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Version: 3.2

Installing on a Tanzu cluster

Summary and Key concepts

Summary​

This article describes the steps required to configure a Synchronous Disaster Recovery (DR) setup for Portworx on Tanzu Kubernetes clusters using labeled drives. A single stretched Portworx cluster is created across two clusters with low-latency connections, supported only in metropolitan area networks with a maximum latency of 10 ms. The guide includes commands for labeling worker nodes and configuring Portworx to distinguish between each cluster’s drives. After applying the modified Portworx specification, verification commands are provided to ensure the cluster is running in a stretched configuration, with output examples showing operational status and drive distribution.

Kubernetes Concepts​

  • PersistentVolumeClaim (PVC): In Tanzu, cloud drives are represented by PVCs, allowing Portworx to access and manage storage across the stretched cluster.

Portworx Concepts​

  • Synchronous Disaster Recovery (DR): Configures a single Portworx cluster across two locations within a 10 ms latency limit, ensuring high availability and rapid failover.

  • StorageCluster: A Portworx custom resource definition (CRD) specifying the storage cluster configuration; here, configured with a --node_pool_label parameter for stretched deployments.

  • pxctl: Portworx command-line tool used here to verify cluster status and confirm the stretch deployment configuration.

note

If you are not using a Tanzu cluster, skip to next section.

Label your drives​

The existing Synchronous DR implementation assumes the availability of cloud drives for each of the two clusters. In Tanzu cloud drive is a PVC, which is a cluster-scoped resource and in order to help clusters distinguish between their drives, they should be labeled accordingly.

  1. Label your worker nodes on both clusters with the px-dr label. Set your cluster domain as a value:

    kubectl label nodes <list-of-nodes or --all> px-dr=<cluster-domain-name>

  2. Add the --node_pool_label parameter to the spec with a key px-dr:

    apiVersion: core.libopenstorage.org/v1
    kind: StorageCluster
    metadata:
      annotations:
        portworx.io/misc-args: '--node_pool_label=px-dr'

    note

    Only deploy Portworx in this mode when your Kubernetes clusters are separated by a metropolitan area network with a maximum latency of 10 ms. Pure Storage does not recommend you to run in this mode if your Kubernetes clusters are distributed across regions, such as AWS regions us-east and us-west.

  1. Apply the modified Portworx spec on both the clusters, and Portworx will form the stretch cluster.

Verify Portworx installation​

You can run the following commands to ensure Portworx is successfully installed in a stretch fashion.

  • Run the following command on your source cluster to see if the Portworx cluster is up and running:

    kubectl get pods
    NAME             READY   STATUS        RESTARTS   AGE
    portworx-d6rk7   1/1     Running       0          4m
    portworx-d6rk8   1/1     Running       0          5m
    portworx-d6rk9   1/1     Running       0          7m

  • Run the following command to verify that stretch cluster is installed:

    kubectl exec portworx-d6rk7 -n <px-namespace> -- /opt/pwx/bin/pxctl status
    Status: PX is operational
    License: Trial (expires in 31 days)
    Node ID: xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-f0835b788738
          IP: X.X.X.230
          Local Storage Pool: 1 pool
          POOL    IO_PRIORITY     RAID_LEVEL      USABLE  USED    STATUS  ZONE            REGION
          0       LOW             raid0           150 GiB 9.0 GiB Online  us-east-1b      us-east-1
          Local Storage Devices: 1 device
          Device  Path            Media Type              Size            Last-Scan
          0:1     /dev/xvdf       STORAGE_MEDIUM_SSD      150 GiB         09 Apr 19 22:57 UTC
          total                   -                       150 GiB
          Cache Devices:
          No cache devices
    Cluster Summary
          Cluster ID: px-dr-cluster
          Cluster UUID: xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-5dfe2af572e0
          Scheduler: kubernetes
          Nodes: 6 node(s) with storage (6 online)
          IP              ID                                      SchedulerNodeName               StorageNode     Used    Capacity        Status  StorageStatus   Version         Kernel          OS
          172.20.33.100   xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-a978f17cd020    ip-172-20-33-100.ec2.internal   Yes             0 B     150 GiB         Online  Up              2.1.0.0-cb23fd1 4.9.0-7-amd64   Debian GNU/Linux 9 (stretch)
          xx.xx.50.47    xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-530f313869f3    ip-172-40-50-47.ec2.internal    Yes             0 B     150 GiB         Online  Up              2.1.0.0-cb23fd1 4.9.0-7-amd64   Debian GNU/Linux 9 (stretch)
          xx.xx.34.140   xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-6faf19e8724c    ip-172-40-34-140.ec2.internal   Yes             0 B     150 GiB         Online  Up              2.1.0.0-cb23fd1 4.9.0-7-amd64   Debian GNU/Linux 9 (stretch)
          172.20.36.212   xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-82b0da1d2580    ip-172-20-36-212.ec2.internal   Yes             0 B     150 GiB         Online  Up              2.1.0.0-cb23fd1 4.9.0-7-amd64   Debian GNU/Linux 9 (stretch)
          172.20.59.248   xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-51e130959644    ip-172-20-59-248.ec2.internal   Yes             0 B     150 GiB         Online  Up              2.1.0.0-cb23fd1 4.9.0-7-amd64   Debian GNU/Linux 9 (stretch)
          X.X.X.230   xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-f0835b788738    ip-172-40-40-230.ec2.internal   Yes             0 B     150 GiB         Online  Up (This node)  2.1.0.0-cb23fd1 4.9.0-7-amd64   Debian GNU/Linux 9 (stretch)
    Global Storage Pool
          Total Used      :  0 B
          Total Capacity  :  900 GiB
       
  You can see that the cluster summary shows `stretch` against each node IP. 


:::note
For instructions on configuring disk provisioning for your Tanzu cluster, refer to the [Tanzu Operations](/reference-architectures/auto-disk-provisioning/tanzu/index.md) section.
:::
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