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Percona Documentation

Helm

Helm is the package manager for Kubernetes. Percona Helm charts can be found in percona/percona-helm-charts repository on Github.

Before you start

Helm v3 is needed to run the following steps.

Refer to Kubernetes Supported versions and Helm Version Support Policy to find the supported versions.

PMM should be platform-agnostic, but it requires escalated privileges inside a container. It is necessary to have a root user inside the PMM container. Thus, PMM would not work for Kubernetes Platforms such as OpenShift or others that have hardened Security Context Constraints, for example:

Kubernetes platforms offer a different set of capabilities. To use PMM in production, you would need backups and, thus storage driver that supports snapshots. Consult your provider for Kubernetes and Cloud storage capabilities.

Locality and Availability

You should not run the PMM monitoring server along with the monitored database clusters and services on the same system.

Please ensure proper locality either by physically separating workloads in Kubernetes clusters or running separate Kubernetes clusters for the databases and monitoring workloads.

You can physically separate workloads by properly configuring Kubernetes nodes, affinity rules, label selections, etc.

Also, ensure that the Kubernetes cluster has high availability so that in case of a node failure, the monitoring service will be running and capturing the required data.

Use Helm to install PMM server on Kubernetes clusters

Availability

This feature is available starting with PMM 2.29.0.

Summary

  • Setup PMM admin password
  • Install
  • Configuration parameters
  • PMM environment variables
  • PMM SSL certificates
  • Backup
  • Upgrade
  • Restore
  • Uninstall

Setup PMM admin password

Create Kubernetes secret with PMM admin password: 

cat <<EOF | kubectl create -f -
apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
  name: pmm-secret
  labels:
    app.kubernetes.io/name: pmm
type: Opaque
data:
# base64 encoded password
# encode some password: `echo -n "admin" | base64`
  PMM_ADMIN_PASSWORD: YWRtaW4=
EOF

To get admin password execute:

kubectl get secret pmm-secret -o jsonpath='{.data.PMM_ADMIN_PASSWORD}' | base64 --decode

Install

To install the chart with the release name pmm:

helm repo add percona https://percona.github.io/percona-helm-charts/
helm install pmm \
--set secret.create=false \
--set secret.name=pmm-secret \
percona/pmm
The command deploys PMM on the Kubernetes cluster in the default configuration and specified secret. The Parameters section lists the parameters that can be configured during installation.

Tip

List all releases using helm list.

Parameters

The list of Parameters is subject to change from release to release. Check the Parameters section of the PMM Helm Chart.

Tip

You can list the default parameters values.yaml or get them from chart definition: helm show values percona/pmm

Specify each parameter using the --set key=value[,key=value] or --set-string key=value[,key=value] arguments to helm install. For example,

helm install pmm \
--set secret.create=false --set secret.name=pmm-secret \
--set-string pmmEnv.DISABLE_UPDATES="1" \
--set service.type="NodePort" \
--set storage.storageClassName="linode-block-storage-retain" \
    percona/pmm

The command above installs PMM, configuring the service network type as NodePort and setting the storage class to linode-block-storage-retain for persistent storage on LKE.```

Important

Once this chart is deployed, it is impossible to change the application’s access credentials, such as password, using Helm. To change these application credentials after deployment, delete any persistent volumes (PVs) used by the chart and re-deploy it, or use the application’s built-in administrative tools (if available)

Alternatively, a YAML file that specifies the values for the above parameters can be provided while installing the chart. For example:

helm show values percona/pmm > values.yaml

#change needed parameters in values.yaml, you need `yq` tool pre-installed
yq -i e '.secret.create |= false' values.yaml

helm install pmm -f values.yaml percona/pmm

PMM environment variables

In case you want to add extra environment variables (useful for advanced operations like custom init scripts), you can use the pmmEnv property.

pmmEnv:
  DISABLE_UPDATES: "1"

PMM SSL certificates

PMM ships with self signed SSL certificates to provide secure connection between client and server (check here).

You will see the warning when connecting to PMM. To further increase security, you should provide your certificates and add values of credentials to the fields of the cert section:

certs:
  name: pmm-certs
  files:
    certificate.crt: <content>
    certificate.key: <content>
    ca-certs.pem: <content>
    dhparam.pem: <content>

Another approach to set up TLS certificates is to use the Ingress controller, see TLS. PMM helm chart supports Ingress. See PMM network configuration.

Backup

PMM helm chart uses PersistentVolume and PersistentVolumeClaim to allocate storage in the Kubernetes cluster.

Volumes could be pre-provisioned and dynamic. PMM chart supports both and exposes it through PMM storage configuration.

