A Helm chart for Running VMCluster on Multiple Availability Zones
Prerequisites #
Install the follow packages:
git
,kubectl
,helm
,helm-docs
. See this tutorial.PV support on underlying infrastructure.
Multiple availability zones.
Chart Details #
This chart sets up multiple VictoriaMetrics cluster instances on multiple availability zones, provides both global write and read entrypoints.
The default setup is as shown below:
For write:
- extra-vmagent(optional): scrapes external targets and all the components installed by this chart, sends data to global write entrypoint.
- vmauth-global-write: global write entrypoint, proxies requests to one of the zone
vmagent
withleast_loaded
policy. - vmagent(per-zone): remote writes data to availability zones that enabled
.Values.availabilityZones.allowIngest
, and buffer data on disk when zone is unavailable to ingest. - vmauth-write-balancer(per-zone): proxies requests to vminsert instances inside it’s zone with
least_loaded
policy. - vmcluster(per-zone): processes write requests and stores data.
For read:
- vmcluster(per-zone): processes query requests and returns results.
- vmauth-read-balancer(per-zone): proxies requests to vmselect instances inside it’s zone with
least_loaded
policy. - vmauth-read-proxy(per-zone): uses all the
vmauth-read-balancer
as servers if zone has.Values.availabilityZones.allowQuery
enabled, always prefer “local”vmauth-read-balancer
to reduce cross-zone traffic withfirst_available
policy. - vmauth-global-read: global query entrypoint, proxies requests to one of the zone
vnauth-read-proxy
withfirst_available
policy. - grafana(optional): uses
vmauth-global-read
as default datasource.
Note: As the topology shown above, this chart doesn’t include components like vmalert, alertmanager, etc by default. You can install them using dependency victoria-metrics-k8s-stack or having separate release.
Why use victoria-metrics-distributed
chart?
#
One of the best practice of running production kubernetes cluster is running with multiple availability zones. And apart from kubernetes control plane components, we also want to spread our application pods on multiple zones, to continue serving even if zone outage happens.
VictoriaMetrics supports data replication natively which can guarantees data availability when part of the vmstorage instances failed. But it doesn’t works well if vmstorage instances are spread on multiple availability zones, since data replication could be stored on single availability zone, which will be lost when zone outage happens. To avoid this, vmcluster must be installed on multiple availability zones, each containing a 100% copy of data. As long as one zone is available, both global write and read entrypoints should work without interruption.
How to write data? #
The chart provides vmauth-global-write
as global write entrypoint, it supports push-based data ingestion protocols as VictoriaMetrics does.
Optionally, you can push data to any of the per-zone vmagents, and they will replicate the received data across zones.
How to query data? #
The chart provides vmauth-global-read
as global read entrypoint, it picks the first available zone (see first_available policy) as it’s preferred datasource and switches automatically to next zone if first one is unavailable, check vmauth first_available
for more details.
If you have services like vmalert or Grafana deployed in each zone, then configure them to use local vmauth-read-proxy
. Per-zone vmauth-read-proxy
always prefers “local” vmcluster for querying and reduces cross-zone traffic.
You can also pick other proxies like kubernetes service which supports Topology Aware Routing as global read entrypoint.
What happens if zone outage happen? #
If availability zone zone-eu-1
is experiencing an outage, vmauth-global-write
and vmauth-global-read
will work without interruption:
vmauth-global-write
stops proxying write requests tozone-eu-1
automatically;vmauth-global-read
andvmauth-read-proxy
stops proxying read requests tozone-eu-1
automatically;vmagent
onzone-us-1
fails to send data tozone-eu-1.vmauth-write-balancer
, starts to buffer data on disk(unless-remoteWrite.disableOnDiskQueue
is specified, which is not recommended for this topology); To keep data completeness for all the availability zones, make sure you have enough disk space on vmagent for buffer, see this doc for size recommendation.
And to avoid getting incomplete responses from zone-eu-1
which gets recovered from outage, check vmagent on zone-us-1
to see if persistent queue has been drained. If not, remove zone-eu-1
from serving query by setting .Values.availabilityZones.{zone-eu-1}.allowQuery=false
and change it back after confirm all data are restored.
How to use multitenancy? #
By default, all the data that written to vmauth-global-write
belong to tenant 0
. To write data to different tenants, set .Values.enableMultitenancy=true
and create new tenant users for vmauth-global-write
.
