The following instructions are made to assist users set up their Google Cloud Platform (GCP) Kubernetes environment for running Wallaroo. These represent a recommended setup, but can be modified to fit your specific needs. In particular, these instructions will provision a GKE cluster with 32 CPUs in total. Please ensure that your project’s resource limits support that.

• Quick Setup Guide: Download a bash script to automatically set up the GCP environment through the Google Cloud Platform command line interface gcloud.
• Manual Setup Guide: A list of the gcloud commands used to create the environment through manual commands.

The following video demonstrates the manual guide:

GCP Prerequisites

Organizations that wish to run Wallaroo in their Google Cloud Platform environment must complete the following prerequisites:

• Register a Google Cloud Account: https://cloud.google.com/
• Create a Google Cloud project: https://cloud.google.com/resource-manager/docs/creating-managing-projects
• Install gcloud and run gcloud init or gcloud init –console on the local system used to set up your environment: https://cloud.google.com/sdk/docs/install
• Enable the Google Compute Engine(GCE): https://cloud.google.com/endpoints/docs/openapi/enable-api
• Enable the Google Kubernetes Engine(GKE) on your project: https://console.cloud.google.com/apis/enableflow?apiid=container.googleapis.com
• Select a default Computer Engine region and zone: https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/regions-zones.

GCP Cluster Recommendations

The following recommendations will assist in reducing the cost of a cloud based Kubernetes Wallaroo cluster.

• Turn off the cluster when not in use. A GCP Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) cluster can be turn off when not in use, then turned back on again when needed. If organizations adopt this process, be aware of the following issues:

  • IP Address Reassignment: The load balancer public IP address may be reassigned when the cluster is restarted by the cloud service unless a static IP address is assigned. For more information in Google Cloud Platform see the Configuring domain names with static IP addresses user guide.

• Assign to a Single Availability Zone: Clusters that span multiple availability zones may have issues accessing persistent volumes that were provisioned in another availability zone from the node when the cluster is restarted. The simple solution is to assign the entire cluster into a single availability zone. For more information in Google Cloud Platform see the Regions and zones guide.

  The scripts and configuration files are set up to create the GCP environment for a Wallaroo instance are based on a single availability zone. Modify the script as required for your organization.

Standard Setup Variables

The following variables are used in the Quick Setup Script and the Manual Setup Guide. Modify them as best fits your organization.

Quick Setup Script

A sample script is available here, and creates a Google Kubernetes Engine cluster ready for use with Wallaroo Community. This script requires the prerequisites listed above, and uses the variables as listed in Standard Setup Variables.

The following steps are geared towards a standard Linux or macOS system that supports the prerequisites listed above. Modify these steps based on your local environment.

1. Download the script above.

2. In a terminal window set the script status as execute with the command chmod +x bash wallaroo_community_gcp_install.bash.

3. Modify the script variables listed above based on your requirements.

4. Run the script with either bash wallaroo_community_gcp_install.bash or ./wallaroo_community_gcp_install.bash from the same directory as the script.

   

Manual Setup Guide

The following steps are guidelines to assist new users in setting up their GCP environment for Wallaroo. Feel free to replace these with commands with ones that match your needs.

See the Google Cloud SDK for full details on commands and settings.

The commands below are set to meet the prerequisites listed above, and uses the variables as listed in Standard Setup Variables. Modify them as best fits your organization’s needs.

Set Variables

The following are the variables used in the environment setup process. Modify them as best fits your organization’s needs.

WALLAROO_GCP_PROJECT=wallaroo-ce
WALLAROO_CLUSTER=wallaroo-ce
WALLAROO_GCP_REGION=us-central1
WALLAROO_NODE_LOCATION=us-central1-f
WALLAROO_GCP_NETWORK_NAME=wallaroo-network
WALLAROO_GCP_SUBNETWORK_NAME=wallaroo-subnet-1
WALLAROO_GCP_MACHINE_TYPE=e2-standard-8
WALLAROO_CLUSTER_SIZE=4

Create a GCP Network

First create a GCP network that is used to connect to the cluster with the gcloud compute networks create command. For more information, see the gcloud compute networks create page.

gcloud compute networks \
create $WALLAROO_GCP_NETWORK_NAME \
--bgp-routing-mode regional \
--subnet-mode custom

Verify it’s creation by listing the GCP networks:

gcloud compute networks list

Create the GCP Wallaroo Cluster

Once the network is created, the gcloud container clusters create command is used to create a cluster. For more information see the gcloud container clusters create page.

Note that three nodes are created by default, so one more is added with the --num-nodes setting to meet the Wallaroo prerequisites. For Google GKE, containerd is enabled by default and so does not need to be specified during the setup procedure: (https://cloud.google.com/kubernetes-engine/docs/concepts/using-containerd)[https://cloud.google.com/kubernetes-engine/docs/concepts/using-containerd].

gcloud container clusters \
create $WALLAROO_CLUSTER \
--region $WALLAROO_GCP_REGION \
--node-locations $WALLAROO_NODE_LOCATION \
--machine-type $WALLAROO_GCP_MACHINE_TYPE \
--num-nodes $WALLAROO_CLUSTER_SIZE \
--network $WALLAROO_GCP_NETWORK_NAME \
--create-subnetwork name=$WALLAROO_GCP_SUBNETWORK_NAME \
--enable-ip-alias \
--cluster-version=1.23

The command can take several minutes to complete based on the size and complexity of the clusters. Verify the process is complete with the clusters list command:

gcloud container clusters list

Retrieving Kubernetes Credentials

Once the GCP cluster is complete, the Kubernetes credentials can be installed into the local administrative system with the the gcloud container clusters get-credentials (https://cloud.google.com/sdk/gcloud/reference/container/clusters/get-credentials) command:

gcloud container clusters \
get-credentials $WALLAROO_CLUSTER \
--region $WALLAROO_GCP_REGION

To verify the Kubernetes credentials for your cluster have been installed locally, use the kubectl get nodes command. This will display the nodes in the cluster as demonstrated below:

kubectl get nodes

NAME                                         STATUS   ROLES    AGE   VERSION
gke-wallaroo-ce-default-pool-863f02db-7xd4   Ready    <none>   39m   v1.21.6-gke.1503
gke-wallaroo-ce-default-pool-863f02db-8j2d   Ready    <none>   39m   v1.21.6-gke.1503
gke-wallaroo-ce-default-pool-863f02db-hn06   Ready    <none>   39m   v1.21.6-gke.1503
gke-wallaroo-ce-default-pool-3946eaca-4l3s   Ready    <none>   39m   v1.21.6-gke.1503

Install Wallaroo

With your environment ready, it’s time to install Wallaroo.

Troubleshooting

What does the error ‘Insufficient project quota to satisfy request: resource “CPUS_ALL_REGIONS”’ mean?

Make sure that the Compute Engine Zone and Region are properly set based on your organization’s requirements. The instructions above default to us-central1, so change that zone to install your Wallaroo instance in the correct location.

In the case of the script, this would mean changing the region and location from:

WALLAROO_GCP_REGION=us-central1
WALLAROO_NODE_LOCATION=us-central1-f

WALLAROO_GCP_REGION={Your Region}
WALLAROO_NODE_LOCATION={Your Location}