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SonarQube on AKS with Azure Disk - Helm Chart and Persistent Volume Setup

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Published Date: 20-JUL-2019

As-is, this sonarqube helm chart will survive a deleted pod event, maybe even a helm delete. But if your cluster is rebuilt, or you run a helm delete --purge sonarqube you're going to lose any data and reports that were living with your deployment.

Pre-requirements​

  • 2 x AzureDisk
  • 1 x K8s cluster
  • helm
  • kubectl
  • az-cli
tip

installation instructions for these tools can be found here.

Quick K8s Storage Overview​

K8s storage took a bit to wrap my head around but essentially when I understood the following topics, it all made sense:

Understanding PersistentVolumes and PersistentVolumeClaims​

This video by "IBM FSS FCI and Counter Fraud Management" (no idea why they're called this?!) is probably the clearest explanation I've seen online.

The abstractions: Volumes, PV, StorageClasses and PVC's​

Here's a diagram:

AKS PV PVC

Essentially, in an oversimplified nutshell:

  • Volumes are derived from Physical Disks that an Admin provisions
  • PersistentVolumes (static) are an abstraction of the Physical Disks
  • StorageClasses (dynamic) are also an abstraction of the Physical Disks
  • PersistentVolumeClaims is what the Pod will actually mount as a "volume". The PVC will determine if you'll be mounting a static PV, or a storageClass Volume.

Right, so now that we've got that out of the way, let's build some things.

Provision your AzureDisks​

  • 1 x sonarqube data disk
  • 1 x postgresql database disk
az disk create -g AKS-CLOUDRESOURCES -n sonarqube-data --size-gb 10 --sku Standard_LRS --tags application=sonarqube
az disk create -g AKS-CLOUDRESOURCES -n postgresql-data --size-gb 16 --sku Standard_LRS --tags application=postgresql

example output for sonarqube disk

{
  "creationData": {
    "createOption": "Empty",
    "imageReference": null,
    "sourceResourceId": null,
    "sourceUri": null,
    "storageAccountId": null
  },
  "diskIopsReadWrite": 500,
  "diskMbpsReadWrite": 60,
  "diskSizeGb": 10,
  "encryptionSettings": null,
  "id": "/subscriptions/XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXX/resourceGroups/AKS-CLOUDRESOURCES/providers/Microsoft.Compute/disks/sonarqube-data",
  "location": "australiaeast",
  "managedBy": null,
  "name": "sonarqube-data",
  "osType": null,
  "provisioningState": "Succeeded",
  "resourceGroup": "AKS-CLOUDRESOURCES",
  "sku": {
    "name": "Standard_LRS",
    "tier": "Standard"
  },
  "tags": {
    "application": "sonarqube"
  },
  "timeCreated": "2019-07-23T11:01:16.893039+00:00",
  "type": "Microsoft.Compute/disks",
  "zones": null
}

storageClass.yaml​

Create your storage class. Notice the Retain reclaimPolicy so that the volumes aren't deleted when pods and container disappear.

  apiVersion: storage.k8s.io/v1
  kind: StorageClass
  metadata:
    name: staticManagedVolumeRetain
  provisioner: kubernetes.io/azure-disk
  parameters:
    kind: Managed
    storageaccounttype: Standard_LRS
  reclaimPolicy: Retain

apply

kubectl apply -f storageClass.yaml

Sonarqube Helm Chart​

Grab a copy of the official sonarqube helm chart from Github

Update sonarqube values.yaml​

add these values to the values.yaml file

persistence:
  enabled: true
  storageClass: "staticManagedVolumeRetain"
  accessMode: ReadWriteOnce
  size: 5Gi

azureDisk:
  kind: Managed
  diskName: sonarqube-data
  diskURI: /subscriptions/XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXX/resourceGroups/AKS-CLOUDRESOURCES/providers/Microsoft.Compute/disks/sonarqube-data