For example, writing data to tenant 1088
with following steps:
- create tenant VMUser for vmauth
vmauth-global-write
to use:
apiVersion: operator.victoriametrics.com/v1beta1
kind: VMUser
metadata:
name: tenant-1088-rw
labels:
tenant-test: "true"
spec:
targetRefs:
- static:
## list all the zone vmagent here
url: "http://vmagent-vmagent-zone-eu-1:8429"
url: "http://vmagent-vmagent-zone-us-1:8429"
paths:
- "/api/v1/write"
- "/prometheus/api/v1/write"
- "/write"
- "/api/v1/import"
- "/api/v1/import/.+"
target_path_suffix: /insert/1088/
username: tenant-1088
password: secret
Add extra VMUser selector in vmauth vmauth-global-write
spec:
userSelector:
matchLabels:
tenant-test: "true"
- send data to
vmauth-global-write
using above token. Example command using vmagent:
/path/to/vmagent -remoteWrite.url=http://vmauth-vmauth-global-write-$ReleaseName-vm-distributed:8427/prometheus/api/v1/write -remoteWrite.basicAuth.username=tenant-1088 -remoteWrite.basicAuth.password=secret
How to install #
Access a Kubernetes cluster.
Setup chart repository (can be omitted for OCI repositories) #
Add a chart helm repository with follow commands:
helm repo add vm https://victoriametrics.github.io/helm-charts/
helm repo update
List versions of vm/victoria-metrics-distributed
chart available to installation:
helm search repo vm/victoria-metrics-distributed -l
Install victoria-metrics-distributed
chart
#
Export default values of victoria-metrics-distributed
chart to file values.yaml
:
For HTTPS repository
helm show values vm/victoria-metrics-distributed > values.yaml
For OCI repository
helm show values oci://ghcr.io/victoriametrics/helm-charts/victoria-metrics-distributed > values.yaml
Change the values according to the need of the environment in values.yaml
file.
Test the installation with command:
For HTTPS repository
helm install vmd vm/victoria-metrics-distributed -f values.yaml -n NAMESPACE --debug --dry-run
For OCI repository
helm install vmd oci://ghcr.io/victoriametrics/helm-charts/victoria-metrics-distributed -f values.yaml -n NAMESPACE --debug --dry-run
Install chart with command:
For HTTPS repository
helm install vmd vm/victoria-metrics-distributed -f values.yaml -n NAMESPACE
For OCI repository
helm install vmd oci://ghcr.io/victoriametrics/helm-charts/victoria-metrics-distributed -f values.yaml -n NAMESPACE
Get the pods lists by running this commands:
kubectl get pods -A | grep 'vmd'
Get the application by running this command:
helm list -f vmd -n NAMESPACE
See the history of versions of vmd
application with command.
helm history vmd -n NAMESPACE
How to upgrade #
In order to serving query and ingestion while upgrading components version or changing configurations, it’s recommended to perform maintenance on availability zone one by one.
First, performing update on availability zone zone-eu-1
:
- remove
zone-eu-1
from serving query by setting.Values.availabilityZones.{zone-eu-1}.allowQuery=false
; - run
helm upgrade vm-dis -n NAMESPACE
with updated configurations forzone-eu-1
invalues.yaml
; - wait for all the components on zone
zone-eu-1
running; - wait
zone-us-1
vmagent persistent queue forzone-eu-1
been drained, addzone-eu-1
back to serving query by setting.Values.availabilityZones.{zone-eu-1}.allowQuery=true
.
Then, perform update on availability zone zone-us-1
with the same steps1~4.
How to uninstall #
Remove application with command.
helm uninstall vmd -n NAMESPACE
Documentation of Helm Chart #
Install helm-docs
following the instructions on this tutorial.
Generate docs with helm-docs
command.
cd charts/victoria-metrics-distributed
helm-docs
The markdown generation is entirely go template driven. The tool parses metadata from charts and generates a number of sub-templates that can be referenced in a template file (by default README.md.gotmpl
). If no template file is provided, the tool has a default internal template that will generate a reasonably formatted README.
Parameters #
The following tables lists the configurable parameters of the chart and their default values.
Change the values according to the need of the environment in victoria-metrics-distributed`/values.yaml
file.
