Provision a database cluster

With Mission Control, you can provision a database cluster directly in the Mission Control UI or through the kubectl command line tool.

Mission Control reconciles MissionControlCluster resources defined either through the UI or CLI against any currently deployed database instances. These definitions describe the desired state of your database clusters. Using your definitions, Mission Control automates the process of provisioning and configuring resources across your control and data planes.

Prerequisites

  • UI simple mode

  • UI expert mode

  • CLI

You need the following:

You need the following:

You need the following:

  • Working knowledge of Kubernetes.

  • Access to a Kubernetes cluster.

  • kubectl installed and configured.

Provision and define a cluster

You can provision a database cluster using the Mission Control UI or CLI. The UI offers simple mode and expert mode. DataStax recommends simple mode if you are new to Kubernetes or Mission Control. It allows you to provision a cluster with a few clicks.

DataStax recommends expert mode if you are familiar with the Kubernetes API and YAML configuration. It allows you to define a cluster with more granular control.

DataStax recommends the CLI if you are familiar with the kubectl command line tool.

For best practices, see Best practices for database clusters.

  • UI simple mode

  • UI expert mode

  • CLI

To provision a database cluster using simple mode, do the following:

  1. In the Mission Control UI, select a project, and then click Create Cluster.

  2. Enter a meaningful, human-readable Cluster Name.

    The Cluster Name can be any string of characters, including international, alphanumeric, punctuation—dashes, spaces, underscores, upper or lower case.

    Cluster names are permanent. You cannot change them after you create the cluster. The name uniquely identifies the cluster across all projects and all environments to prevent a logical cluster from inadvertently joining another.

  3. Select a cluster Type.

  4. Enter a valid Version number.

  5. Leave the Image field blank. It is for advanced users.

  6. To define the Datacenter configuration, do the following:

    1. Enter a meaningful, human-readable Datacenter Name.

      Datacenter names are permanent. You cannot change them after you create the cluster. The datacenter name:

      • Must start with an alphanumeric character.

      • Must be a single word.

      • Can be any capitalization: upper, lower, or mixed-case.

      • Can include dashes and underscores.

      • Must not include spaces.

    2. Optional: Add the configuration property and its corresponding value in the Add cassandra.yaml Setting sub-section if you require a non-standard Cassandra configuration.

    3. Select the Data Plane Context where you want to deploy the cluster.

      By default, Mission Control deploys a database cluster to the control plane. If a data plane is deployed on another Kubernetes cluster, you can choose to deploy the database cluster to that context. For more information, see the Planning guide.

    4. Enter a Rack Name for the first rack, for example, rack1.

      Rack names are permanent. You cannot change them after you create the cluster. The rack name:

      • Must start with an alphanumeric character.

      • Must be a single word.

      • Can be any capitalization: upper, lower, or mixed-case.

      • Can have dashes and underscores.

      • Must not include spaces.

      Database pods, or nodes, are scheduled using node affinity.

    5. Add the mission-control.datastax.com/role=database label to the rack configuration to ensure database pods are scheduled on database worker nodes only, not on platform worker nodes.

      • Label: mission-control.datastax.com/role

      • Value: database

        DataStax recommends a minimum of three nodes for production clusters to support replication in a datacenter for high availability. With three replicas in a datacenter, this configuration can tolerate a failure of one node when using a strong consistency of LOCAL_QUORUM.

        To add another rack, select Add Rack and configure it as you did in the previous steps. Make sure that you add the node affinity label.

    6. For Nodes Per Rack, allocate at least one database node to the rack.

    7. Optional: To create a multi-datacenter cluster, select Add Datacenter and configure it as above.

    8. For Resource Requests, enter the minimum available resources required. DataStax recommends that you allocate the following minimum amounts of memory:

      • 4 GB of RAM for development environments and 8 GB for nodes with Vector Search enabled.

      • 32 GB of RAM to production nodes and 64 GB for nodes with Vector Search enabled.

        For more information, see the HCD, DSE, or Cassandra capacity planning guide.

      • 500 GB of storage for production nodes.

        .Select the Storage Class you configured for your environment.

        DataStax recommends a class backed by NVMe SSDs.

    9. Enter the Storage Amount to allocate.

  7. To add Security Settings, do the following:

    1. Select the Require authentication to access cluster option.

    2. Enter a Superuser Name.

    3. Enter a Superuser Password.

    4. Select the Enable internode encryption option.

      The superuser role is required to provision other roles such as operators and service accounts.

      DataStax recommends that you secure your clusters by enabling authentication and internode encryption, especially for production environments.

