Configure your InfluxDB cluster using Helm

Manage your InfluxDB Clustered deployments using Kubernetes and apply configuration settings using a YAML configuration file. The InfluxDB Clustered Helm chart provides an alternative method for deploying your InfluxDB cluster using Helm. It acts as a wrapper for the InfluxDB AppInstance resource. When using Helm, apply configuration options in a a values.yaml on your local machine.

InfluxData provides the following items:

• influxdb-docker-config.json: an authenticated Docker configuration file. The InfluxDB Clustered software is in a secure container registry. This file grants access to the collection of container images required to install InfluxDB Clustered.

Configuration data

When ready to configure your InfluxDB cluster, have the following information available:

• InfluxDB cluster hostname: the hostname Kubernetes uses to expose InfluxDB API endpoints
• PostgreSQL-style data source name (DSN): used to access your PostgreSQL-compatible database that stores the InfluxDB Catalog.
• Object store credentials (AWS S3 or S3-compatible)
  • Endpoint URL
  • Access key
  • Bucket name
  • Region (required for S3, may not be required for other object stores)
• Local storage information (for ingester pods)
  • Storage class
  • Storage size

InfluxDB is deployed to a Kubernetes namespace which, throughout the following installation procedure, is referred to as the target namespace. For simplicity, we assume this namespace is influxdb, however you may use any name you like.

AppInstance resource

The InfluxDB installation, update, and upgrade processes are driven by editing and applying a Kubernetes custom resource (CRD) called AppInstance. The AppInstance CRD is included in the InfluxDB Clustered Helm chart and can be configured by applying custom settings in the values.yaml included in the chart.

The AppInstance resource contains key information, such as:

• Name of the target namespace
• Version of the InfluxDB package
• Reference to the InfluxDB container registry pull secrets
• Hostname where the InfluxDB API is exposed
• Parameters to connect to external prerequisites

kubecfg kubit operator

The InfluxDB Clustered Helm chart also includes the kubecfg kubit operator (maintained by InfluxData) which simplifies the installation and management of the InfluxDB Clustered package. It manages the application of the jsonnet templates used to install, manage, and update an InfluxDB cluster.

skipOperator: true

Configure your cluster

1. Install Helm
2. Create a values.yaml file
3. Configure access to the InfluxDB container registry
4. Modify the configuration file to point to prerequisites

Install Helm

If you haven’t already, install Helm on your local machine.

Create a values.yaml file

Download or copy the base values.yaml for the InfluxDB Clustered Helm chart from GitHub and store it locally. For example–if using cURL:

curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/influxdata/helm-charts/master/charts/influxdb3-clustered/values.yaml

Or you can copy the default values.yaml from GitHub:

View values.yaml on GitHub

Configure access to the InfluxDB container registry

The provided influxdb-docker-config.json grants access to a collection of container images required to run InfluxDB Clustered. Your Kubernetes Cluster needs access to the container registry to pull down and install InfluxDB.

When pulling images, there are two main scenarios:

• You have a Kubernetes cluster that can pull from the InfluxData container registry.
• You run in an environment with no network interfaces (“air-gapped”) and you can only access a private container registry.

In both scenarios, you need a valid container registry secret file. Use crane to create a container registry secret file.

1. Install crane
2. Use the following command to create a container registry secret file and retrieve the necessary secrets:

mkdir /tmp/influxdbsecret
cp influxdb-docker-config.json /tmp/influxdbsecret/config.json
DOCKER_CONFIG=/tmp/influxdbsecret \
  crane manifest \
  us-docker.pkg.dev/influxdb2-artifacts/clustered/influxdb:
PACKAGE_VERSION

Replace PACKAGE_VERSION with your InfluxDB Clustered package version.

If your Docker configuration is valid and you’re able to connect to the container registry, the command succeeds and the output is the JSON manifest for the Docker image, similar to the following:

{
  "schemaVersion": 2,
  "config": {
    "mediaType": "application/vnd.kubecfg.bundle.config.v1+json",
    "digest": "sha256:6900d2f248e678176c68f3768e7e48958bb96a59232070ff31b3b018cf299aa7",
    "size": 8598
  },
  "layers": [
    {
      "mediaType": "application/vnd.kubecfg.bundle.tar+gzip",
      "digest": "sha256:7c1d62e76287035a9b22b2c155f328fae9beff2c6aa7a09a2dd2697539f41d98",
      "size": 404059
    }
  ],
  "annotations": {
    "org.opencontainers.image.created": "1970-01-01T00:00:00Z",
    "org.opencontainers.image.revision": "unknown",
    "org.opencontainers.image.source": "kubecfg pack"
  }
}

If there’s a problem with the Docker configuration, crane won’t retrieve the manifest and the output is similar to the following error:

Error: fetching manifest us-docker.pkg.dev/influxdb2-artifacts/clustered/influxdb:<package-version>: GET https://us-docker.pkg.dev/v2/token?scope=repository%3Ainfluxdb2-artifacts%2Fclustered%2Finfluxdb%3Apull&service=: DENIED: Permission "artifactregistry.repositories.downloadArtifacts" denied on resource "projects/influxdb2-artifacts/locations/us/repositories/clustered" (or it may not exist)

kubectl create secret docker-registry gar-docker-secret \
  --from-file=.dockerconfigjson=influxdb-docker-config.json \
  --namespace influxdb

secret/gar-docker-secret created

DOCKER_CONFIG=/tmp/influxdbsecret \
crane config \
  us-docker.pkg.dev/influxdb2-artifacts/clustered/influxdb:
PACKAGE_VERSION
 \
  | jq -r '.metadata["oci.image.list"].images[]' \
  > /tmp/images.txt

us-docker.pkg.dev/influxdb2-artifacts/idpe/idpe-cd-ioxauth@sha256:5f015a7f28a816df706b66d59cb9d6f087d24614f485610619f0e3a808a73864
us-docker.pkg.dev/influxdb2-artifacts/iox/iox@sha256:b59d80add235f29b806badf7410239a3176bc77cf2dc335a1b07ab68615b870c
...

