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High Availability (HA) Deployment - Kubernetes Production Setup

Deploy OpenObserve in high availability (HA) mode for production observability workloads. This guide walks through deploying on Kubernetes with Helm using object storage (S3, GCS, MinIO, Swift, Civo) and PostgreSQL or MySQL as the metadata store.

While OpenObserve can run in HA mode on bare metal servers, VMs, and other platforms, we officially provide installation via Helm charts for Kubernetes. Local disk storage is not supported in HA mode, so an object store is mandatory.

This guide will help you:

  1. Set up prerequisites (CLI tools, operator, bucket).
  2. Download and customize values.yaml.
  3. Configure object storage and the metadata store.
  4. Install OpenObserve with Helm.
  5. Verify the deployment.

Prerequisites

You need:

  • A Kubernetes cluster you have admin access to.
  • kubectl and helm installed locally.
  • An object storage bucket created beforehand (S3, GCS, MinIO, Swift, or Civo). The bucket itself is not created by the chart.
  • The Cloud Native PostgreSQL Operator installed in the cluster. This is required because the chart provisions its PostgreSQL cluster (1 primary + 1 replica) through cnpg.

Install the cnpg operator:

kubectl apply --server-side -f \
  https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cloudnative-pg/cloudnative-pg/release-1.23/releases/cnpg-1.23.1.yaml

Sizing the cluster

For recommended CPU, memory, and storage values per component, see Capacity planning.

Download values.yaml

For accessing the object store we recommend the best security practice of using IAM roles wherever possible. In case of Amazon EKS you can use IAM roles for Service Accounts (IRSA).

You must download the values.yaml file and make required changes. At a minimum you must provide the details of bucket to be used for data storage and credentials (IAM role or keys) to access it. You can download the file using the following command:

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/openobserve/openobserve-helm-chart/main/charts/openobserve/values.yaml -o values.yaml

Configure object storage

Amazon EKS + S3

You must set a minimum of 2 values:

  1. S3 bucket where data will be stored 
    config:
  ZO_S3_BUCKET_NAME: "<your-bucket>"
  2. IAM role for the serviceAccount to gain AWS IAM credentials to access s3 
    serviceAccount:
  annotations:
    eks.amazonaws.com/role-arn: arn:aws:iam::12345353456:role/zo-s3-eks

Once you have configured the above in your values.yaml file, you can run the commands in Install OpenObserve below.

Follow AWS documentation to enable IRSA and create an IAM role that you can use. You can also refer to the IRSA introduction blog.

Sample IAM policy

{
  "Id": "Policy1678319681097",
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Sid": "Stmt1678319677242",
      "Action": [
        "s3:PutObject",
        "s3:GetObject",
        "s3:ListBucket",
        "s3:DeleteObject"
      ],
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::<your-bucket>/*"
    }
  ]
}

Video walkthrough

Any Kubernetes + S3

Add/Modify following to values.yaml

  1. S3 bucket where data will be stored 
    auth:
  ZO_S3_ACCESS_KEY: "e.g.AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE"
  ZO_S3_SECRET_KEY: "e.g.wJalrXUtnFEMI/K7MDENG/bPxRfiCYEXAMPLEKEY"
config:
  ZO_S3_BUCKET_NAME: "<your-bucket>"
  ZO_S3_REGION_NAME: "us-west-1"

Any Kubernetes + MinIO

Add/Modify following to values.yaml

  1. S3 bucket where data will be stored 
    auth:
  ZO_S3_ACCESS_KEY: "e.g.AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE"
  ZO_S3_SECRET_KEY: "e.g.wJalrXUtnFEMI/K7MDENG/bPxRfiCYEXAMPLEKEY"
config:
  ZO_S3_SERVER_URL: "http://minio-server-url"
  ZO_S3_BUCKET_NAME: "<your-bucket>"
  ZO_S3_REGION_NAME: "us-west-1"
  ZO_S3_PROVIDER: "minio"

Any Kubernetes + GCS

Add/Modify following to values.yaml

  1. GCS bucket where data will be stored 
    auth:
  ZO_S3_ACCESS_KEY: "e.g.AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE"
  ZO_S3_SECRET_KEY: "e.g.wJalrXUtnFEMI/K7MDENG/bPxRfiCYEXAMPLEKEY"
config:
  ZO_S3_SERVER_URL: "https://storage.googleapis.com"
  ZO_S3_BUCKET_NAME: "<your-bucket>"
  ZO_S3_REGION_NAME: "auto"
  ZO_S3_PROVIDER: "s3"
  ZO_S3_FEATURE_HTTP1_ONLY: "true"