  8. To configure Backup/Restore options, do the following:

    1. Optional: Enter a Prefix to use as the name of the top-level folder in the Backup bucket.

      If you don’t enter a value, Mission Control uses the cluster name.

    2. Select your Backup Configuration.

  9. Under Advanced Settings, for Heap Amount, enter an amount using the following as a guide:

    System memory

    Heap

    8 GB

    4 GB

    32 GB

    8-24 GB

    64 GB

    31 GB

  10. Select Create Cluster.

  11. Optional: Track the progress of the database pods:

    kubectl get pods -n mission-control

    Mission Control assigns database pod names prefixed by the cluster name. Each node completes a standard bootstrap sequence in approximately 2-3 minutes. Once operational and ready to accept client requests, each pod displays 2/2 containers as READY with a STATUS of Running.

  12. Optional: Inspect pods that are not ready:

    kubectl describe pod -n mission-control POD_NAME

    Replace POD_NAME with the name of your pod.

DataStax recommends expert mode only if you are familiar with the Kubernetes API and YAML configuration.

After you create or update a cluster in expert mode, you cannot edit it in simple mode.

For custom resource definitions (CRDs), see the Mission Control Custom Resource Definition (CRD) reference.

To provision a database cluster in Mission Control using expert mode, do the following:

  1. In the Mission Control UI, select a project, and then click Create Cluster.

  2. Click Expert. The Create Cluster page displays YAML configuration options.

  3. Edit the YAML configuration to define the cluster.

    As you make changes, autocomplete suggestions appear for some fields:

    • When you add a new array item (-), autocomplete provides intelligent suggestions based on the schema.

    • For arrays of objects, autocomplete suggests valid property names based on the object’s schema.

    • For arrays of enum strings, autocomplete suggests predefined values from the enum list.

  4. Click Create Cluster.

When you use expert mode to copy your YAML definition and create a new cluster on another installation, you must omit the metadata.resourceVersion property. If you include this property, you cannot make updates to the new cluster with kubectl.

Given that your data plane clusters have either the appropriate compute capacity or the capability to auto-scale, define a simple MissionControlCluster YAML file and invoke kubectl to create a running cluster.

Create a cluster by completing the following define and submit tasks. Review the automatic reconciliation workflow, and then monitor the reconciliation status with one kubectl command.

To define a new MissionControlCluster, start with creating a new YAML file that defines the topology and configuration for the new cluster. This file is an instance of a MissionControlCluster Kubernetes Custom Resource (CR), and it describes the target end-state for the cluster.

What follows is a minimal example of a MissionControlCluster instance which creates a three-node database cluster. Each node has five GB of storage available for data and requests 32 GB of RAM.

For more information, see the HCD, DSE, or Cassandra capacity planning guide.

  1. On a local machine, create a manifest file named database-cluster.yaml to describe the cluster topology.

  2. Copy the following code into the file:

    apiVersion: missioncontrol.datastax.com/v1beta2
kind: MissionControlCluster
metadata:
  name: CLUSTER_NAME
  namespace: PROJECT_SLUG
spec:
  encryption:
    internodeEncryption:
      enabled: true
  k8ssandra:
    auth: true
    cassandra:
      serverVersion: SERVER_VERSION
      serverType: SERVER_TYPE
      storageConfig:
        cassandraDataVolumeClaimSpec:
          storageClassName: default
          accessModes:
            - ReadWriteOnce
          resources:
            requests:
              storage: 1024Gi
      config:
        cassandraYaml:
          dynamic_snitch: false
          server_encryption_options:
            internode_encryption: all
        jvmOptions:
          additionalJvmServerOptions:
          heapSize: 31Gi
      resources:
        limits:
          cpu: "32"
          memory: 128Gi
        requests:
          cpu: "28"
          memory: 128Gi
      datacenters:
        - metadata:
            name: dc1
          datacenterName: dc1
          stopped: false
          size: 3
          racks:
            - name: rack1
              nodeAffinityLabels:
                mission-control.datastax.com/role: database
            - name: rack2
              nodeAffinityLabels:
                mission-control.datastax.com/role: database
            - name: rack3
              nodeAffinityLabels:
                mission-control.datastax.com/role: database

    Replace the following:

    • CLUSTER_NAME: The name of the cluster

    • PROJECT_SLUG: The name of the project

    • SERVER_VERSION: The version of the database

    • SERVER_TYPE: The type of the database server: hcd, dse, or oss

  3. Change the storageClassName to a preferred value, matching the ones available in the installation, or leave the default value. To determine which storage classes are available in the environment, run:

    kubectl get sc

  4. Optional: Append the hostNetwork section at the same level as the config section in the database-cluster.yaml file if you use VMs with a Mission Control embedded Kubernetes runtime:

     ...
  networking:
    hostNetwork: true
  config:
    ...

