Private DBaaS with Free Kubernetes Cluster

Private DBaaS with Free Kubernetes Cluster

We at Percona are committed to delivering software that enables users to run databases anywhere. Our Operators for databases and Percona Monitoring and Management (PMM) Database as a Service (DBaaS) confirm our commitment to Kubernetes. Kubernetes is not only the most popular container orchestrator, but also becoming a de-facto standard for containerized workloads.

Even though we have an enterprise-grade solution to run and manage databases on Kubernetes, we still see that Kubernetes itself sometimes becomes a blocker for onboarding. We wrote a blog post some time ago about spinning up DBaaS in under 20 minutes. What if we can do it in two? This is why we partnered with a cloud-native service provider – Civo – to provide our users with a free temporary Kubernetes cluster. In this blog post, you will learn how to use it and try out our Private DBaaS solutions without the need of being a database or Kubernetes expert.

How do I get the cluster?

• Sign in to Percona Platform. If you don’t have an account yet, click Create one at the bottom of the sign-in form.
• Find “Free Kubernetes” in the menu on the left:

• Click “Launch a new cluster”. It will take less than 90 seconds to create one.
• Once the cluster is ready, you will be able to download kubeconfig – a file used to access the Civo Kubernetes cluster.

Save this file somewhere on your computer, we will need it later to register Kubernetes in PMM DBaaS. That is it, the cluster is up and running. 

Limitations

• The cluster will be automatically destroyed in three hours. It must not be used for any production workloads.
• The cluster comes with three nodes (4 CPUs, 8 GB RAM each) and does not have auto scaling enabled. It is enough for deploying a database cluster and an application.

Try DBaaS in Percona Monitoring and Management

Install PMM server

If you have a PMM server – skip this section. If not, we are going to deploy it using the quick install. You can also install PMM on Kubernetes with a helm chart by following our documentation and this blog post.

Run the following command to install PMM server on your docker compatible *nix based machine (see quick start guide for more details):

When the script is done, the CLI tool will print a list of IP-based URLs you can put in a browser to access the PMM UI.  Copy/paste one into your favorite browser.  You may receive a security warning, there are instructions in the script output on how to bypass if you don’t get a “proceed anyway” option in your browser.  

DBaaS

You can find necessary information about how to utilize DBaaS in our documentation or this video. In general there are few steps:

1. At the time of writing this blog post, DBaaS is in technical preview. Do not forget to enable it in Settings -> Advanced Settings.
2. Register the Kubernetes cluster in the DBaaS using the kubeconfig generated in the Portal
3. Deploy your first database

Your database will be ready in a few minutes, you will get the endpoint to connect to and the username and password. By default the database is not exposed publicly and reachable only within the Kubernetes cluster. You can change it in the Advanced Options when creating the database.

With ‘Free Kubernetes’ we want to simplify PMM DBaaS onboarding and we also want to bring value to our community of users. It is the first version and we plan to deliver more enhancements to provide even more exciting onboarding. It would be great if you could help us to find those improvements by submitting your feedback at [email protected]. Please spend a couple of minutes and let us know what problems or improvements you would like to see in your PMM DBaaS and Kubernetes journey.