Nodes orchestration
editNodes orchestration
editNodeSets overview
editThe Elasticsearch cluster is specified using a list of NodeSets
. Each NodeSet
represents a group of Elasticsearch nodes sharing the same specification (both Elasticsearch configuration and Kubernetes Pod configuration).
apiVersion: elasticsearch.k8s.elastic.co/v1 kind: Elasticsearch metadata: name: quickstart spec: version: 8.15.3 nodeSets: - name: master-nodes count: 3 config: master: true data: false volumeClaimTemplates: - metadata: name: elasticsearch-data spec: accessModes: - ReadWriteOnce resources: requests: storage: 10Gi storageClassName: standard - name: data-nodes count: 10 config: master: false data: true volumeClaimTemplates: - metadata: name: elasticsearch-data spec: accessModes: - ReadWriteOnce resources: requests: storage: 1000Gi storageClassName: standard
The Elasticsearch resource above defines two NodeSets
: one for master nodes, using 10Gi volumes, and one for data nodes, using 1000Gi volumes. The Elasticsearch cluster is composed of 13 nodes: 3 master nodes and 10 data nodes.
Upgrading the cluster
editECK handles smooth upgrades from one cluster specification to another. You can apply a new Elasticsearch specification at any time.
Here are a few examples based on the Elasticsearch specification above:
-
To add five additional Elasticsearch data nodes: change
count: 10
tocount: 15
in thedata-nodes
NodeSet
. -
To increase the RAM memory limit of data nodes to 32Gi: set a different resources limits in the existing
data-nodes
NodeSet
PodTemplate. -
To replace dedicated master and dedicated data nodes by nodes having both master and data roles: replace the 2 existing
NodeSets
by a single one with a different name and the corresponding Elasticsearch configuration settings. -
To upgrade Elasticsearch from version
7.2.0
to7.3.0
: change the value in theversion
field.
ECK orchestrates NodeSet
changes with no downtime and makes sure that:
- Before a node is removed, the relevant data is migrated to other nodes (but see Limitations).
-
When a cluster topology changes, the Elasticsearch orchestration settings
discovery.seed_hosts
,cluster.initial_master_nodes
,discovery.zen.minimum_master_nodes
,_cluster/voting_config_exclusions
are adjusted accordingly. -
Rolling upgrades are performed safely, reusing the
PersistentVolumes
of the upgraded Elasticsearch nodes.
StatefulSets orchestration
editBehind the scenes, ECK translates each NodeSet
specified in the Elasticsearch resource into a StatefulSet in Kubernetes. The StatefulSet specification is based on the NodeSet
specification:
-
count
corresponds to the number of replicas in theStatefulSet
, each replica leading to the creation of aPod
, which corresponds to a single Elasticsearch node -
podTemplate
can be used to specify custom settings for the Elasticsearch Pod, overriding the default ones set by ECK on the generatedStatefulSet
specification -
the
StatefulSet
name is built from the Elasticsearch resource name and theNodeSet
name. Each Pod will be assigned theStatefulSet
name suffixed by an ordinal. The corresponding Elasticsearch node has the same name as thePod
.
The actual Pod
creation is handled by the StatefulSet
controller in Kubernetes. ECK relies on the OnDelete StatefulSet update strategy since it needs full control over when and how Pods get upgraded to a new revision.
When a Pod
is removed and recreated (maybe with a newer revision), the StatefulSet
controller makes sure that the PersistentVolumes
attached to the original Pod
are then attached to the new Pod
.
Cluster upgrade patterns
editDepending on how the NodeSets
are updated, ECK handles the Kubernetes resources reconciliation in various ways.
