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Overview

Order of Operations

1. MongoDB must be running first
2. Next, start the RabbitMQ
3. Then, start Clowder itself
4. Optional: Finally, start any extractors that you want
   1. You may need to give Clowder 10-15 minutes to discover this change.
5. Verify that the extractors are registered to Clowder by navigating to: CLOWDER_URL:PORT/api/status
   1. You should see the extractors show up in their respective section after several minutes.

Bootstrapping Clowder in Kubernetes

Step 1: Build or Pull Required Images

Start up the NDSDEV container using the following command:

. ./devtools/ndsdev/ndsdevctl run

Once inside of NDSDEV, enter the services/ncsa/clowder folder:

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cd /nds/src/services/ncsa/clowder

Pulling the Images from Docker Hub

From services/ncsa/clowder, run the following command to pull all required images:

make all

You should now see Docker pulling down several images. Once it is complete, you can move on to spinning up your cluster.

Building the Images from Source

WARNING: Building these images from source takes a VERY long time (~25 minutes). Pulling the images from docker hub is always preferred.

From services/ncsa/clowder, execute the following commands to build the required images from source:

make git-src
make all-from-src 

Step 2: Bring Up an Empty Cluster

Setup an empty K8 cluster, as described here: Cluster Setup: Development (Local)

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3: Bring

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Up All Services

This step MUST be done before the controllers can be started. Create the 3 necessary services using the following command:

kubectl create -f services/

Why must this be done first?

Starting these services creates a bunch of environment variables containing ip/port/protocol of the service that are then injected into controllers/pods that match the selector. Any pods started after these services will have these environment variables injected into their pod's environment. This allows us to set values in the controller specification(s) like this one, for example:

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          value: "amqp://guest:guest@$(CLOWDER_RABBITMQ_PORT_5672_TCP_ADDR):$(CLOWDER_RABBITMQ_PORT_5672_TCP_PORT)/%2F"

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4: Bring

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Up Any Controllers (In Order)

1.)  To bring up a MongoDB controller and pod, run the following command:

kubectl create -f controllers/mongodb-controller.yaml

2a2.)  (Optional) Run this command to start ElasticSearchRabbitMQ:

kubectl create -f controllers/elasticsearchrabbitmq-controller.yaml

2b3.)  Run this command to start RabbitMQlast to bring up Clowder itself:

kubectl create -f controllers/rabbitmqclowder-controller.yaml

Step 5: Clowder GUI

Wait a minute or so for Clowder to start. Once it has started, you should be able to navigate your browser to port 30291 of your OpenStack VM's IP.

Clowder's controller specification describes a "NodePort" (port 30291) that exposes our cluster to the public internet.

Optional Plugins

Extractors

3.)  (Optional) After starting RabbitMQ, you can run commands similar to the following in order to start your extractors:

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kubectl create -f controllers/EXTRACTOR-N-controller.yaml

 4.)  Run this command last to bring up Clowder itself:

NOTE: Be sure to give Clowder up to 15 minutes to discover the change unless you plan on restarting the Clowder pod.

ElasticSearch (Text-based Search)

WARNING: The "latest" v2.2.0 image of elasticsearch would not work with Clowder. We need to investigate the latest usable version. v1.3.9 worked without errors.

kubectl create -f controllers/clowderelasticsearch-controller.yaml

Step 4: Clowder GUI

Wait a minute or so for Clowder to start. Once it has started, you should be able to navigate your browser to port 30291 of your OpenStack VM's IP.

To enable searching from the browser, you will need to install the "head" plugin for elasticsearch by running the following command:

kubectl exec `kubectl get pods | grep lastic | awk '{print $1}'` -- /usr/share/elasticsearch/bin/plugin -i mobz/elasticsearch-head

TERRA Tool Server

More information to come..Clowder's controller specification describes a "NodePort" (port 30291) that exposes our cluster to the public internet.

Stopping the Cluster

To shut down the cluster, simply perform all steps above in reverse with delete instead of create.

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. ./cluster/k8s/localdev/kube-down-local.sh

Tip and Tricks

Scaling Extractors

Use the following command to scale up or down an extractor on the fly:

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NOTE: --replicas=0 is an acceptable value, allowing you to start a controller without starting its pods right away.

Hot-swapping Extractors

As you bring up and take down extractors, they will (every few minutes or so) automagically register / unregister themselves from Clowder. Based on the behavior, this is likely done via a polling process. 

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