Backups for the PMM server currently support only storage layer backups and thus require StorageClass and VolumeSnapshotClass.

Validate the correct configuration by using these commands: 

kubectl get sc
kubectl get volumesnapshotclass

Storage

Storage configuration is Hardware and Cloud specific. There could be additional costs associated with Volume Snapshots. Check the documentation for your Cloud or for your Kubernetes cluster.

Before taking a VolumeSnapshot, stop the PMM server. In this step, we will stop PMM (scale to 0 pods), take a snapshot, wait until the snapshot completes, then start PMM server (scale to 1 pod): 

kubectl scale statefulset pmm --replicas=0
kubectl wait --for=jsonpath='{.status.replicas}'=0 statefulset pmm

cat <<EOF | kubectl create -f -
apiVersion: snapshot.storage.k8s.io/v1
kind: VolumeSnapshot
metadata:
  name: before-v2.34.0-upgrade
  labels:
    app.kubernetes.io/name: pmm
spec:
  volumeSnapshotClassName: csi-hostpath-snapclass
  source:
    persistentVolumeClaimName: pmm-storage-pmm-0
EOF

kubectl wait --for=jsonpath='{.status.readyToUse}'=true VolumeSnapshot/before-v2.34.0-upgrade
kubectl scale statefulset pmm --replicas=1

Output: 

statefulset.apps/pmm scaled
statefulset.apps/pmm condition met
volumesnapshot.snapshot.storage.k8s.io/before-v2.34.0-upgrade created
volumesnapshot.snapshot.storage.k8s.io/before-v2.34.0-upgrade condition met
statefulset.apps/pmm scaled

PMM scale

Only one replica set is currently supported.

You can view available snapshots by executing the following command: 

kubectl get volumesnapshot

Upgrades

Percona will release a new chart updating its containers if a new version of the main container is available, there are any significant changes, or critical vulnerabilities exist.

By default the UI update feature is disabled and should not be enabled. Do not modify that parameter when customizing the values.yaml file:

pmmEnv:
  DISABLE_UPDATES: "1"

Before updating the helm chart, it is recommended to pre-pull the image on the node where PMM is running, as the PMM images could be large and could take time to download.

Update PMM as follows:

helm repo update percona
helm upgrade pmm -f values.yaml percona/pmm

This will check updates in the repo and upgrade deployment if the updates are available.

Restore

The version of the PMM server should be greater than or equal to the version in a snapshot. To restore from the snapshot, delete the old deployment first: 

helm uninstall pmm

And then use snapshot configuration to start the PMM server again with the correct version and correct storage configuration: 

helm install pmm \
--set image.tag="2.34.0" \
--set storage.name="pmm-storage-old" \
--set storage.dataSource.name="before-v2.34.0-upgrade" \
--set storage.dataSource.kind="VolumeSnapshot" \
--set storage.dataSource.apiGroup="snapshot.storage.k8s.io" \
--set secret.create=false \
--set secret.name=pmm-secret \
percona/pmm

Here, we created a new pmm-storage-old PVC with data from the snapshot. So, there are a couple of PV and PVCs available in a cluster.

$ kubectl get pvc
NAME                    STATUS   VOLUME                                     CAPACITY   ACCESS MODES   STORAGECLASS      AGE
pmm-storage-old-pmm-0   Bound    pvc-70e5d2eb-570f-4087-9515-edf2f051666d   10Gi       RWO            csi-hostpath-sc   3s
pmm-storage-pmm-0       Bound    pvc-9dbd9160-e4c5-47a7-bd90-bff36fc1463e   10Gi       RWO            csi-hostpath-sc   89m

$ kubectl get pv
NAME                                       CAPACITY   ACCESS MODES   RECLAIM POLICY   STATUS   CLAIM                           STORAGECLASS      REASON   AGE
pvc-70e5d2eb-570f-4087-9515-edf2f051666d   10Gi       RWO            Delete           Bound    default/pmm-storage-old-pmm-0   csi-hostpath-sc            4m50s
pvc-9dbd9160-e4c5-47a7-bd90-bff36fc1463e   10Gi       RWO            Delete           Bound    default/pmm-storage-pmm-0       csi-hostpath-sc            93m

Delete unneeded PVC when you are sure you don’t need them.

Uninstall

To uninstall pmm deployment:

helm uninstall pmm

This command takes a release name and uninstalls the release.

It removes all resources associated with the last release of the chart as well as the release history.

Helm will not delete PVC, PV, and any snapshots. Those need to be deleted manually.

Also, delete PMM Secret if no longer required: 

kubectl delete secret pmm-secret

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