-
When a new
NodeSet
is added to the Elasticsearch resource, ECK creates the correspondingStatefulSet
. It also sets up Secrets and ConfigMaps to hold the TLS certificates and Elasticsearch configuration files. -
When the node count of an existing
NodeSet
is increased, ECK increases the replicas of the correspondingStatefulSet
. -
When the node count of an existing
NodeSet
is decreased, ECK migrates data away from the corresponding Elasticsearch nodes to remove, then decreases the replicas of the correspondingStatefulSet
, once data migration is over. Corresponding PersistentVolumeClaims are automatically removed. -
When an existing
NodeSet
is removed, ECK migrates data away from the corresponding Elasticsearch nodes to remove, decreases theStatefulSet
replicas accordingly, then finally removes the correspondingStatefulSet
. -
When the specification of an existing
NodeSet
is updated (for example the Elasticsearch configuration, or thePodTemplate
resources requirements), ECK performs a rolling upgrade of the corresponding Elasticsearch nodes. In order to do so, it follows Elasticsearch rolling upgrade best practices, to slowly upgradePods
to the newest revision while preventing unavailability of the Elasticsearch cluster. In most cases, it corresponds to restarting Elasticsearch nodes one by one and reusing the samePersistentVolume
data. Note that some cluster topologies may cause the cluster to be unavailable during the upgrade. -
When an existing
NodeSet
is renamed, ECK performs the creation of a newNodeSet
with the new name, and the removal of the oldNodeSet
, according to theNodeSet
creation and removal patterns described above. Elasticsearch data is migrated away from the deprecatedNodeSet
before removal. The Elasticsearch resource update strategy controls how many nodes can exist above or below the target node count during the upgrade.
In all these cases, ECK handles StatefulSet
operations according to the Elasticsearch orchestration best practices, by adjusting the orchestration settings discovery.seed_hosts
, cluster.initial_master_nodes
, discovery.zen.minimum_master_nodes
, and _cluster/voting_config_exclusions
accordingly.
Limitations
editBased on how Kubernetes and StatefulSets
operate, ECK orchestration has the following limitations:
-
Storage requirements (including volume size) of an existing
NodeSet
cannot be updated. StatefulSet volumes expansion is not available in Kubernetes yet. To upgrade the storage size, you can create a newNodeSet
, or rename an existing one. Renaming aNodeSet
automatically creates a newStatefulSet
with the specified storage size. The originalStatefulSet
is removed once the Elasticsearch data is migrated to the nodes of the newStatefulSet
. -
Cluster availability is not be guaranteed in the following cases:
- During the rolling upgrade of single-node clusters
- For clusters that have indices with no replicas
If an Elasticsearch node holds the only copy of a shard, this shard becomes unavailable while the node is upgraded. Clusters with more than one node and at least one replica per index are considered best practice.
-
Elasticsearch
Pods
may stayPending
during a rolling upgrade if the Kubernetes scheduler cannot re-schedule them back. This is especially important when using localPersistentVolumes
. If the Kubernetes node bound to a localPersistentVolume
does not have enough capacity to host an upgradedPod
which was temporarily removed, thatPod
will stay Pending. -
Rolling upgrades can make progress if the Elasticsearch cluster health is green. ECK will also make progress if the cluster health is yellow under the following conditions:
-
A cluster version upgrade is in progress and some
Pods
are not up to date - There are no initializing or relocating shards
-
A cluster version upgrade is in progress and some
If the above conditions are met, then ECK can delete a Pod
for upgrade even if the cluster health is yellow as long as the Pod
is not holding the last available replica of a shard.
The health of the cluster is deliberately ignored in the following cases:
-
If all the Elasticsearch nodes of a
NodeSet
are unavailable, probably caused by a misconfiguration, the operator ignores the cluster health and upgrades nodes of theNodeSet
. -
If an Elasticsearch node to upgrade is not healthy, and not part of the Elasticsearch cluster, the operator ignores the cluster health and upgrades the Elasticsearch node.
- Elasticsearch versions cannot be downgraded. For example it is impossible to downgrade an existing cluster from version 7.3.0 to 7.2.0. This is not supported by Elasticsearch.
Advanced users may force an upgrade by manually deleting Pods
themselves. The deleted Pods
will be automatically recreated at the latest revision.
Operations that reduce the number of nodes in the cluster cannot make progress without user intervention if the Elasticsearch index replica settings are incompatible with the intended downscale. Specifically if the Elasticsearch index settings demand a higher number of shard copies than data nodes in the cluster after the downscale operation, ECK cannot migrate the data away from the node about to be removed. Users can address this in the following ways:
- Adjust the Elasticsearch index settings to a number of replicas that allow the desired node removal
-
Use
auto_expand_replicas
to automatically adjust the replicas to the number of data nodes in the cluster