Quickstart for Site Reliability Engineers

In this quickstart for Site Reliability Engineers (SREs), we’ll cover:

• Accessing nodetool commands like status, ring, and info.
• Configure port forwarding for the Prometheus and Grafana monitoring utilities as well as Reaper for Apache Cassandra® (Reaper).
• Accessing the K8ssandra monitoring utilities, Prometheus and Grafana.
• Accessing Reaper, an easy to use repair interface.
• Upgrading a K8ssandra cluster: to ensure you’re using the latest K8ssandra software, or to apply new settings.

Access the Apache Cassandra® nodetool utility

Cassandra’s nodetool utility is commonly used for a variety of monitoring and management tasks. You’ll need to run nodetool on your K8ssandra cluster using the kubectl exec command, because there’s no external standalone option available.

To run nodetool commands:

1. Get a list of the running K8ssandra pods using kubectl get:

   kubectl get pods
   

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   Output:

   NAME                                                READY   STATUS      RESTARTS   AGE
   k8ssandra-cass-operator-766849b497-klgwf            1/1     Running     1          45h
   k8ssandra-dc1-default-sts-0                         2/2     Running     0          115m
   k8ssandra-dc1-stargate-5c46975f66-pxl84             1/1     Running     5          45h
   k8ssandra-grafana-679b4bbd74-wj769                  2/2     Running     2          45h
   k8ssandra-kube-prometheus-operator-85695ffb-ft8f8   1/1     Running     1          45h
   k8ssandra-reaper-655fc7dfc6-n9svw                   1/1     Running     7          45h
   k8ssandra-reaper-operator-79fd5b4655-748rv          1/1     Running     0          45h
   prometheus-k8ssandra-kube-prometheus-prometheus-0   2/2     Running     3          45h
   

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   The K8ssandra pod running Cassandra takes the form <k8ssandra-cluster-name>-<datacenter-name>-default-sts-<n> and, in the example above is k8ssandra-dc1-default-sts-0 which we’ll use throughout the following sections.

   Tip

   Although not applicable to this quick start, additional K8ssandra Cassandra nodes will increment the final <n> but the rest of the name will remain the same.

2. Run nodetool status, using the Cassandra node name k8ssandra-dc1-default-sts-0, and replacing <k8ssandra-username> and <k8ssandra-password> with the values you retrieved in Retrieve K8ssandra superuser credentials:

   kubectl exec -it k8ssandra-dc1-default-sts-0 -c cassandra -- nodetool -u <k8ssandra-username> -pw <k8ssandra-password> status
   

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   Output:

   Datacenter: dc1
   ===============
   Status=Up/Down
   |/ State=Normal/Leaving/Joining/Moving
   --  Address      Load       Owns    Host ID                               Token                                    Rack
   UN  10.244.1.12  215.3 KiB  ?       75e52e51-edc9-49f8-84f6-f044999ac130  -1080085985719557225                     default
   
   Note: Non-system keyspaces don't have the same replication settings, effective ownership information is meaningless
   

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   Tip

   All nodes should have the status UN or “Up Normal.”

Other useful nodetool commands include:

• nodetool ring which outputs all the tokens in the node:

  kubectl exec -it k8ssandra-dc1-default-sts-0 -c cassandra -- nodetool -u <k8ssandra-username> -pw <k8ssandra-password> ring
  

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  Output:

  Datacenter: dc1
  ==========
  Address      Rack        Status State   Load            Owns                Token
                                                                              9126546575375666475
  172.17.0.13  default     Up     Normal  597.42 KiB      ?                   -9138166261715795932
  172.17.0.13  default     Up     Normal  597.42 KiB      ?                   -9120920057340937901
  172.17.0.13  default     Up     Normal  597.42 KiB      ?                   -9117737800555727340
  172.17.0.13  default     Up     Normal  597.42 KiB      ?                   -9058127181143818684
  172.17.0.13  default     Up     Normal  597.42 KiB      ?                   -8998548020695455271
  ...
  

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• nodetool info which provides load and uptime information:

  kubectl exec -it k8ssandra-dc1-default-sts-0 -c cassandra -- nodetool -u <k8ssandra-username> -pw <k8ssandra-password> ring
  

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  Output:

  ID                     : dec6a537-f00c-458a-bbc0-26b173675cc7
  Gossip active          : true
  Thrift active          : true
  Native Transport active: true
  Load                   : 597.42 KiB
  Generation No          : 1614265335
  Uptime (seconds)       : 9232
  Heap Memory (MB)       : 567.72 / 1024.00
  Off Heap Memory (MB)   : 0.00
  Data Center            : dc1
  Rack                   : default
  Exceptions             : 0
  Key Cache              : entries 39, size 3.46 KiB, capacity 51 MiB, 199 hits, 240 requests, 0.829 recent hit rate, 14400 save period in seconds
  Row Cache              : entries 0, size 0 bytes, capacity 0 bytes, 0 hits, 0 requests, NaN recent hit rate, 0 save period in seconds
  Counter Cache          : entries 0, size 0 bytes, capacity 25 MiB, 0 hits, 0 requests, NaN recent hit rate, 7200 save period in seconds
  Chunk Cache            : entries 6, size 384 KiB, capacity 224 MiB, 111 misses, 3472 requests, 0.968 recent hit rate, NaN microseconds miss latency
  Percent Repaired       : 100.0%
  Token                  : (invoke with -T/--tokens to see all 256 tokens)
  

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For details on all nodetool commands, see The nodetool utility.

Configure port forwarding

In order to access Cassandra utilities outside of the K8s cluster, if you don’t have an Ingress setup as described in Configure Ingress, you’ll need to configure port forwarding.

