Our K3s HA setup consists of 4 homogeneous nodes (3 master nodes + 1 worker node) and can withstand a single-node failure with a very short failover disruption (between 3 to 6 minutes).

With our HA setup we can achieve a monthly uptime of 99.9% (a maximum of 43m of downtime every month).

Prerequisites

Please refer to https://getvisibility.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/GS/pages/88801305/K3s+Installation#Requirements for the node specs of the product you’ll be installing.

Networking

Internal

K3s needs the following ports to be accessible by all other nodes running in the same cluster:

All nodes in the cluster must have:

1. Domain Name Service (DNS) configured

2. Network Time Protocol (NTP) configured

3. Software Update Service - access to a network-based repository for software update packages

4. Fixed private IPv4 address

5. Globally unique node name (use --node-name when installing K3s in a VM to set a static node name)

External

The following port must be publicly exposed in order to allow users to access Synergy or Focus product:

The user must not access the K3s nodes directly, instead, there should be a load balancer sitting between the end user and all the K3s nodes (master and worker nodes):

The load balancer must operate at Layer 4 of the OSI model and listen for connections on port 443. After the load balancer receives a connection request, it selects a target from the target group (which can be any of the master or worker nodes in the cluster) and then attempt to open a TCP connection to the selected target (node) on port 443.

The load balancer must have health checks enabled which are used to monitor the health of the registered targets (nodes in the cluster) so that the load balancer can send requests to healthy nodes only.

The recommended health check configuration is:

• Timeout: 10 seconds

• Healthy threshold: 3 consecutive health check successes

• Unhealthy threshold: 3 consecutive health check failures

• Interval: 30 seconds

• Balance mode: round robin

Public

Please refer to https://getvisibility.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/GS/pages/88801305/K3s+Installation#Proxy-settings for the list of urls you need to enable in your corporate proxy in order to connect to our private registries.

Configuring K3s nodes

We need 3 master nodes and at least 1 worker node to run K3s in HA mode.

1st master node

To get started launch a server node using the cluster-init flag:

curl -sfL https://assets.master.k3s.getvisibility.com/k3s/k3s.sh | INSTALL_K3S_VERSION="v1.23.9+k3s1" K3S_KUBECONFIG_MODE="644" sh -s - server --node-name=master1 --cluster-init

Check for your first master node status, it should have the Ready state:

kubectl get nodes

Use the following command to copy the TOKEN that will used to join the other nodes to the cluster:

cat /var/lib/rancher/k3s/server/node-token

Don’t also forget to copy the private IP address of the 1st master node which will be used by the other nodes to join the cluster.

2nd master node

SSH into the 2nd server to join it to the cluster:

1. Replace K3S_TOKEN with the contents of the file /var/lib/rancher/k3s/server/node-token from the 1st master node installation.

2. Set --node-name to master2

3. Set --server to the private static IP address of the 1st master node.

curl -sfL https://assets.master.k3s.getvisibility.com/k3s/k3s.sh | K3S_TOKEN=SHARED_SECRET INSTALL_K3S_VERSION="v1.23.9+k3s1" K3S_KUBECONFIG_MODE="644" sh -s - server --node-name=master2 --server https://<ip or hostname of master1>:6443

Check the node status:

kubectl get nodes

3rd master node

SSH into the 3rd server to join it to the cluster:

1. Replace K3S_TOKEN with the contents of the file /var/lib/rancher/k3s/server/node-token from the 1st master node installation.

2. Set --node-name to master3

3. Set --server to the private static IP address of the 1st master node.

curl -sfL https://assets.master.k3s.getvisibility.com/k3s/k3s.sh | K3S_TOKEN=SHARED_SECRET INSTALL_K3S_VERSION="v1.23.9+k3s1" K3S_KUBECONFIG_MODE="644" sh -s - server --node-name=master3 --server https://<ip or hostname of master1>:6443

Check the node status:

kubectl get nodes

1st worker node

SSH into the 4th server to join it to the cluster:

1. Replace K3S_TOKEN with the contents of the file /var/lib/rancher/k3s/server/node-token from the 1st master node installation.

2. Set --node-name to worker1

3. Set --server to the private static IP address of the 1st master node.

curl -sfL https://assets.master.k3s.getvisibility.com/k3s/k3s.sh | K3S_TOKEN=SHARED_SECRET INSTALL_K3S_VERSION="v1.23.9+k3s1" K3S_KUBECONFIG_MODE="644" sh -s - agent --node-name=worker1 --server https://<ip or hostname of any master node>:6443

Joining additional worker nodes

You may create as many additional worker nodes as you want.

SSH into the server to join it to the cluster:

1. Replace K3S_TOKEN with the contents of the file /var/lib/rancher/k3s/server/node-token from the 1st master node installation.

2. Update --node-name with your worker node name(Ex: worker2 , worker3 etc..)

3. Set --server to the private static IP address of the 1st master node.

curl -sfL https://assets.master.k3s.getvisibility.com/k3s/k3s.sh | K3S_TOKEN=SHARED_SECRET INSTALL_K3S_VERSION="v1.23.9+k3s1" K3S_KUBECONFIG_MODE="644" sh -s - agent --node-name=workerX --server https://<ip or hostname of any master node>:6443

Check the node status:

kubectl get nodes

Register HA K3s Cluster to Rancher

You may run the registration command that you generated using Rancher UI or through license manager. You should see all master and worker nodes in your cluster through the Machine Pools on the Rancher dashboard:

Install Helm charts

GV Essentials

1. Go to Apps > Charts and install the GetVisibility Essentials Helm chart:

   

   1. If you are installing Focus or Enterprise click on Enable ElasticSearch.

   2. Configure the UTC hour (0-23) that backups should be performed at:

      

2. Click on High Available and set:

   1. MinIO Replicas to 4

   2. MinIO Mode to distributed

   3. Consul Server replicas to 3

      

GV Monitoring

1. Go to Apps > Charts and install the GetVisibility Monitoring Helm chart:

   

   1. Install into Project: Default

2. Click on High Available and set:

   1. Prometheus replicas to 2

   2. Loki replicas to 2
      

      

Configure Fleet labels

1. Go to the global menu Continuous Delivery > Clusters and click on Edit config for the cluster:

   

2. For Synergy: add 3 labels  product=synergy environment=prod high_available=true and press Save.

3. For Focus: add 3 labels  product=focus environment=prod high_available=true and press Save.

4. For Enterprise: add 3 labels  product=enterprise environment=prod high_available=true and press Save.