Run Solr container in Azure Kubernetes cluster (AKS)

Nov 7, 2017

 solr containers azure  indexing  docker  kubernetes

Consult Kubernetes documentation to learn more about it and kubectl options. Refer to Azure AKS tutorial for more details on the service.
This exercise uses Azure CLI commands.

This exercise assumes you have created a docker image and made it available either through Azure ACR or using other image hosting service.

All commands in this article were tested using Bash on Windows available in Win 10 Fall Creators Update.

Create Kubernetes cluster

This step follows instructions from AKS tutorial with minor tweaks.

Create resource group to host AKS service

az group create --name akstest --location westus2

Generate SSH keys [optional]

Navigate to .ssh folder and execute ssh-keygen. Follow instructions to create ssh keys.

ssh-keygen -N P@ssword1 -f aks_id

This command will create aks_id and aks_id.pub files.

Create AKS service

az aks create --resource-group akstest --name myK8sCluster --agent-count 1 --ssh-key-value ~/.ssh/aks_id.pub

The command takes several minutes to complete and creates several resources:

  • Azure service principal for cluster authentication. You can find it in your Azure Active Directory service at App registrations blade. Once there select My Apps to limit output to your account principals.
    The principal gets also added to ~/.azure/acsServicePrincipal.json file.
  • myK8sCluster service that will be added to akstest group.
  • MC_<groupName>_<aksName>_<location> group with all resources necessary for Managed Kubernetes cluster. In this example it will be MC_akstest_myK8sCluster_westus2.

Install kubectl CLI

az aks install-cli

Get AKS credentials

az aks get-credentials --resource-group akstest --name myK8sCluster

This command will merge Kubernetes cluster configuration into ~/.kube/config file. You can view it by running command:

kubectl config view

Deploy Solr container into AKS pod

Next step is to deploy application instance (in this example Solr pod) and service instance to allow communication with application pod.

Deploy Solr application instance

Creat Kubernetes deployment manifest (solr-app-deployment.yml) with the following content. Make sure to modify image parameter to point to your container image.

apiVersion: apps/v1beta1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: solr-app
spec:
  replicas: 1
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: solr-app
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: solr-app
        image: myregistry.azurecr.io/solrssl-flex:6.6.0
        command: ["create-basic-cores.sh"]
        ports:
        - containerPort: 8983
          name: solr

Deploy manafest using kubectl.

kubectl apply -f ./solr-app-deployment.yml

Verify that deployment is created:

kubectl get deployment

Verify that pod for solr application is created and running:

kubectl get pods

If pod gets an error, you can try to access its logs:

kubectl logs <podName>

Deploy service load balancer instance

Create manifest file to describe service instance solr-service.yml. Type LoadBalancer creates an external IP for the service so that you can access it from outside of AKS.

apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: solr-app
  labels:
    app: solr-app
    tier: frontend
spec:
  type: LoadBalancer
  ports:
  - port: 8983
    targetPort: 8983
  selector:
    app: solr-app

Deploy service into AKS cluster.

kubectl apply -f ./solr-service.yml

Verify that service is up and running and has external IP:

kubectl get services

Populate managed index schema

Sitecore 9 requires managed-schema to be populated with fields before you can start indexing Sitecore items. You can do this by calling /sitecore/admin/PopulateManagedSchema.aspx?indexes=all service page.

[optional] Install self-signed SSL cert into Win CA root

This step is necessary if you use Solr image that creates self-signed SSL cert. Copy SSL cert from pod into your local machine:

kubectl cp <podName>:/opt/solr/server/etc/solr-ssl.keystore.jks ~/solr-ssl.keystore.jks

Copy cert from Ubuntu on Windows to your Windows (WLS) file system:

cp ~/solr-ssl.keystore.jks /mnt/c/temp/solr-ssl.keystore.jks

Install SSL cert into Windows CA root using install-solrssl.ps1 PS script.

[optional] Use namespaces for different environments

By default everything you create in your AKS cluster goes into default namespace. Kubernetes allows to isolate or group resources through namespaces.

Create namespace for testing environment

Create manifest file (namespace-testing.json) that describes testing namespace.

{
  "kind": "Namespace",
  "apiVersion": "v1",
  "metadata": {
    "name": "testing",
    "labels": {
      "name": "playground"
    }
  }
}

Deploy testing namespace into AKS cluster:

kubectl create -f namespace-testing.json

View available namespaces in your AKS cluster:

kubectl get namespace --show-labels

Now you can deploy apps and services into testing namespace of you AKS cluster by adding --namespace testing parameter to kubectl command.

kubectl apply -f ./solr-app-deployment.yml --namespace testing
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