Portworx Autopilot on OpenShift
Scenario - Automated Volume Expansion using Portworx Autopilot
Portworx Autopilot is a rule-based engine that responds to changes from a monitoring source. Autopilot allows you to specify monitoring conditions along with actions it should take when those conditions occur.
Reminder: Accessing the Red Hat OpenShift Console
To connect to the console, click on the OpenShift Console tab above.
IMPORTANT: The
OpenShift Consoletab will open in a new browser window.
We can then log in with the following credentials:
Username: kubeadmin Password: kubeadmin_password
Task 1: Create Autopilot Rule
Autopilot rules allow users to create IFTTT (IF This Then That) rules, where Autopilot will monitor for a condition and then perform an action on your behalf.
Let’s create a simple rule that will monitor persistent volumes associated with objects that have the app: disk-filler label and in namespaces that have the label type: db.
First, let’s take a look at the YAML for the rule and call out the important lines:
ccat autopilotrule.yamlThe rule displayed will:
-
Line 9: Target PVCs with the Kubernetes label
app: disk-filler -
Line 13: Target PVCs in namespaces with the label
type: db -
Lines 18-21: Monitor if capacity usage grows to or above 30%
-
Line 28: Automatically grow the volume and underlying filesystem by 100% of the current volume size if usage above 30% is detected
-
Line 30: Not grow the volume to more than 20Gi
Apply the yaml to create the Portworx Autopilot rule:
oc create -f autopilotrule.yamlTask 2: Identify Namespaces Selected
Since our Portworx Autopilot rule only targets namespaces that have the label type: db, let’s make sure our namespace has the proper label:
oc get ns -l type=dbThere is our autopilot namespace in the filtered results - we are good to go!
Task 3: Deploy PVCs for Disk Filler
Review the yaml for the volume, and note the label app: disk-filler on Line 6:
ccat disk-filler-pvc.yamlThen let’s apply it to deploy our PVC:
oc create -f disk-filler-pvc.yaml -n autopilotEnsure that the PVC is created and bound:
oc get pvc -n autopilotIMPORTANT: Note that the original size of the PVC for our data volume is 10Gi.
Task 4: Deploy the Disk Filler Pod
Review the yaml for our busybox pod that will fill our volume with data.
On Line 27 you can see we’ll use a simple dd command to fill the disk by generating random data:
ccat disk-filler.yamlAnd then deploy the pod:
oc create -f disk-filler.yaml -n autopilotTask 5: Observe the Portworx Autopilot events
Run the following command to observe the state changes for Portworx Autopilot:
watch oc get events --field-selector \
involvedObject.kind=AutopilotRule,involvedObject.name=volume-resize \
--all-namespaces --sort-by .lastTimestamp -o custom-columns=MESSAGE:.messageYou will see Portworx Autopilot move through the following states as it monitors volumes and takes actions defined in Portworx Autopilot rules:
-
Initializing (Detected a volume to monitor via applied rule conditions)
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Normal (Volume is within defined conditions and no action is necessary)
-
Triggered (Volume is no longer within defined conditions and action is necessary)
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ActiveActionsPending (Corrective action is necessary but not executed yet)
-
ActiveActionsInProgress (Corrective action is under execution)
-
ActiveActionsTaken (Corrective action is complete)
Once you see ActiveActionsTaken in the event output, press CTRL+C to exit the watch command.
Task 6: Verify the Volume Expansion
Now let’s take a look at our PVC - note the automatic expansion of the volume occurred with no human interaction and no application interruption:
oc get pvc -n autopilotIMPORTANT: You should now see the data volume has been doubled from the original capacity of 10Gi when the PVC was initially created.
You’ve just configured Portworx Autopilot and observed how it can perform automated capacity management based on rules you configure, and be able to "right size" your underlying persistent storage as it is needed!