Begin by getting a list of your K8ssandra K8s services and ports:

kubectl get services

Output:

NAME                                   TYPE        CLUSTER-IP     EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)                                                 AGE
cass-operator-metrics                  ClusterIP   10.80.3.92     <none>        8383/TCP,8686/TCP                                       24h
k8ssandra-dc1-all-pods-service         ClusterIP   None           <none>        9042/TCP,8080/TCP,9103/TCP                              24h
k8ssandra-dc1-service                  ClusterIP   None           <none>        9042/TCP,9142/TCP,8080/TCP,9103/TCP,9160/TCP            24h
k8ssandra-dc1-stargate-service         ClusterIP   10.80.13.197   <none>        8080/TCP,8081/TCP,8082/TCP,8084/TCP,8085/TCP,9042/TCP   24h
k8ssandra-grafana                      ClusterIP   10.80.7.168    <none>        80/TCP                                                  24h
k8ssandra-kube-prometheus-operator     ClusterIP   10.80.8.109    <none>        443/TCP                                                 24h
k8ssandra-kube-prometheus-prometheus   ClusterIP   10.80.2.44     <none>        9090/TCP                                                24h
k8ssandra-reaper-reaper-service        ClusterIP   10.80.5.77     <none>        8080/TCP                                                24h
k8ssandra-seed-service                 ClusterIP   None           <none>        <none>                                                  24h
kubernetes                             ClusterIP   10.80.0.1      <none>        443/TCP                                                 27h
prometheus-operated                    ClusterIP   None           <none>        9090/TCP                                                24h

In the output above, the services of interest are:

• k8ssandra-grafana: The K8ssandra grafana service where the name is a combination of the K8ssandra cluster name you specified during the Helm install, k8ssandra, and the postfix, -grafana. This service listens on the internal K8s port 80.
• prometheus-operated: The K8ssandra Prometheus daemon. This service listens on the internal K8s port 9090.
• k8ssandra-reaper-reaper-service: The K8ssandra Reaper service where the name is a combination of the K8ssandra cluster name you specified during the Helm install, k8ssandra, -reaper, the K8ssandra cluster name again, and the postfix -reaper-service. This port listens on the internal K8s port 8080.

To configure port forwarding:

1. Open a new terminal.

2. Run the following 3 kubectl port-forward commands in the background:

   kubectl port-forward svc/k8ssandra-grafana 9191:80 &
   kubectl port-forward svc/prometheus-operated 9292:9090 &
   kubectl port-forward svc/k8ssandra-reaper-reaper-service 9393:8080 &
   

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   Output:

   [1] 29211
   [2] 29212
   [3] 29213
   
   ~/
   Forwarding from 127.0.0.1:9292 -> 9090
   Forwarding from [::1]:9292 -> 9090
   Forwarding from 127.0.0.1:9393 -> 8080
   Forwarding from [::1]:9393 -> 8080
   Forwarding from 127.0.0.1:9191 -> 3000
   Forwarding from [::1]:9191 -> 3000
   

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The K8ssandra services are now available at:

• Prometheus: http://127.0.0.1:9292
• Grafana: http://127.0.0.1:9191
• Reaper: http://127.0.0.1:9393/webui

Terminate port forwarding

To terminate a particular forwarded port:

1. Get the process ID:

   jobs -l
   

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   Output:

   [3]  + 29213 running    kubectl port-forward svc/k8ssandra-reaper-k8ssandra-reaper-service 9393:8080
   

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2. Kill the process

   kill 80940
   

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   Output:

   [3]  + terminated  kubectl port-forward svc/k8ssandra-reaper-k8ssandra-reaper-service 9393:8080
   

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Access K8ssandra monitoring utilities

K8ssandra deploys the following customized monitoring utilities:

• Prometheus a standard metrics collection and alerting tool.
• Grafana a set of preconfigured dashboards displaying important K8ssandra metrics.

Prometheus

To check on the health of your K8ssandra cluster using the K8ssandra Prometheus interface:

1. Access the Prometheus home page at http://127.0.0.1:9292:

   

2. From the Status menu, choose Targets.

3. Verify that the stargate/0 and k8ssandra/0 are in the state UP:

   

For more details on Prometheus, see the Prometheus web site.

Grafana

To monitor the health and performance of your K8ssandra cluster using the pre-configured K8ssandra dashboards:

1. Retrieve the Grafana login username using the helm show command:

   helm show values k8ssandra/k8ssandra | grep "adminUser"
   

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   Output:

   admin
   

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2. Retrieve the Grafana login password using the helm show command:

   helm show values k8ssandra/k8ssandra | grep "adminPassword"
   

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   Output:

   secret
   

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3. Access the Grafana login screen at http://127.0.0.1:9191 and login using the username and password:

   

4. Click the home button indicated by the arrow:

   

5. Click the K8ssandra Overview dashboard:

   

6. The K8ssandra Overview dashboard is displayed:

   

7. Explore the other K8ssandra dashboards.

For more information see the Grafana web site.

Access Reaper

Reaper is an easy interface for managing K8ssandra cluster repairs. Reaper is deployed as part of the K8ssandra install.

For details, start in the Reaper topic. Then read about the repair tasks you can perform with Reaper.

Upgrade K8ssandra

You can easily upgrade your K8ssandra software with the helm repo update command, or apply new settings with the helm upgrade command. For details, see Upgrade K8ssandra.

Next steps

• FAQs: If you’re new to K8ssandra, these FAQs are for you.
• Components: Dig in to each deployed component of the K8ssandra stack and see how it communicates with the others.
• Tasks: Need to get something done? Check out the Tasks topics for a helpful collection of outcome-based solutions.
• Reference: Explore the K8ssandra configuration interface (Helm charts), the available options, and a Glossary.

We encourage SREs to actively participate in the K8ssandra community.