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Getting Started with OpenEBS

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Following are the steps to get started with OpenEBS on a Kubernetes cluster.

As a Kubernetes Operator/Administrator:

1. As a prerequisite, check if open-iscsi is installed and running on kubelet. See Steps for configuring and verifying open-iscsi.

2. You can install OpenEBS either through stable helm chart or by through OpenEBS helm chart or by using OpenEBS operator/kubectl.

   Using a Stable Helm Chart:

   Setup RBAC for helm tiller and install the chart from Kubernetes stable and deploy the storage class templates.

   helm install  --namespace openebs --name openebs  -f https://openebs.github.io/charts/helm-values-0.6.0.yaml stable/openebs
   kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/openebs/openebs/v0.6/k8s/openebs-storageclasses.yaml
   

   For more details on installing OpenEBS using helm, see install through helm.

   Using OpenEBS Helm Charts

   (Will be deprecated in the coming releases)

   helm repo add openebs-charts https://openebs.github.io/charts/
   helm repo update
   helm install openebs-charts/openebs
   

   Using OpenEBS Operator (kubectl):

   As a cluster admin, execute the following single command on the Kubernetes shell.

   kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/openebs/openebs/v0.6/k8s/openebs-operator.yaml
   kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/openebs/openebs/v0.6/k8s/openebs-storageclasses.yaml
   

3. Optional: Create a catalog of storage classes and publish them to your developers. A default storage class (openebs-standard) is added to the cluster when you install OpenEBS.

4. Optional: An OpenEBS enabled cluster can be imported into mayaonline.io for better visibility, volume management, and integrated ChatOps experience with Slack.

As an Application Developer:

1. Create a PVC specification with the right storage class and use it in the application YAML file. An example PVC specification is as follows.

   application yaml contents
        
         volumes:
         - name: datadir
           persistentVolumeClaim:
             claimName: datadir
     volumeClaimTemplates:
     - metadata:
         name: datadir
       spec:
         storageClassName: openebs-cockroachdb
         accessModes:
           - "ReadWriteOnce"
         resources:
           requests:
             storage: 100G
   

2. Apply the YAML file using kubectl apply -f command. Verify that an OpenEBS volume is provisioned and bound to the application pod.

3. Note: Because OpenEBS is a CAS, you will observe that new pods (one volume controller pod and as many volume replica PODs as the number of replicas configured in the storage class) are created.

See Also:

Prerequisites

Tested platforms

OpenEBS architecture