New to KubeDB? Please start here.

Using Custom Configuration File

KubeDB supports providing custom configuration for PerconaXtraDB. This tutorial will show you how to use KubeDB to run a PerconaXtraDB database with custom configuration.

Before You Begin

• At first, you need to have a Kubernetes cluster, and the kubectl command-line tool must be configured to communicate with your cluster. If you do not already have a cluster, you can create one by using kind.

• Now, install KubeDB cli on your workstation and KubeDB operator in your cluster following the steps here.

• To keep things isolated, this tutorial uses a separate namespace called demo throughout this tutorial.

  $ kubectl create ns demo
  namespace/demo created
  

Note: YAML files used in this tutorial are stored in docs/examples/percona-xtradb folder in GitHub repository kubedb/docs.

Overview

PerconaXtraDB allows to configure database via configuration file. The default configuration for PerconaXtraDB can be found in /etc/my.cnf file. When PerconaXtraDB starts, it looks for custom configuration files.

• For standalone server, it looks into /etc/my.cnf.d/and /etc/percona-server.conf.d/ directories. Here, KubeDB uses the later one /etc/percona-server.conf.d/ for custom configurations. If configuration file exists, the mysqld will use combined startup setting from both /etc/my.cnf and *.cnf files in /etc/percona-server.conf.d/ directory. This custom configuration will overwrite the existing default one.
• For cluster, the mysqld process looks into /etc/my.cnf.d/, and /etc/percona-xtradb-cluster.conf.d/ directories. Here, KubeDB uses the later one /etc/percona-xtradb-cluster.conf.d/ for custom configurations. If any configuration file exists, the mysqld will use combined startup settings from both /etc/my.cnf and *.cnf files in /etc/percona-xtradb-cluster.conf.d/ directory. This custom configuration will overwrite the existing default one.

At first, you have to create a config file with .cnf extension with your desired configuration. Then you have to put this file into a volume. You have to specify this volume in .spec.configSecret section while creating PerconaXtraDB object. KubeDB will mount this volume into the directory (specified above) of the database Pod.

In this tutorial, we will configure max_connections and read_buffer_size via a custom config file for a standalone percona server. We will use ConfigMap as volume source.

Custom Configuration

At first, let’s create my-config.cnf file setting max_connections and read_buffer_size parameters.

$ cat <<EOF > my-config.cnf
[mysqld]
max_connections = 200
read_buffer_size = 1048576
EOF

$ cat my-config.cnf
[mysqld]
max_connections = 200
read_buffer_size = 1048576

Here, read_buffer_size is set to 1MB in bytes.

Now, create a ConfigMap with this configuration file.

 $ kubectl create configmap -n demo my-custom-config --from-file=./my-config.cnf
configmap/my-custom-config created

Verify the ConfigMap has the configuration file.

$ kubectl get configmap -n demo my-custom-config -o yaml

And the output is,

apiVersion: v1
data:
  my-config.cnf: |
    [mysqld]
    max_connections = 200
    read_buffer_size = 1048576    
kind: ConfigMap
metadata:
  name: my-custom-config
  namespace: demo
  ...

Now, create PerconaXtraDB object specifying .spec.configSecret field.

$ kubectl apply -f https://github.com/kubedb/docs/raw/v2021.03.17/docs/examples/percona-xtradb/custom-config.yaml
perconaxtradb.kubedb.com/custom-px created

Below is the YAML for the PerconaXtraDB object we just created above.

apiVersion: kubedb.com/v1alpha2
kind: PerconaXtraDB
metadata:
  name: custom-px
  namespace: demo
spec:
  version: "5.7"
  replicas: 1
  configSecret:
    name: my-custom-config
  storageType: Durable
  storage:
    storageClassName: "standard"
    accessModes:
    - ReadWriteOnce
    resources:
      requests:
        storage: 50Mi
  terminationPolicy: DoNotTerminate

Now, wait a few minutes. KubeDB operator will create necessary PVC, statefulset, services, secret etc. If everything goes well, we will see that a Pod with the name custom-px-0 has been created.

Check that the StatefulSet’s Pod is running

$ kubectl get pod -n demo
NAME          READY     STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
custom-px-0   1/1       Running   0          44s

Check the Pod’s log to see if the database is ready

$ kubectl logs -f -n demo custom-px-0
...
2019-12-24T13:43:51.050366Z 0 [Note] mysqld: ready for connections.
Version: '5.7.26-29'  socket: '/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock'  port: 3306  Percona Server (GPL), Release 29, Revision 11ad961

Once we see [Note] mysqld: ready for connections. in the log, the database is ready.

Now, we will check if the database has started with the custom configuration we have provided.

$ kubectl get secret -n demo  custom-px-auth -o jsonpath='{.data.password}'| base64 -d
5ujF0R5wnUh5_gDk⏎

$ kubectl exec -it -n demo custom-px-0 -- \
  mysql --user=root --password=5ujF0R5wnUh5_gDk -e "select * from  performance_schema.global_variables where VARIABLE_NAME='max_connections';"
mysql: [Warning] Using a password on the command line interface can be insecure.
+-----------------+----------------+
| VARIABLE_NAME   | VARIABLE_VALUE |
+-----------------+----------------+
| max_connections | 200            |
+-----------------+----------------+

$ kubectl exec -it -n demo custom-px-0 -- \
  mysql --user=root --password=5ujF0R5wnUh5_gDk -e "select * from  performance_schema.global_variables where VARIABLE_NAME='read_buffer_size';"
mysql: [Warning] Using a password on the command line interface can be insecure.
+------------------+----------------+
| VARIABLE_NAME    | VARIABLE_VALUE |
+------------------+----------------+
| read_buffer_size | 1048576        |
+------------------+----------------+

Cleaning up

To cleanup the Kubernetes resources created by this tutorial, run:

$ kubectl patch -n demo px/custom-px -p '{"spec":{"terminationPolicy":"WipeOut"}}' --type="merge"
$ kubectl delete -n demo px/custom-px

$ kubectl delete -n demo configmap my-custom-config
$ rm ./my-config.cnf

$ kubectl delete ns demo

If you would like to uninstall KubeDB operator, please follow the steps here.

Next Steps

• Initialize PerconaXtraDB with Script.
• Monitor your PerconaXtraDB database with KubeDB using out-of-the-box builtin-Prometheus.
• Use private Docker registry to deploy PerconaXtraDB with KubeDB.
• How to use custom rbac resource for PerconaXtraDB.
• Use Stash to Backup PerconaXtraDB.
• Detail concepts of PerconaXtraDB object.
• Detail concepts of PerconaXtraDBVersion object.
• Want to hack on KubeDB? Check our contribution guidelines.