</tmp/images.txt xargs -I% crane cp % 
REGISTRY_HOSTNAME
/%

myregistry.mydomain.io

images:
  registryOverride: 
REGISTRY_HOSTNAME

Modify the configuration file to point to prerequisites

Update your values.yaml file with credentials necessary to connect your cluster to your prerequisites.

• Configure ingress
• Configure the object store
• Configure the catalog database
• Configure local storage for ingesters

Configure ingress

To configure ingress, provide values for the following fields in your values.yaml:

• ingress.hosts: Cluster hostnames

  Provide the hostnames that Kubernetes should use to expose the InfluxDB API endpoints–for example: cluster-host.com.

  You can provide multiple hostnames. The ingress layer accepts incoming requests for all listed hostnames. This can be useful if you want to have distinct paths for your internal and external traffic.

  You are responsible for configuring and managing DNS. Options include:

  • Manually managing DNS records
  • Using external-dns to synchronize exposed Kubernetes services and ingresses with DNS providers.

• ingress.tlsSecretName: TLS certificate secret name

  (Optional): Provide the name of the secret that contains your TLS certificate and key. The examples in this guide use the name ingress-tls.

  The tlsSecretName field is optional. You may want to use it if you already have a TLS certificate for your DNS name.

  Writing to and querying data from InfluxDB does not require TLS. For simplicity, you can wait to enable TLS before moving into production. For more information, see Phase 4 of the InfluxDB Clustered installation process, Secure your cluster.

ingress:
  hosts:
    - cluster-host.com
  tlsSecretName: ingress-tls

Configure the object store

To connect your InfluxDB cluster to your object store, provide the required credentials in your values.yaml. The credentials required depend on your object storage provider.

objectStore:
    # Bucket that the Parquet files will be stored in
  bucket: 
S3_BUCKET_NAME
  
  s3: 
    # URL for S3 Compatible object store
    endpoint: 
S3_URL

    # Set to true to allow communication over HTTP (instead of HTTPS)
    allowHttp: 'true'

    # S3 Access Key
    # This can also be provided as a valueFrom: secretKeyRef:
    accessKey:
      value: 
S3_ACCESS_KEY

    # S3 Secret Key
    # This can also be provided as a valueFrom: secretKeyRef:
    secretKey:
      value: 
S3_SECRET_KEY

    # This value is required for AWS S3, it may or may not be required for other providers.
    region: 
S3_REGION

objectStore:
    # Bucket that the Parquet files will be stored in
  bucket: 
AZURE_BUCKET_NAME
  
  azure:
    # Azure Blob Storage Access Key
    # This can also be provided as a valueFrom:
    accessKey:
      value: 
AZURE_ACCESS_KEY

    # Azure Blob Storage Account
    # This can also be provided as a valueFrom: secretKeyRef:
    account:
      value: 
AZURE_STORAGE_ACCOUNT

objectStore:
    # Bucket that the Parquet files will be stored in
  bucket: 
GOOGLE_BUCKET_NAME
  
  google:
    # This section is not needed if you are using GKE Workload Identity.
    # It is only required to use explicit service account secrets (JSON files)
    serviceAccountSecret:
      # Kubernetes Secret name containing the credentials for a Google IAM
      # Service Account.
      name: 
GOOGLE_IAM_SECRET
      # The key within the Secret containing the credentials.
      key: 
GOOGLE_CREDENTIALS_KEY

Configure the catalog database

The InfluxDB catalog is a PostgreSQL-compatible relational database that stores metadata about your time series data. To connect your InfluxDB cluster to your PostgreSQL-compatible database, provide values for the following fields in your values.yaml:

• catalog.dsn
  • SecretName: Secret name
  • SecretKey: Key in the secret that contains the DSN

catalog:
  # Secret name and key within the secret containing the dsn string to connect
  # to the catalog
  dsn:
    # Kubernetes Secret name containing the dsn for the catalog.
    SecretName: 
SECRET_NAME
    # The key within the Secret containing the dsn.
    SecretKey: 
SECRET_KEY

Replace the following:

• SECRET_NAME: Name of the secret containing your PostgreSQL-compatible DSN
• SECRET_KEY: Key in the secret that references your PostgreSQL-compatible DSN

Catalog DSN error: A catalog error occurred: unhandled external error: error with configuration: invalid port number

postgresql://postgres:meow#meow@my-fancy.cloud-database.party:5432/postgres

postgresql://postgres:meow%23meow@my-fancy.cloud-database.party:5432/postgres

postgres://username:passw0rd@mydomain:5432/influxdb?sslmode=disable

Configure local storage for ingesters

InfluxDB ingesters require local storage to store the Write Ahead Log (WAL) for incoming data. To connect your InfluxDB cluster to local storage, provide values for the following fields in your values.yaml:

• ingesterStorage
  • storageClassName: Kubernetes storage class. This differs based on the Kubernetes environment and desired storage characteristics.
  • storage: Storage size. We recommend a minimum of 2 gibibytes (2Gi).

ingesterStorage:
  # (Optional) Set the storage class. This will differ based on the K8s
  # environment and desired storage characteristics.
  # If not set, the default storage class will be used.
  storageClassName: 
STORAGE_CLASS
  # Set the storage size (minimum 2Gi recommended)
  storage: 
STORAGE_SIZE

Replace the following:

• STORAGE_CLASS: Kubernetes storage class
• STORAGE_SIZE: Storage size (example: 2Gi)