Create pv.yaml for sonarqube chart​

Place this under /sonarqube/templates/

sonarqube-pv.yaml
\{\{- if and .Values.persistence.enabled (not .Values.persistence.existingClaim) \}\}
kind: PersistentVolume
apiVersion: v1
metadata:
  name: pv-\{\{ template "sonarqube.name" . \}\}-data
  labels:
    app: \{\{ template "sonarqube.name" . \}\}
    chart: "\{\{ .Chart.Name \}\}-\{\{ .Chart.Version \}\}"
    release: "\{\{ .Release.Name \}\}"
    heritage: "\{\{ .Release.Service \}\}"
spec:
  capacity:
    storage: \{\{ .Values.persistence.size \}\}
  storageClassName: \{\{ .Values.persistence.storageClassName | quote \}\}
  azureDisk:
    kind: \{\{ .Values.azureDisk.kind | quote \}\}
    diskName: \{\{ .Values.azureDisk.diskName | quote \}\}
    diskURI: \{\{ .Values.azureDisk.diskURI | quote \}\}
  accessModes:
    - \{\{ .Values.persistence.accessMode | quote \}\}
\{\{- end \}\}

PostgreSQL Helm Sub Chart​

We are going to use this PostgreSQL helm chart as a subchart to sonarqube.

  1. Create a directory called '/charts/' in the sonarqube root directory.
  2. Download the postgresql chart into /charts/.
  3. Make the following changes.

Add postgresql values.yaml​

Add the following values (that match the azureDisk's you provisioned earlier).

persistence:
  enabled: true
  storageClass: "staticManagedVolumeRetain"
  accessMode: ReadWriteOnce
  size: 5Gi

azureDisk:
  kind: Managed
  diskName: postgresql-data
  diskURI: /subscriptions/XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXX/resourceGroups/AKS-CLOUDRESOURCES/providers/Microsoft.Compute/disks/postgresql-data

Create pv.yaml for PostgreSQL sub-chart​

Place this under /post/templates/:

sonarqube-pv.yaml
\{\{- if and .Values.persistence.enabled (not .Values.persistence.existingClaim) \}\}
kind: PersistentVolume
apiVersion: v1
metadata:
  name: pv-\{\{ template "sonarqube.name" . \}\}-data
  labels:
    app: \{\{ template "sonarqube.name" . \}\}
    chart: "\{\{ .Chart.Name \}\}-\{\{ .Chart.Version \}\}"
    release: "\{\{ .Release.Name \}\}"
    heritage: "\{\{ .Release.Service \}\}"
spec:
  capacity:
    storage: \{\{ .Values.persistence.size \}\}
  storageClassName: \{\{ .Values.persistence.storageClassName | quote \}\}
  azureDisk:
    kind: \{\{ .Values.azureDisk.kind | quote \}\}
    diskName: \{\{ .Values.azureDisk.diskName | quote \}\}
    diskURI: \{\{ .Values.azureDisk.diskURI | quote \}\}
  accessModes:
    - \{\{ .Values.persistence.accessMode | quote \}\}
\{\{- end \}\}

Zip PostgreSQL (optional)​

After adding the pv.yaml file to the postgresql/templates directory and adding the details into the postgresql values.yaml file you can tar zip that up so as postgresql-0.8.3.tgz and make sure it can be found under sonarqube/charts folder.

You can also just keep the files unzipped in their folders under sonarqube/charts/postgresql/ etc.

Worse case scenario none of this makes sense and is hard to follow - have a look at my git repo with the files laid out how it worked for me: https://github.com/ronamosa/sonarqube-static-disks.gitng}

Helm deploy chart​

You can now run whatever helm deploy line you usually do to put that badboy into your k8s cluster.

Test the persistence by doing a

  • helm delete --purge sonarqube or
  • terraform destroy myAksCluster

and watch when you re-deploy sonarqube that the deployment will find and mount the existing PV's into the pod and you'll see all your previous sonarqube data.

References​

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