Run Milvus in Kubernetes with Milvus Operator

This page illustrates how to start a Milvus instance in Kubernetes using Milvus Operator.

Overview

Milvus Operator is a solution that helps you deploy and manage a full Milvus service stack to target Kubernetes (K8s) clusters. The stack includes all Milvus components and relevant dependencies like etcd, Pulsar, and MinIO.

Prerequisites

• Create a K8s cluster.

• Install a StorageClass. You can check the installed StorageClass as follows.

  $ kubectl get sc
  
  NAME                  PROVISIONER                  RECLAIMPOLICY    VOLUMEBIINDINGMODE    ALLOWVOLUMEEXPANSION     AGE
  standard (default)    k8s.io/minikube-hostpath     Delete           Immediate             false 
  

• Check the hardware and software requirements before installation.

• Before installing Milvus, it is recommended to use the Milvus Sizing Tool to estimate the hardware requirements based on your data size. This helps ensure optimal performance and resource allocation for your Milvus installation.

Install Milvus Operator

Milvus Operator defines a Milvus cluster custom resources on top of Kubernetes Custom Resources. When custom resources are defined, you can use K8s APIs in a declarative way and manage the Milvus deployment stack to ensure its scalability and high availability.

You can install Milvus Operator in either of the following ways:

• With Helm
• With kubectl

Install with Helm

Run the following command to install Milvus Operator with Helm.

$ helm install milvus-operator \
  -n milvus-operator --create-namespace \
  --wait --wait-for-jobs \
  https://github.com/zilliztech/milvus-operator/releases/download/v1.3.0-rc1-hotfix/milvus-operator-1.3.0-rc1-hotfix.tgz

You will see the output similar to the following after the installation process ends.

NAME: milvus-operator
LAST DEPLOYED: Thu Jul  7 13:18:40 2022
NAMESPACE: milvus-operator
STATUS: deployed
REVISION: 1
TEST SUITE: None
NOTES:
Milvus Operator Is Starting, use `kubectl get -n milvus-operator deploy/milvus-operator` to check if its successfully installed
If Operator not started successfully, check the checker's log with `kubectl -n milvus-operator logs job/milvus-operator-checker`
Full Installation doc can be found in https://github.com/zilliztech/milvus-operator/blob/main/docs/installation/installation.md
Quick start with `kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/zilliztech/milvus-operator/main/config/samples/milvus_minimum.yaml`
More samples can be found in https://github.com/zilliztech/milvus-operator/tree/main/config/samples
CRD Documentation can be found in https://github.com/zilliztech/milvus-operator/tree/main/docs/CRD

helm upgrade milvus-operator \
  -n milvus-operator --create-namespace \
  --wait --wait-for-jobs \
  https://github.com/zilliztech/milvus-operator/releases/download/v1.3.0-rc1-hotfix/milvus-operator-1.3.0-rc1-hotfix.tgz

Install with kubectl

Run the following command to install Milvus Operator with kubectl.

$ kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/zilliztech/milvus-operator/main/deploy/manifests/deployment.yaml

You will see the output similar to the following after the installation process ends.

namespace/milvus-operator created
customresourcedefinition.apiextensions.k8s.io/milvusclusters.milvus.io created
serviceaccount/milvus-operator-controller-manager created
role.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/milvus-operator-leader-election-role created
clusterrole.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/milvus-operator-manager-role created
clusterrole.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/milvus-operator-metrics-reader created
clusterrole.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/milvus-operator-proxy-role created
rolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/milvus-operator-leader-election-rolebinding created
clusterrolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/milvus-operator-manager-rolebinding created
clusterrolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/milvus-operator-proxy-rolebinding created
configmap/milvus-operator-manager-config created
service/milvus-operator-controller-manager-metrics-service created
service/milvus-operator-webhook-service created
deployment.apps/milvus-operator-controller-manager created

You can check if the Milvus Operator pod is running as follows:

$ kubectl get pods -n milvus-operator

NAME                               READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
milvus-operator-5fd77b87dc-msrk4   1/1     Running   0          46s

Deploy Milvus

1. Deploy a Milvus cluster

Once the Milvus Operator pod is running, you can deploy a Milvus cluster as follows.

$ kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/zilliztech/milvus-operator/main/config/samples/milvus_cluster_default.yaml

The command above deploys a Milvus cluster with its components and dependencies in separate pods using default configurations. To customize these settings, we recommend you use the Milvus Sizing Tool to adjust the configurations based on your actual data size and then download the corresponding YAML file. To learn more about configuration parameters, refer to Milvus System Configurations Checklist.