Key | Type | Default | Description |
---|---|---|---|
availabilityZones[0].allowIngest | bool |
| Allow data ingestion to this zone |
availabilityZones[0].allowQuery | bool |
| Allow data query from this zone through global query endpoint |
availabilityZones[0].extraAffinity | object |
| Extra affinity adds user defined custom affinity rules |
availabilityZones[0].name | string |
| Availability zone name |
availabilityZones[0].nodeSelector | object |
| Node selector to restrict where pods of this zone can be placed. usually provided by cloud providers. |
availabilityZones[0].topologySpreadConstraints | list |
| Topology spread constraints allows to customize the default topologySpreadConstraints. |
availabilityZones[0].vmagent | object |
| VMAgent here only meant to proxy write requests to each az, doesn’t support customized other remote write address. |
availabilityZones[0].vmagent.annotations | object |
| VMAgent annotations |
availabilityZones[0].vmagent.name | string |
| Override the name of the vmagent object |
availabilityZones[0].vmagent.spec | object |
| VMAgent spec. More options can be found here |
availabilityZones[0].vmauthCrossAZQuery.enabled | bool |
| Create a vmauth with all the zone with |
availabilityZones[0].vmauthCrossAZQuery.name | string |
| Override the name of the vmauth object |
availabilityZones[0].vmauthCrossAZQuery.spec | object |
| VMAuth spec. More options can be found here |
availabilityZones[0].vmauthIngest.enabled | bool |
| Create vmauth as a local write endpoint |
availabilityZones[0].vmauthIngest.name | string |
| Override the name of the vmauth object |
availabilityZones[0].vmauthIngest.spec | object |
| VMAuth spec. More options can be found here |
availabilityZones[0].vmauthQueryPerZone.enabled | bool |
| Create vmauth as a local read endpoint |
availabilityZones[0].vmauthQueryPerZone.name | string |
| Override the name of the vmauth object |
availabilityZones[0].vmauthQueryPerZone.spec | object |
| VMAuth spec. More options can be found here |
availabilityZones[0].vmcluster.enabled | bool |
| |
availabilityZones[0].vmcluster.name | string |
| Override the name of the vmcluster, by default is vmcluster- |
availabilityZones[0].vmcluster.spec | object |
| Spec for VMCluster CRD, see here |
availabilityZones[1].allowIngest | bool |
| Allow data ingestion to this zone |
availabilityZones[1].allowQuery | bool |
| Allow data query from this zone through global query endpoint |
availabilityZones[1].extraAffinity | object |
| Extra affinity adds user defined custom affinity rules |
availabilityZones[1].name | string |
| Availability zone name |
availabilityZones[1].nodeSelector | object |
| Node selector to restrict where pods of this zone can be placed. usually provided by cloud providers. |
availabilityZones[1].topologySpreadConstraints | list |
| Topology spread constraints allows to customize the default topologySpreadConstraints. |
availabilityZones[1].vmagent | object |
| VMAgent only meant to proxy write requests to each az, doesn’t support customized remote write address |
availabilityZones[1].vmagent.annotations | object |
| VMAgent annotations |
availabilityZones[1].vmagent.name | string |
| Override the name of the vmagent object |
availabilityZones[1].vmagent.spec | object |
| VMAgent spec. More options can be found here |
availabilityZones[1].vmauthCrossAZQuery.enabled | bool |
| Create a vmauth with all the zone with |
availabilityZones[1].vmauthCrossAZQuery.name | string |
| Override the name of the vmauth object |
availabilityZones[1].vmauthCrossAZQuery.spec | object |
| VMAuth spec. More options can be found here |
availabilityZones[1].vmauthIngest.enabled | bool |
| Create vmauth as a local write endpoint |
availabilityZones[1].vmauthIngest.name | string |
| Override the name of the vmauth object |
availabilityZones[1].vmauthIngest.spec | object |
| VMAuth spec. More options can be found here |
availabilityZones[1].vmauthQueryPerZone.enabled | bool |
| Create vmauth as a local read endpoint |
availabilityZones[1].vmauthQueryPerZone.name | string |
| Override the name of the vmauth object |
availabilityZones[1].vmauthQueryPerZone.spec | object |
| VMAuth spec. More options can be found here |
availabilityZones[1].vmcluster.enabled | bool |
| |
availabilityZones[1].vmcluster.name | string |
| Override the name of the vmcluster, by default is vmcluster- |
availabilityZones[1].vmcluster.spec | object |
| Spec for VMCluster CRD, see here |
enableMultitenancy | bool |
| Enable multitenancy mode see here |
extraVMAgent | object |
| Set up an extra vmagent to scrape all the scrape objects by default, and write data to above vmauth-global-ingest endpoint. |
fullnameOverride | string |
| Overrides the chart’s computed fullname. |
nameOverride | string |
| Overrides the chart’s name |
victoria-metrics-k8s-stack | object |
| Set up vm operator and other resources like vmalert, grafana if needed |
vmauthIngestGlobal.enabled | bool |
| Create a vmauth as the global write entrypoint |
vmauthIngestGlobal.name | string |
| Override the name of the vmauth object |
vmauthIngestGlobal.spec | object |
| VMAuth spec. More options can be found here |
vmauthQueryGlobal.enabled | bool |
| Create vmauth as the global read entrypoint |
vmauthQueryGlobal.name | string |
| Override the name of the vmauth object |
vmauthQueryGlobal.spec | object |
| VMAuth spec. More options can be found here |