Kubernetes Overview

Kubernetes is a portable, extensible platform for managing containerized workloads and services. For a given workload, you provide Kubernetes with a configuration, and Kubernetes applies that configuration to all Kubernetes nodes that are running the application.

This page describes a Kubernetes deployment method that is considered “legacy” and will not be supported in a future release of CockroachDB. New CockroachDB deployments on Kubernetes are recommended to use the newer, fully-featured that’s easier to deploy and supports scaling of multi-region clusters. To migrate an existing deployment to use the CockroachDB operator, read the and migration guides.For more information on legacy Kubernetes deployments and support timelines, read the .

You can also deploy CockroachDB on Kubernetes using the following methods:

Public operator The Public operator is also available on platforms such as and IBM Cloud Pak for Data.
Manual StatefulSet configuration
Helm package manager for Kubernetes

CockroachDB on Kubernetes

This section describes how to:

Kubernetes terminology

Before starting, review some basic Kubernetes terminology. Note that CockroachDB are distinct from Kubernetes “nodes” or “worker nodes”.

Feature	Description
node	A physical or virtual machine. In the , you’ll create GCE or AWS instances and join them as worker nodes into a single Kubernetes cluster from your local workstation.
pod	A pod is a group of one of more Docker containers. In the , each pod will run on a separate Kubernetes worker node and include one Docker container running a single CockroachDB node, reflecting our .
StatefulSet	A StatefulSet is a group of pods treated as stateful units, where each pod has distinguishable network identity and always binds back to the same persistent storage on restart. StatefulSets are considered stable as of Kubernetes version 1.9 after reaching beta in version 1.5.
persistent volume	A persistent volume is a piece of networked storage (Persistent Disk on GCE, Elastic Block Store on AWS) mounted into a pod. The lifetime of a persistent volume is decoupled from the lifetime of the pod that’s using it, ensuring that each CockroachDB node binds back to the same storage on restart. The assumes that dynamic volume provisioning is available. When that is not the case, persistent volume claims need to be created manually.
RBAC	RBAC, or Role-Based Access Control, is the system Kubernetes uses to manage permissions within the cluster. In order to take an action (e.g., `get` or `create`) on an API resource (e.g., a `pod`), the client must have a `Role` that allows it to do so. The creates the RBAC resources necessary for CockroachDB to create and access certificates.

Get Started

CockroachDB and AI

Feature Overview

Data Resilience

Connect to an Application

Self-Hosted Deployments

Schema Design

Reads and Writes

Stream Data

Cross-Cluster Replication

Multi-Region Capabilities

Optimize Performance

Integrate

CockroachDB on Kubernetes

Kubernetes terminology

​CockroachDB on Kubernetes

​Kubernetes terminology

CockroachDB on Kubernetes

Kubernetes terminology