Deploy MinIO Operator on Google Kubernetes Engine

Overview

Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) offers a highly automated secure and fully managed Kubernetes platform. The MinIO Kubernetes Operator supports deploying MinIO Tenants onto GKE infrastructure using the MinIO Operator Console or kustomize for YAML-defined deployments.

Through the GKE Marketplace: MinIO maintains an GKE Marketplace listing through which you can register your GKE cluster with MinIO SUBNET. Any MinIO tenant you deploy through Marketplace-connected clusters can take advantage of SUBNET registration, including 24/7 direct access to MinIO engineers.
Using the MinIO kubectl Plugin: MinIO provides a kubectl plugin for installing and managing the MinIO Operator and Tenants through a terminal or shell (CLI) environment. You can manually register these tenants with MinIO SUBNET at any time.

This page documents deploying the MinIO Operator through the CLI using Kustomize. For instructions on deploying the MinIO Operator through the GKE Marketplace, see Deploy MinIO through GKE

This documentation assumes familiarity with all referenced Kubernetes and Google Kubernetes Engine concepts, utilities, and procedures. While this documentation may provide guidance for configuring or deploying Kubernetes-related or Google Kubernetes Engine-related resources on a best-effort basis, it is not a replacement for the official Kubernetes Documentation.

Prerequisites

Existing GKE Cluster

This procedure assumes an existing GKE cluster onto which you can deploy the MinIO Operator.

The Operator by default deploys pods and services with two replicas each and pod anti-affinity. The GKE cluster should therefore have at least two nodes available for scheduling Operator pods and services. While these nodes may be the same nodes intended for use by MinIO Tenants, co-locating Operator and Tenant pods may increase the risk of service interruptions due to the loss of any one node.

`kubectl` Access to the GKE Cluster

Ensure your host machine has a kubectl installation compatible with the target GKE cluster. For guidance on connecting kubectl to GKE, see Install kubectl and configure cluster access.

Procedure

The following steps deploy Operator using Kustomize and a kustomization.yaml file from the MinIO Operator GitHub repository.

Install the MinIO Operator using Kustomize

The following procedure uses kubectl -k to install the Operator from the MinIO Operator GitHub repository. kubectl -k and kubectl --kustomize are aliases that perform the same command.

Important

If you use Kustomize to install the Operator, you must use Kustomize to manage or upgrade that installation. Do not use kubectl krew, a Helm chart, or similar methods to manage or upgrade a MinIO Operator installation deployed with Kustomize.

You can, however, use Kustomize to upgrade a previous version of Operator (5.0.14 or earlier) installed with the MinIO Kubernetes Plugin.

Install the latest version of Operator

The following command installs the Operator to the minio-operator namespace:
```
kubectl apply -k "github.com/minio/operator?ref=v6.0.4"
```
The command outputs a list of installed resources.

Verify the Operator pods are running:

kubectl get pods -n minio-operator

The output resembles the following:

NAME                              READY   STATUS              RESTARTS   AGE
minio-operator-6c758b8c45-nkhlx   1/1     Running   0          2m42s
minio-operator-6c758b8c45-dgd8n   1/1     Running   0          2m42s

In this example, the minio-operator pod is MinIO Operator and the console pod is the Operator Console.

You can modify your Operator deployment by applying kubectl patches. You can find examples for common configurations in the Operator GitHub repository.

Verify the Operator installation

Check the contents of the specified namespace (minio-operator) to ensure all pods and services have started successfully.

kubectl get all -n minio-operator

The response should resemble the following:

NAME                                  READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
pod/minio-operator-6c758b8c45-nkhlx   1/1     Running   0          5m20s
pod/minio-operator-6c758b8c45-dgd8n   1/1     Running   0          5m20s

NAME               TYPE        CLUSTER-IP      EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)                         AGE
service/operator   ClusterIP   10.43.135.241   <none>        4221/TCP                        5m20s
service/sts        ClusterIP   10.43.117.251   <none>        4223/TCP                        5m20s

NAME                             READY   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   AGE
deployment.apps/minio-operator   2/2     2            2           5m20s

NAME                                        DESIRED   CURRENT   READY   AGE
replicaset.apps/minio-operator-6c758b8c45   2         2         2       5m20s

Next Steps

You can deploy MinIO tenants using the MinIO CRD and Kustomize. MinIO also provides a Helm chart for deploying Tenants.

MinIO recommends using the same method of Tenant deployment and management used to install the Operator. Mixing Kustomize and Helm for Operator or Tenant management may increase operational complexity.