Highly available (HA) cluster

This example shows how to use Kubitect to set up a highly available cluster that spreads over 5 hosts. Such topology provides redundancy in case any node or even host fails.

Step 1: Hosts configuration🔗︎

In this example, we deploy a Kubernetes cluster on 5 (remote) physical hosts. The subnet of the local network is 10.10.0.0/20 and the gateway IP address is 10.10.0.1. Each host is connected to the same local network and has a pre-configured bridge interface br0.

In addition, a user kubitect is configured on each host, which is accessible via SSH with the same password-less certificate stored on our local machine under the path ~/.ssh/id_rsa_ha.

Each host must be specified in the Kubitect configuration file. In our case, the configurations of the hosts differ only by the name and IP address of the host.

hosts:
  - name: host1
    connection:
      type: remote
      user: kubitect
      ip: 10.10.0.5
      ssh:
        keyfile: "~/.ssh/id_rsa_ha"
  - name: host2
    connection:
      type: remote
      user: kubitect
      ip: 10.10.0.6
      ssh:
        keyfile: "~/.ssh/id_rsa_ha"
  - name: host3
    connection:
      type: remote
      user: kubitect
      ip: 10.10.0.10
      ssh:
        keyfile: "~/.ssh/id_rsa_ha"
  - name: host4
    connection:
      type: remote
      user: kubitect
      ip: 10.10.0.11
      ssh:
        keyfile: "~/.ssh/id_rsa_ha"
  - name: host5
    connection:
      type: remote
      user: kubitect
      ip: 10.10.0.12
      ssh:
        keyfile: "~/.ssh/id_rsa_ha"

Step 2: Network configuration🔗︎

In the network configuration section, we specify the bridge interface that is preconfigured on each host and CIDR of our local network.

The following code snippet shows the network configuration for this example.

cluster:
  network:
    mode: bridge
    cidr: 10.10.0.0/20
    bridge: br0

Step 3: Load balancer configuration🔗︎

Each working node stores only a single control plane IP address. By placing a load balancer in front of the control plane (as shown in the Multi-master cluster example), traffic can be distributed across all control plane nodes.

By having only a single load balancer in the cluster, the control plane may become unreachable if that load balancer fails. This would cause the entire cluster to become unavailable. To avoid this single point of failure, a failover (backup) load balancer can be configured. Its main purpose is to serve incoming requests on the same virtual (shared) IP address if the primary load balancer fails, as shown in the following figure.

Failover is achieved using a virtual router redundancy protocol (VRRP). In practice, each load balancer still has its own IP address, but the primary load balancer also serves requests on the virtual IP address, which is not bound to any network interface. The primary load balancer periodically sends heartbeats to other load balancers (backups) to let them know it is still active. If the backup load balancer does not receive a heartbeat within a certain period of time, it assumes that the primary load balancer is has failed. The new primary load balancer is elected based on the priorities of the available load balancers. Once the load balancer becomes primary, it starts serving requests on the same virtual IP address as the previous one. This ensures that the requests are served through the same virtual IP address in case of a load balancer failure.

The following code snippet shows the configuration of two load balancers and virtual IP for their failover.

cluster:
  nodes:
    loadBalancer:
      vip: 10.10.13.200
      instances:
        - id: 1
          ip: 10.10.13.201
          host: host1
        - id: 2
          ip: 10.10.13.202
          host: host2

Note that for each load balancer instance, the host property is set. Its value is a name of the host on which a particular instance is to be deployed.

Step 4: Nodes configuration🔗︎

The configuration of the nodes is very simple and similar to the configuration of the load balancer instances. Each instance is configured with an ID, an IP address, and a host affinity.

cluster:
  nodes:
    master:
      instances:
        - id: 1
          ip: 10.10.13.10
          host: host3
        - id: 2
          ip: 10.10.13.11
          host: host4
        - id: 3
          ip: 10.10.13.12
          host: host5
    worker:
      instances:
        - id: 1
          ip: 10.10.13.20
          host: host3
        - id: 2
          ip: 10.10.13.21
          host: host4
        - id: 3
          ip: 10.10.13.22
          host: host5

Step 4.1 (Optional): Data disks configuration🔗︎

Kubitect creates a main (system) disk for each configured virtual machine (VM). The main disk contains the VM's operating system along with all installed Kubernetes components.

The VM's storage can be expanded by creating additional disks, also called data disks. This can be particularly useful when using storage solutions such as Rook. For example, Rook can be configured to use empty disks on worker nodes to create reliable distributed storage.

To configure data disks with Kubitect, a data resource pool must be configured for a host on which a VM using a configured data disk is deployed. In addition, data disks must be linked to a specific data resource pool, because multiple data resource pools can be configured.

hosts:
  - name: host3
    ...
    dataResourcePools:
      - name: data-pool
        path: /mnt/libvirt/pools/

cluster:
  nodes:
    worker:
      - id: 1
        ip: 10.10.13.20
        host: host3
        dataDisks:
          - name: rook
            pool: data-pool
            size: 512 # GiB

hosts:
  - name: host1
    connection:
      type: remote
      user: kubitect
      ip: 10.10.0.5
      ssh:
        keyfile: "~/.ssh/id_rsa_ha"
  - name: host2
    connection:
      type: remote
      user: kubitect
      ip: 10.10.0.6
      ssh:
        keyfile: "~/.ssh/id_rsa_ha"
  - name: host3
    connection:
      type: remote
      user: kubitect
      ip: 10.10.0.10
      ssh:
        keyfile: "~/.ssh/id_rsa_ha"
    dataResourcePools:
      - name: data-pool
        path: /mnt/libvirt/pools/
  - name: host4
    connection:
      type: remote
      user: kubitect
      ip: 10.10.0.11
      ssh:
        keyfile: "~/.ssh/id_rsa_ha"
    dataResourcePools:
      - name: data-pool
        path: /mnt/libvirt/pools/
  - name: host5
    connection:
      type: remote
      user: kubitect
      ip: 10.10.0.12
      ssh:
        keyfile: "~/.ssh/id_rsa_ha"
    dataResourcePools:
      - name: data-pool
        path: /mnt/libvirt/pools/

cluster:
  name: kubitect-ha
  network:
    mode: bridge
    cidr: 10.10.0.0/20
    bridge: br0
  nodeTemplate:
    user: k8s
    updateOnBoot: true
    ssh:
      addToKnownHosts: true
    os:
      distro: ubuntu
  nodes:
    loadBalancer:
      vip: 10.10.13.200
      instances:
        - id: 1
          ip: 10.10.13.201
          host: host1
        - id: 2
          ip: 10.10.13.202
          host: host2
    master:
      instances:
        - id: 1
          ip: 10.10.13.10
          host: host3
        - id: 2
          ip: 10.10.13.11
          host: host4
        - id: 3
          ip: 10.10.13.12
          host: host5
    worker:
      instances:
        - id: 1
          ip: 10.10.13.20
          host: host3
          dataDisks:
            - name: rook
              pool: data-pool
              size: 512
        - id: 2
          ip: 10.10.13.21
          host: host4
          dataDisks:
            - name: rook
              pool: data-pool
              size: 512
        - id: 3
          ip: 10.10.13.22
          host: host5
          dataDisks:
            - name: rook
              pool: data-pool
              size: 512

kubernetes:
  version: v1.23.7
  kubespray:
    version: v2.19.0

Step 5: Applying the configuration🔗︎

Apply the cluster configuration.

kubitect apply --config ha.yaml