    This makes the deployed services directly available on the network.

  5. Apply the manifest:

    kubectl apply -f MANIFEST_FILENAME.yaml

    Replace MANIFEST_FILENAME.yaml with the name of your file.

    Check that the pods representing the nodes appear:

    kubectl get pods -n mission-control
    Result 
    NAME                                                  READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
cass-operator-controller-manager-6487b8fb6c-xkjjx     1/1     Running   0          41m
k8ssandra-operator-55b44544d6-n8gs8                   1/1     Running   0          41m
mission-control-controller-manager-54c64975cd-nvcm7   1/1     Running   0          41m
test-dc1-default-sts-0                                0/2     Pending   0          7s
test-dc1-default-sts-1                                0/2     Pending   0          7s
test-dc1-default-sts-2                                0/2     Pending   0          7s

    Each node must go through the standard bootstrapping process, which takes approximately 2-3 minutes. Upon completion, the nodes should display 2/2 under READY and Running under STATUS:

    NAME                                                  READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
cass-operator-controller-manager-6487b8fb6c-xkjjx     1/1     Running   0          50m
k8ssandra-operator-55b44544d6-n8gs8                   1/1     Running   0          50m
mission-control-controller-manager-54c64975cd-nvcm7   1/1     Running   0          50m
test-dc1-default-sts-0                                2/2     Running   0          9m6s
test-dc1-default-sts-1                                2/2     Running   0          9m6s
test-dc1-default-sts-2                                2/2     Running   0          9m6s

    If any pods list their STATUS as Pending, there might be resource availability issues. Run the following command to check the pod status:

    kubectl describe pod POD_NAME

    Replace POD_NAME with the name of your pod.

    The cluster is operational when all of the nodes indicate 2/2 under READY and Running under STATUS.

    Now that the database cluster is up and running, connect to it using the previously downloaded cqlsh binary with vector index support. Mission Control is secured by default and generates a unique superuser after disabling the default cassandra account.

  6. Discover the username of this generated superuser by accessing the <CLUSTER_NAME-superuser secret in the Kubernetes cluster in the mission-control namespace. Run the following command:

    kubectl get secret/test-superuser -n mission-control -o jsonpath='{.data.username}' | base64 -d; echo
    Result 
    test-superuser

  7. Read the username’s password:

    kubectl get secret/test-superuser -n mission-control -o jsonpath='{.data.password}' | base64 -d; echo
    Result 
    PaSsw0rdFORsup3ruser

  8. Connect to the cluster:

    • Embedded Kubernetes cluster

    • External Kubernetes cluster

    Because host networking is enabled, connect to any of the nodes through its Internet Protocol (IP) address or hostname using cqlsh with the correct Superuser credentials. Port 9042 must be accessible from cqlsh:

    cqlsh --username test-superuser --password SUPERUSER_PASSWORD ip-175-32-24-217

    Replace SUPERUSER_PASSWORD with the password of the superuser.

    Result 
    Connected to test at ip-175-32-24-217:9042
[cqlsh 6.0.0 | Cassandra 4.0.7-c556d537c707 | CQL spec 3.4.5 | Native protocol v5]
Use HELP for help.
test-superuser@cqlsh>

    1. Port forward the service that exposes the cluster’s CQL port:

      kubectl port-forward svc/test-dc1-service 9042:9042 -n mission-control

    2. Connect using cqlsh pointing at localhost:

      cqlsh --username test-superuser --password `**SUPERUSER_PASSWORD**` 127.0.0.1

      Replace SUPERUSER_PASSWORD with the password of the superuser.

      Result 
      Connected to test at 127.0.0.1:9042.
[cqlsh 6.0.0 | Cassandra 4.0.7-c556d537c707 | CQL spec 3.4.5 | Native protocol v5]
Use HELP for help.
test-superuser@cqlsh>

Automatic reconciliation steps for MissionControlCluster resources

The following steps describe the automated process for informational purposes only; no user intervention is required.

  1. Cluster-level operators detect a new MissionControlCluster custom resource through the Kubernetes API within the control plane.

  2. Cluster-level operators identify which control plane or data plane clusters receive datacenters defined within the MissionControlCluster. In this example the east data plane cluster is specified so datacenter-level resources are created and reconciled there. If you omit the data plane identifier, resources are deployed within the control plane.

  3. Datacenter-level operators within the data plane clusters detect new datacenter-level custom resources (CRs) through the Kubernetes API.

