Get started with AKO in the cloud

This tutorial describes how to create an Aerospike Database Enterprise Edition deployment using the Aerospike Kubernetes Operator (AKO) on Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) or Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS).

Most steps on this page are performed in the same way on GKE or EKS. Where there is a difference, choose the tab that applies to your deployment.

Prerequisites

A running GKE or EKS Kubernetes cluster
The gcloud or aws terminal utilities
Helm
Git
Kubectl
An Aerospike Enterprise Edition feature-key file.
- Download a free Enterprise Edition feature-key file good for 60 days at this link: Get Started with Aerospike

This tutorial assumes basic knowledge of Kubernetes and that your terminal is set up to communicate with your cloud Kubernetes instance.

Pre-install

Your cloud Kubernetes instance should be set up to the point that you can run commands with your local terminal to create Secrets and install Helm charts. You can test this with the following commands. Copy and paste the commands into your terminal. If all commands complete without errors, your environment is ready to install AKO

Google GKE
Amazon EKS

# Point kubectl at the correct GKE cluster
gcloud container clusters get-credentials CLUSTER_NAME --region REGION

# Check connectivity and versions
kubectl cluster-info                 # API-server reachable?
kubectl get nodes -o wide            # Nodes visible?
helm version --short                 # Helm installed?
git --version                        # Git installed?

# Point kubectl at the correct EKS cluster
aws eks update-kubeconfig --region REGION --name CLUSTER_NAME

# Check connectivity and versions
kubectl cluster-info                 # API-server reachable?
kubectl get nodes -o wide            # Nodes visible?
helm version --short                 # Helm installed?
git --version                        # Git installed?

Install AKO

In this section, you use Helm to install AKO on your Kubernetes cluster and configure the Kubernetes namespace to watch for Aerospike database deployment.

Add the JetStack Helm repository so you can install cert-manager, a utility that AKO relies on to manage certificates.
Terminal window
```
helm repo add jetstack https://charts.jetstack.io --force-update
```

Install the cert-manager Helm chart.

helm install cert-manager jetstack/cert-manager --namespace cert-manager --create-namespace --version v1.17.0 --set crds.enabled=true

Add the AKO Helm repository.

helm repo add aerospike https://aerospike.github.io/aerospike-kubernetes-enterprise

Install AKO to your cluster.

helm install aerospike-kubernetes-operator aerospike/aerospike-kubernetes-operator --version=4.1.0 --set watchNamespaces="aerospike"

AKO is now running on your cluster and is ready to create a new Aerospike Database deployment.

Deploy an Aerospike database

In this section, you use kubectl to deploy Aerospike Database. This tutorial uses a pre-built sample configuration for Aerospike database deployment.

Create the aerospike namespace for your Aerospike Database deployment. While AKO watches all namespaces by default, in the previous section AKO was instructed to watch the namespace aerospike.
```
kubectl create namespace aerospike
```
Download the Aerospike Kubernetes Operator repository from GitHub to your local machine. This repository contains sample configuration files for an Aerospike Database deployment. You can edit and modify these files on your local machine before using kubectl to apply the changes to the cluster.
Terminal window
```
git clone https://github.com/aerospike/aerospike-kubernetes-operator.git
```
The directories you need to use during this tutorial are config and samples as shown in the following diagram:
- Directoryaerospike-kubernetes-operator
  - Directoryapi/
    …
  - Directorycmd/
    …
  - Directoryconfig/
    Directorysamples/
    …
    … (sample configuration files)
  - … (other directories)
Navigate to the repository folder and the most recent release branch, 4.1.0.
Terminal window
```
cd aerospike-kubernetes-operator
git checkout v4.1.0
```
Your working directory is now aerospike-kubernetes-operator/. All file paths in the rest of this tutorial assume this working directory.
Put your features.conf feature-key file in the config/samples/secrets directory. This lets you apply a folder of secrets including TLS certs all at once.

Pass the config/samples/secrets directory to kubectl to create the Kubernetes Secrets.

kubectl -n aerospike create secret generic aerospike-secret --from-file=config/samples/secrets
kubectl -n aerospike create secret generic auth-secret --from-literal=password='admin123'

Create a ServiceAccount in the aerospike namespace for AKO to work within.
Terminal window
```
kubectl -n aerospike create serviceaccount aerospike-operator-controller-manager
```

Create a ClusterRoleBinding to attach the aerospike-cluster ClusterRole with the ServiceAccount from the previous step.

kubectl create clusterrolebinding aerospike-cluster --clusterrole=aerospike-cluster --serviceaccount=aerospike:aerospike-operator-controller-manager

Prepare the cluster to use SSD storage with a sample storage class file from the GitHub repository.
- Google GKE
- Amazon EKS
Terminal window
kubectl apply -f config/samples/storage/gce_ssd_storage_class.yaml
Terminal window
kubectl apply -f config/samples/storage/eks_ssd_storage_class.yaml
Create the Aerospike cluster using a sample Custom Resource (CR) file that uses SSD storage.
Terminal window
```
kubectl apply -f config/samples/ssd_storage_cluster_cr.yaml
```

Run the following command to check the startup status of the Aerospike cluster.

kubectl get aerospikeclusters aerocluster -n aerospike -w

Wait until the PHASE column shows Completed. This can take a few minutes, depending on your cluster size and the resources available.

NAME          SIZE   IMAGE                                           MULTIPODPERHOST   HOSTNETWORK   AGE   PHASE
aerocluster   2      aerospike/aerospike-server-enterprise:8.1.0.0   true                            2s    InProgress
aerocluster   2      aerospike/aerospike-server-enterprise:8.1.0.0   true                            21s   InProgress
aerocluster   2      aerospike/aerospike-server-enterprise:8.1.0.0   true                            21s   InProgress
aerocluster   2      aerospike/aerospike-server-enterprise:8.1.0.0   true                            27s   InProgress
aerocluster   2      aerospike/aerospike-server-enterprise:8.1.0.0   true                            28s   Completed

Run the following command to find the access endpoints. Client applications connect to these endpoints to access your Aerospike Database deployment for reading and writing data.
Terminal window
```
kubectl -n aerospike describe aerospikeclusters aerocluster | grep -E 'Access Endpoints|Alternate Access Endpoints' -A1
```

You now have a running Aerospike Database deployment using AKO!

Next steps

The biggest difference between the cluster created in this tutorial and a production cluster is in the storage class and CR file configurations. See the AKO Configuration section to learn how to configure your deployment for your own application needs.

Become familiar with the Aerospike Backup Service (ABS) and the monitoring stack. They are separate services that run alongside the database in your cluster. ABS listens for REST requests to perform backups and restores of the database, while the monitoring stack allows you to visualize cluster statistics on Grafana dashboards.