to prepare the helm release.


git clone https://github.com/apache/pulsar-helm-chart
cd pulsar-helm-chart
./scripts/pulsar/prepare_helm_release.sh -n <k8s-namespace> -k <helm-release-name>

The prepare_helm_release creates following resources:

  • A k8s namespace for installing the Pulsar release
  • Create a secret for storing the username and password of control center administrator. The username and password can be passed to prepare_helm_release.sh through flags --control-center-admin and --control-center-password. The username and password is used for logging into Grafana dashboard and Pulsar Manager.
  • Create the JWT secret keys and tokens for three superusers: broker-admin, proxy-admin, and admin. By default, it generates asymmetric pubic/private key pair. You can choose to generate symmeric secret key by specifying --symmetric.
    • proxy-admin role is used for proxies to communicate to brokers.
    • broker-admin role is used for inter-broker communications.
    • admin role is used by the admin tools.

Deploy using Helm​

Once you have done the following three things, you can proceed to install a Helm release.

  • Collect all of your configuration options
  • Install dependent charts
  • Prepare the Helm release

In this example, we've named our Helm release pulsar.


git clone https://github.com/apache/pulsar-helm-chart
cd pulsar-helm-chart
helm upgrade --install pulsar charts/pulsar \
    --timeout 600 \
    --set [your configuration options]

note

For the first deployment, add --set initialize=true option to initialize bookie and Pulsar cluster metadata.

You can also use --version <installation version> option if you would like to install a specific version of Pulsar Helm chart.

Monitoring the Deployment​

This will output the list of resources installed once the deployment finishes which may take 5-10 minutes.

The status of the deployment can be checked by running helm status pulsar which can also be done while the deployment is taking place if you run the command in another terminal.

Accessing the Pulsar Cluster​

The default values will create a ClusterIP for the following resources you can use to interact with the cluster.

  • Proxy: You can use the IP address to produce and consume messages to the installed Pulsar cluster.
  • Pulsar Manager: You can access the pulsar manager UI at http://<pulsar-manager-ip>:9527.
  • Grafana Dashboard: You can access the Grafana dashboard at http://<grafana-dashboard-ip>:3000.

To find the IP address of those components use:


kubectl get service -n <k8s-namespace>

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