Deploying to Alibaba Cloud Using Network Attached Storage

Note: Official Alibaba documentation on deploying and connecting to a Kubernetes cluster is available here.

  1. Launch the Cluster
    1. Navigate to the Alibaba Cloud console.
    2. Click Container Service.
    3. Click Create Kubernetes Cluster.
    4. Click the Managed Kubernetes tab at top.
    5. Specify the following parameters:
      • Cluster name, Region, Zone, and VPC.
      • Choose an Instance type and Node count. For example, ecs.mn4.large Instance type, quantity of 3. Uncheck Attach Data Disk.
      • Specify an ssh key pair for logging in.
      • For all other parameters, keep the default settings.
    6. Click Create. The cluster may take 5-10 minutes to create.
  2. Connect to the Cluster
    1. Go to Container Service in the Alibaba Cloud console.
    2. Click on the cluster you just created.
    3. At the bottom of the page is a kubectl config file. Copy and paste this into a .yaml file on your machine.
    4. Set the environment variable KUBECONFIG to point to this file in your terminal.
    5. To check you are connected, run:

      6. kubectl get nodes

  3. Install Helm
    1. (Helm v2 only) To install Helm, run:

      2. helm init

    2. Give Helm deploy permissions.

      3. WARNING: This procedure is not best practice for a production cluster. For more information, see https://github.com/helm/helm/blob/master/docs/rbac.md

      Run:

      kubectl create clusterrolebinding add-on-cluster-admin --clusterrole=cluster-admin --serviceaccount=kube-system:default

  4. Configure Network Attached Storage (NAS)
    1. In the Alibaba Cloud console, navigate to the NAS console
    2. Click Create File System.
    3. Specify the parameters:
      • Region and Zone: Specify the same as your Kubernetes cluster.
      • Under Storage Type, select SSD performance-type
      • Storage Type: NFS
    4. Click OK.
    5. Click Add Mount Point.
    6. Specify the parameters:
      • Mount Point Type: VPC
      • Select the same VPC as the one in which the Kubernetes cluster is running.
      • Select the default VPC permission group.
    7. Click OK.
    8. To add an NAS storage class to the Kubernetes cluster, go to the Alibaba documentation on using NAS storage in a Kubernetes cluster.
      1. Under "Dynamic storage volumes", copy and paste the "Install the plug-in" config file into a file on your local machine.
      2. In that file, modify the value of NFS_SERVER in the controller container, and the "server" in the volume to be the mount point URL created for the NAS.
      3. Remove the nodeSelector section completely.
      4. Apply to the cluster with kubectl apply -f <path_to_yaml>, where <path_to_yaml> is the config file created in the previous step.
    9. You should now have a storage class in your cluster with the name "alicloud-nas" that can use the FME Server System Share.
  5. Deploy FME Server
    1. Add the Safe Software Helm repository:

      2. helm repo add safesoftware https://safesoftware.github.io/helm-charts/

    2. Construct a hostname for the FME Server deployment. Alibaba’s Kubernetes Ingress Controller resolves a DNS name in the form:

      3. *.[cluster-id].[region-id].alicontainer.com

      For example, you can use DNS hostname:

      fmeserver.[cluster-id].[region-id].alicontainer.com

      cluster-id and region can be found on the Container Service page of the Alibaba Cloud console. See the Alibaba documentation for a mapping of regions to region-id.

    3. Install FME Server.

      4. Example:

      • Helm v2: helm install -n fmeserver safesoftware/fmeserver-2019.0.0 --set fmeserver.image.tag=19208,deployment.hostname=fmeserver.[cluster-id].[region-id].alicontainer.com,storage.fmeserver.class=alicloud-nas,storage.fmeserver.accessMode=ReadWriteMany,storage.fmeserver.size=10Gi,storage.postgresql.class=alicloud-disk-ssd,storage.postgresql.size=20Gi,deployment.numCores=2,deployment.numEngines=4
      • Helm v3: helm install fmeserver safesoftware/fmeserver-2019.0.0 --set fmeserver.image.tag=19208,deployment.hostname=fmeserver.[cluster-id].[region-id].alicontainer.com,storage.fmeserver.class=alicloud-nas,storage.fmeserver.accessMode=ReadWriteMany,storage.fmeserver.size=10Gi,storage.postgresql.class=alicloud-disk-ssd,storage.postgresql.size=20Gi,deployment.numCores=2,deployment.numEngines=4

      Parameters to note:

      • Change deployment.hostname to a domain that resolves to your cluster’s Ingress Controller as described in the previous step.
      • Change fmeserver.image.tag to the build number you want to deploy.
      • storage.fmeserver.class=alicloud-nas uses the Alibaba NAS set up previously.
      • deployment.numEngines=4 starts four engines
      • deployment.numCores=2 starts two FME Server Core pods for load balancing and fault tolerance.
    4. To access FME Server after it deploys, use your browser to invoke the DNS name you set in step 2.