  4. Datacenter-level operators generate and submit rack-level resources (StatefulSets) to their local Kubernetes API.

  5. Built-in Kubernetes reconciliation loops detect the new rack-level resources and begin creating pods and storage resources representing the underlying HCD, DSE, or Cassandra nodes.

  6. Status of resource creation rises to operators at the datacenter and cluster levels.

  7. When all pods are up and running the cluster-level operator signals the datacenter-level operators to begin bootstrap operations of DSE within the created and running pods.

  8. As pods come online their status is escalated and operations continue until all nodes are up and running with services discoverable via the Kubernetes API.

Monitor bootstrap progress

Monitor the progress of the bootstrap to determine completion status or note any errors.

After you submit the MissionControlCluster custom resource (CR), the operator modifies the resource within the Kubernetes API by adding a status field to the top-level of the resource.

This status field provides valuable insight into the health of the MissionControlCluster as one or more operators detect definition changes. status indicates everything from the reconciliation phase to errors encountered while attempting to create storage.

  1. Run the following command to retrieve the descriptive status for the test MissionControlCluster object:

    kubectl describe mccluster/CLUSTER_NAME

    Replace CLUSTER_NAME with the name of your cluster.

    You can specify MissionControlCluster, missioncontrolcluster, or the short-form mccluster. Additionally, all of the names can be plural.
    Result 
    Name:         CLUSTER_NAME
Namespace:    default
Labels:       <none>
Annotations:  <none>
API Version:  missioncontrol.datastax.com/v1beta2
Kind:         MissionControlCluster
Metadata:
  Creation Timestamp:  2023-10-30T11:09:33Z
  Finalizers:
    missioncontrol.datastax.com/finalizer
  Generation:        1
  Resource Version:  105388250
  UID:               57e956f8-1f87-422f-a7f8-b9ec87b956c4
Spec:
  Create Issuer:  true
  Encryption:
    Internode Encryption:
      Certs:
        Cert Template:
          Issuer Ref:
            Name:
          Secret Name:
        Create Certs:   true
      Enabled:          true
  k8ssandra:
    Auth:  true
    Cassandra:
      Datacenters:
        Dse Workloads:
        Metadata:
          Name:  dc1
          Pods:
          Services:
            Additional Seed Service:
            All Pods Service:
            Dc Service:
            Node Port Service:
            Seed Service:
        Per Node Config Init Container Image:  <name>/yq:4
        Per Node Config Map Ref:
        Racks:
          Name:   rack1
        Size:     3
        Stopped:  false
      Metadata:
        Pods:
        Services:
          Additional Seed Service:
          All Pods Service:
          Dc Service:
          Node Port Service:
          Seed Service:
      Per Node Config Init Container Image:  <name>/yq:4
      Resources:
        Requests:
          Memory:      32Gi
      Server Type:     dse
      Server Version:  6.9.2
      Storage Config:
        Cassandra Data Volume Claim Spec:
          Access Modes:
            ReadWriteOnce
          Resources:
            Requests:
              Storage:         5Gi
          Storage Class Name:  standard
      Superuser Secret Ref:
        Name:          my-cluster-superuser
    Secrets Provider:  internal
Status:
  Conditions:
    Last Transition Time:  2023-10-30T14:08:08Z
    Message:
    Reason:                UpdatingIssuers
    Status:                False
    Type:                  UpdatingIssuers
    Last Transition Time:  2023-10-30T14:08:08Z
    Message:
    Reason:                UpdatingCertificates
    Status:                False
    Type:                  UpdatingCertificates
    Last Transition Time:  2023-10-30T14:08:08Z
    Message:
    Reason:                UpdatingReplicatedSecrets
    Status:                False
    Type:                  UpdatingReplicatedSecrets
    Last Transition Time:  2023-10-30T11:16:38Z
    Message:
    Reason:                UpdatingCluster
    Status:                False
    Type:                  UpdatingCluster
    Last Transition Time:  2023-10-30T14:08:08Z
    Message:               Ready
    Reason:                Ready
    Status:                True
    Type:                  Ready
Events:                    <none>

  2. View operator logs to discover more detail:

    kubectl logs -n mission-control POD_NAME

    Replace POD_NAME with the name of your pod, for example: mission-control-controller.

    The StatefulSet controller is one of the core Kubernetes controllers that create the pods. The number of pods per StatefulSet is calculated by dividing the number of nodes in the datacenter by the number of racks.

    For example, a three-node cluster with three racks has one pod per StatefulSet, and a nine node cluster with three racks has three pods per StatefulSet.

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