2. Check Milvus cluster status

Run the following command to check Milvus cluster status

$ kubectl get milvus my-release -o yaml

Once your Milvus cluster is ready, the output of the above command should be similar to the following. If the status.status field stays Unhealthy, your Milvus cluster is still under creation.

apiVersion: milvus.io/v1alpha1
kind: Milvus
metadata:
...
status:
  conditions:
  - lastTransitionTime: "2021-11-02T05:59:41Z"
    reason: StorageReady
    status: "True"
    type: StorageReady
  - lastTransitionTime: "2021-11-02T06:06:23Z"
    message: Pulsar is ready
    reason: PulsarReady
    status: "True"
    type: PulsarReady
  - lastTransitionTime: "2021-11-02T05:59:41Z"
    message: Etcd endpoints is healthy
    reason: EtcdReady
    status: "True"
    type: EtcdReady
  - lastTransitionTime: "2021-11-02T06:12:36Z"
    message: All Milvus components are healthy
    reason: MilvusClusterHealthy
    status: "True"
    type: MilvusReady
  endpoint: my-release-milvus.default:19530
  status: Healthy

Milvus Operator creates Milvus dependencies, such as etcd, Pulsar, and MinIO, and then Milvus components, such as proxy, coordinators, and nodes.

Once your Milvus cluster is ready, the status of all pods in the Milvus cluster should be similar to the following.

$ kubectl get pods

NAME                                             READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
my-release-etcd-0                                1/1     Running   0          2m36s
my-release-etcd-1                                1/1     Running   0          2m36s
my-release-etcd-2                                1/1     Running   0          2m36s
my-release-milvus-datanode-58955c65b9-j4j7s      1/1     Running   0          92s
my-release-milvus-mixcoord-686f84968f-jcv5d      1/1     Running   0          92s
my-release-milvus-proxy-646f48fc7c-4lctb         1/1     Running   0          92s
my-release-milvus-querynode-0-d89d7677b-x7j7q    1/1     Running   0          91s
my-release-milvus-streamingnode-556bdcc87c-2qwcc 1/1     Running   0          92s
my-release-minio-0                               1/1     Running   0          2m36s
my-release-minio-1                               1/1     Running   0          2m36s
my-release-minio-2                               1/1     Running   0          2m35s
my-release-minio-3                               1/1     Running   0          2m35s

3. Forward a local port to Milvus

Run the following command to get the port at which your Milvus cluster serves.

$ kubectl get pod my-release-milvus-proxy-84f67cdb7f-pg6wf --template
='{{(index (index .spec.containers 0).ports 0).containerPort}}{{"\n"}}'
19530

The output shows that the Milvus instance serves at the default port 19530.

Then, run the following command to forward a local port to the port at which Milvus serves.

$ kubectl port-forward service/my-release-milvus 27017:19530
Forwarding from 127.0.0.1:27017 -> 19530

Optionally, you can use :19530 instead of 27017:19530 in the above command to let kubectl allocate a local port for you so that you don’t have to manage port conflicts.

By default, kubectl’s port-forwarding only listens on localhost. Use the address flag if you want Milvus to listen on the selected or all IP addresses. The following command makes port-forward listen on all IP addresses on the host machine.

$ kubectl port-forward --address 0.0.0.0 service/my-release-milvus 27017:19530
Forwarding from 0.0.0.0:27017 -> 19530

Now, you can connect to Milvus using the forwarded port.

Access Milvus WebUI

Milvus ships with a built-in GUI tool called Milvus WebUI that you can access through your browser. Milvus Web UI enhances system observability with a simple and intuitive interface. You can use Milvus Web UI to observe the statistics and metrics of the components and dependencies of Milvus, check database and collection details, and list detailed Milvus configurations. For details about Milvus Web UI, see Milvus WebUI

To enable the access to the Milvus Web UI, you need to port-forward the proxy pod to a local port.

$ kubectl port-forward --address 0.0.0.0 service/my-release-milvus 27018:9091
Forwarding from 0.0.0.0:27018 -> 9091

Now, you can access Milvus Web UI at http://localhost:27018.

Uninstall Milvus

Run the following command to uninstall the Milvus cluster.

$ kubectl delete milvus my-release

Uninstall Milvus Operator

There are also two ways to uninstall Milvus Operator.

• Uninstall with Helm
• Uninstall with kubectl

Uninstall with Helm

$ helm -n milvus-operator uninstall milvus-operator

Uninstall with kubectl

$ kubectl delete -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/zilliztech/milvus-operator/v1.3.0-rc1-hotfix/deploy/manifests/deployment.yaml

What’s next

Having installed Milvus in Docker, you can:

• Check Hello Milvus to see what Milvus can do.

• Learn the basic operations of Milvus:

  • Manage Databases
  • Manage Collections
  • Manage Partitions
  • Insert, Upsert & Delete
  • Single-Vector Search
  • Hybrid Search

• Upgrade Milvus Using Helm Chart.

• Scale your Milvus cluster.

• Deploy your Milvu cluster on clouds:

  • Amazon EKS
  • Google Cloud
  • Microsoft Azure

• Explore Milvus WebUI, an intuitive web interface for Milvus observability and management.

• Explore Milvus Backup, an open-source tool for Milvus data backups.

• Explore Birdwatcher, an open-source tool for debugging Milvus and dynamic configuration updates.

• Explore Attu, an open-source GUI tool for intuitive Milvus management.

• Monitor Milvus with Prometheus.