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 56 CPUs in total. Please ensure that your project’s resource limits support that.

• Quick Setup Script: 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.

  Installation Flow

A typical installation of Wallaroo Enterprise follows this flow:

• Create Environment: Create the environment to install Wallaroo that meets the system prerequisites.
• Install Wallaroo: Install Wallaroo into the target environment.
• Configure DNS: Configure DNS services and the Wallaroo instance for your organization’s use.

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.

The following software or runtimes are required Wallaroo version 2023.2. Most are automatically available through the supported cloud providers.

Recommendations

• IMPORTANT NOTE

  Organizations that intend to stop and restart their Kubernetes environment on an intentional or regular basis are recommended to use a single availability zone for their nodes. This minimizes issues such as persistent volumes in different availability zones, etc.

  Organizations that intend to use Wallaroo Enterprise in a high availability cluster are encouraged to follow best practices including using separate availability zones for redundancy, etc.

Custom Configurations

Wallaroo can be configured with custom installations depending on your organization’s needs. The following options are available:

• Install Wallaroo to Specific Nodes: How to specify what nodes in a Kubernetes cluster to install Wallaroo to.
• Install Wallaroo with Minimum Services: How to install Wallaroo with reduced services to fit into a lower-resource environment.
• Taints and Tolerances Guide: How to configure Wallaroo for specific taints and tolerances so ensure that only Wallaroo services are running in specific nodes.

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 Enterprise. 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_enterprise_gcp_expandable.bash.
3. Modify the script variables listed above based on your requirements.
4. Run the script with either bash wallaroo_enterprise_gcp_expandable.bash or ./wallaroo_enterprise_gcp_expandable.bash from the same directory as the script.

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
WALLAROO_CLUSTER=wallaroo
WALLAROO_GCP_REGION=us-central1
WALLAROO_NODE_LOCATION=us-central1-f
WALLAROO_GCP_NETWORK_NAME=wallaroo-network
WALLAROO_GCP_SUBNETWORK_NAME=wallaroo-subnet-1
DEFAULT_VM_SIZE=n2-standard-8
POSTGRES_VM_SIZE=n2-standard-8
ENGINELB_VM_SIZE=c2-standard-8
ENGINE_VM_SIZE=c2-standard-8

Manual Setup Guide

The following steps are guidelines to assist new users in setting up their GCP environment for Wallaroo. The variables used in the commands are as listed in Standard Setup Variables. Feel free to replace these with ones that match your needs.

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

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

Retrieve the Current Supported Kubernetes Version

GCP supports different version of Kubernetes as detailed in their GKE versioning and support Guide. The script below sets the version of Kubernetes to use for the cluster based on the most current Regular channels.

Verify that the version of Wallaroo matches the GCP Prerequisites above.

CLUSTER_VERSION=$(gcloud container get-server-config \
    --flatten="channels" \
    --filter="channels.channel=REGULAR" \
    --format="value(channels.defaultVersion)")

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.

The following is a recommended format, replacing the {} listed variables based on your setup. For Google GKE containerd is enabled by default.

gcloud container clusters \
create $WALLAROO_CLUSTER \
--region $WALLAROO_GCP_REGION \
--node-locations $WALLAROO_NODE_LOCATION \
--machine-type $DEFAULT_VM_SIZE \
--network $WALLAROO_GCP_NETWORK_NAME \
--create-subnetwork name=$WALLAROO_GCP_SUBNETWORK_NAME \
--enable-ip-alias \
--cluster-version=$CLUSTER_VERSION

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

Wallaroo Enterprise Nodepools

The following static nodepools can be set based on your organizations requirements. Adjust the settings or names based on your requirements.

gcloud container node-pools create postgres \
--cluster=$WALLAROO_CLUSTER \
--machine-type=$POSTGRES_VM_SIZE \
--num-nodes=1 \
--region $WALLAROO_GCP_REGION \
--node-taints wallaroo.ai/postgres=true:NoSchedule

The following autoscaling nodepools are used for the engine load balancers and Wallaroo engine. Again, replace names and virtual machine types based on your organizations requirements.

gcloud container node-pools create engine-lb \
--cluster=$WALLAROO_CLUSTER \
--machine-type=$ENGINELB_VM_SIZE \
--enable-autoscaling \
--num-nodes=1 \
--min-nodes=0 \
--max-nodes=3 \
--region $WALLAROO_GCP_REGION \
--node-taints wallaroo-engine-lb=true:NoSchedule,wallaroo.ai/enginelb=true:NoSchedule \
--node-labels wallaroo-node-type=engine-lb

gcloud container node-pools create engine \
--cluster=$WALLAROO_CLUSTER \
--machine-type=$ENGINE_VM_SIZE \
--enable-autoscaling \
--num-nodes=1 \
--min-nodes=0 \
--max-nodes=3 \
--region $WALLAROO_GCP_REGION \
--node-taints wallaroo.ai/engine=true:NoSchedule \
--node-labels=wallaroo-node-type=engine

Retrieving Kubernetes Credentials

Once the GCP cluster is complete, the Kubernetes credentials can be installed into the local administrative system with 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-k8s-test-default-pool-ec79fdd6-7rg3   Ready    <none>   18m   v1.25.8-gke.500
gke-wallaroo-k8s-test-default-pool-ec79fdd6-9clq   Ready    <none>   18m   v1.25.8-gke.500
gke-wallaroo-k8s-test-default-pool-ec79fdd6-pd4w   Ready    <none>   18m   v1.25.8-gke.500
gke-wallaroo-k8s-test-postgres-6e8fe176-s1xr       Ready    <none>   17m   v1.25.8-gke.500

Install Wallaroo

With the environment prepared, Wallaroo can now be installed.

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.