Version: 3.8 (unsupported)

Getting Started with Helm Charts (Scalar Manager)

Scalar Manager is a centralized management and monitoring solution for ScalarDB and ScalarDL within Kubernetes cluster environments that allows you to:

Check the availability of ScalarDB or ScalarDL.
Schedule or execute pausing jobs that create transactionally consistent periods in the databases used by ScalarDB or ScalarDL.
Check the time-series metrics and logs of ScalarDB or ScalarDL through Grafana dashboards.

For more details, refer to Scalar Manager Overview.

This guide will show you how to deploy and access Scalar Manager on a Kubernetes cluster.

Assumption

This guide assumes that you are aware of how to deploy ScalarDB or ScalarDL with the monitoring and logging tools to a Kubernetes cluster.

Requirement

You need privileges to pull the Scalar Manager container (scalar-manager) from GitHub Packages.
You must create a Github Personal Access Token (PAT) with read:packages scope according to the GitHub document to pull the above container.
You must deploy kube-prometheus-stack according to the instructions in Getting Started with Helm Charts (Monitoring using Prometheus Operator).
You must deploy loki-stack according to the instructions in Getting Started with Helm Charts (Logging using Loki Stack).

What we create

We will deploy the following components on a Kubernetes cluster as follows.

+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| +----------------------+                                                                         |
| |    scalar-manager    |                                                                         |
| |                      |                                                                         |
| | +------------------+ | --------------------------(Manage)--------------------------+           |
| | |  Scalar Manager  | |                                                             |           |
| | +------------------+ |                                                             |           |
| +--+-------------------+                                                             |           |
|    |                                                                                 |           |
| +------------------------------------+                                               |           |
| |             loki-stack             |                                               V           |
| |                                    |                                       +-----------------+ |
| | +--------------+  +--------------+ | <----------------(Log)--------------- | Scalar Products | |
| | |     Loki     |  |   Promtail   | |                                       |                 | |
| | +--------------+  +--------------+ |                                       |  +-----------+  | |
| +------------------------------------+                                       |  | ScalarDB  |  | |
|    |                                                                         |  +-----------+  | |
| +------------------------------------------------------+                     |                 | |
| |                kube-prometheus-stack                 |                     |  +-----------+  | |
| |                                                      |                     |  | ScalarDL  |  | |
| | +--------------+  +--------------+  +--------------+ | -----(Monitor)----> |  +-----------+  | |
| | |  Prometheus  |  | Alertmanager |  |   Grafana    | |                     +-----------------+ |
| | +-------+------+  +------+-------+  +------+-------+ |                                         |
| |         |                |                 |         |                                         |
| |         +----------------+-----------------+         |                                         |
| |                          |                           |                                         |
| +--------------------------+---------------------------+                                         |
|    |                       |                                                                     |
|    |                       |         Kubernetes                                                  |
+----+-----------------------+---------------------------------------------------------------------+
     |                       |
  expose to localhost (127.0.0.1) or use load balancer etc to access
     |                       |
  (Access Dashboard through HTTP)
     |                       |
+----+----+             +----+----+
| Browser | <-(Embed)-- + Browser |
+---------+             +---------+

Step 1. Upgrade the `kube-prometheus-stack` to allow Grafana to be embedded

Add or revise this value to the custom values file (e.g. scalar-prometheus-custom-values.yaml) of the kube-prometheus-stack

kubeStateMetrics:
  enabled: true
nodeExporter:
  enabled: true
kubelet:
  enabled: true
grafana:
  grafana.ini:
    users:
      default_theme: light
    security:
      allow_embedding: true
    auth.anonymous:
      enabled: true
      org_name: "Main Org."
      org_role: Editor

Upgrade the Helm installation

helm upgrade scalar-monitoring prometheus-community/kube-prometheus-stack -n monitoring -f scalar-prometheus-custom-values.yaml

Step 2. Prepare a custom values file for Scalar Manager

Create an empty .yaml file named scalar-manager-custom-values.yaml for scalar-manager.
Set the service type to access Scalar Manager. The default value is ClusterIP, but if we access using the minikube tunnel command or some load balancer, we can set it as LoadBalancer.
```
service:
  type: LoadBalancer
  port: 8000
```

Step 3. Deploy `scalar-manager`

Deploy the scalar-manager Helm Chart.

helm install scalar-manager scalar-labs/scalar-manager -f scalar-manager-custom-values.yaml

Step 4. Access Scalar Manager

If you use minikube

To expose Scalar Manager's service resource as your localhost (127.0.0.1), open another terminal, and run the minikube tunnel command.
```
minikube tunnel
```
Open the browser with URL http://localhost:8000

If you use other Kubernetes than minikube

If you're using a Kubernetes cluster other than minikube, you'll need to access the LoadBalancer service according to the manner of each Kubernetes cluster. For example, you'll need to use a load balancer provided by your cloud services provider or use the kubectl port-forward command.

note

Scalar Manager will try to detect the external IP of Grafana and then embed Grafana based on the IP. Therefore, you must configure the Grafana service type as LoadBalancer, and the external IP must be accessible from your browser.

Step 5. Delete Scalar Manager

Uninstall scalar-manager
```
helm uninstall scalar-manager
```

Assumption​

Requirement​

What we create​

Step 1. Upgrade the kube-prometheus-stack to allow Grafana to be embedded​

Step 2. Prepare a custom values file for Scalar Manager​

Step 3. Deploy scalar-manager​

Step 4. Access Scalar Manager​

If you use minikube​

If you use other Kubernetes than minikube​

Step 5. Delete Scalar Manager​