You can generate keys for GCS bucket using following steps:

  1. Go to Google cloud console > Cloud Storage > Settings > Interoperability
  2. Make sure you are in the right project.
  3. Access keys for your user account > Click "CREATE A KEY"

Video walkthrough

Any Kubernetes + OpenStack Swift

Add/Modify following to values.yaml

  1. swift bucket where data will be stored 
    auth:
  ZO_S3_ACCESS_KEY: "e.g.AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE"
  ZO_S3_SECRET_KEY: "e.g.wJalrXUtnFEMI/K7MDENG/bPxRfiCYEXAMPLEKEY"
config:
  ZO_S3_SERVER_URL: "swift url"
  ZO_S3_BUCKET_NAME: "<your-bucket>"
  ZO_S3_REGION_NAME: "us-west-1"
  ZO_S3_PROVIDER: "s3"

Any Kubernetes + Civo Object Store

Add/Modify following to values.yaml

  1. civo object store will store the data 
    auth:
  ZO_S3_ACCESS_KEY: "e.g.AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE"
  ZO_S3_SECRET_KEY: "e.g.wJalrXUtnFEMI/K7MDENG/bPxRfiCYEXAMPLEKEY"
config:
  ZO_S3_SERVER_URL: "civo object store url"
  ZO_S3_BUCKET_NAME: "<your-bucket>"
  ZO_S3_REGION_NAME: "us-west-1"
  ZO_S3_PROVIDER: "s3"

Metadata store

You can use PostgreSQL or MySQL as metadata storage.

Default: bundled PostgreSQL

The official Helm chart (from Feb 23rd 2024 onward) uses PostgreSQL as the metadata store by default. It installs a PostgreSQL cluster (1 primary + 1 replica) for you via the cnpg operator. You don't need any additional configuration if you want to use the bundled instance.

PostgreSQL (external)

If you want to use external PostgreSQL, configure as below. Create the database first. In this example we use openobserve as the database name.

config:
  ZO_META_STORE: "postgres"

auth:
  ZO_META_POSTGRES_DSN: "postgres://postgres:12345678@localhost:5432/openobserve"

postgres:
  enabled: false # disable bundled PostgreSQL

MySQL

Create the database first. In this example we use openobserve as the database name.

config:
  ZO_META_STORE: "mysql"
  ZO_META_MYSQL_DSN: "mysql://user:12345678@localhost:3306/openobserve"

NATS cluster coordinator

NATS is used by OpenObserve as the cluster coordinator. The official Helm chart configures NATS for you, so no additional configuration is required.

Install OpenObserve

Install the chart:

helm repo add openobserve https://charts.openobserve.ai
helm repo update

kubectl create ns openobserve

helm --namespace openobserve -f values.yaml install o2 openobserve/openobserve

Verify deployment

After running helm install, confirm every pod is healthy before pointing traffic at OpenObserve.

Verify

Verification step

# Watch pods come up (Ctrl+C once everything is Running)
kubectl -n openobserve get pods -w

# Final pod state. Confirm every pod is 1/1 (or 2/2 for NATS) and Running
kubectl -n openobserve get pods

Expected output

NAME: o2
LAST DEPLOYED: <timestamp>
NAMESPACE: openobserve
STATUS: deployed
REVISION: 1
  • ~12 pods, every one READY 1/1 (or 2/2 for NATS) and STATUS Running. Components: NATS x3, postgres x2, openfga, alertmanager, router, ingester, querier, compactor, openfga-init.
  • Image: o2cr.ai/openobserve/openobserve-enterprise:<tag> (or the OSS image, depending on your chart values).
  • If a pod is stuck in ImagePullBackOff, check kubectl -n openobserve describe pod <name> and verify outbound internet from the cluster.

Then port-forward the router service to reach the UI:

kubectl --namespace openobserve port-forward svc/o2-openobserve-router 5080:5080

Open http://localhost:5080 and sign in with the credentials you set in values.yaml.

Uninstallation

helm --namespace openobserve delete o2

Next steps

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