Install Milvus Standalone with Kubernetes

This topic describes how to install Milvus standalone using Kubernetes.

Prerequisites

Check the requirements for hardware and software prior to your installation.

Create a K8s cluster using minikube

We recommend installing Milvus on K8s with minikube, a tool that allows you to run K8s locally.

1. Install minikube

See install minikube for more information.

2. Start a K8s cluster using minikube

After installing minikube, run the following command to start a K8s cluster.

$ minikube start

3. Check the K8s cluster status

Run $ kubectl cluster-info to check the status of the K8s cluster you just created. Ensure that you can access the K8s cluster via kubectl. If you have not installed kubectl locally, see Use kubectl inside minikube.

minikube has a dependency on default StorageClass when installed. Check the dependency by running the following command. Other installation methods require manual configuration of the StorageClass. See Change the Default StorageClass for more information.

$ kubectl get sc

NAME                  PROVISIONER                  RECLAIMPOLICY    VOLUMEBIINDINGMODE    ALLOWVOLUMEEXPANSION     AGE
standard (default)    k8s.io/minikube-hostpath     Delete           Immediate             false                    3m36s

4. Check the default storage class

Milvus relies on the default storage class to automatically provision volumes for data persistence. Run the following command to check storage classes:

$ kubectl get sc

The command output should be similar to the following:

NAME                   PROVISIONER                                     RECLAIMPOLICY   VOLUMEBINDINGMODE      ALLOWVOLUMEEXPANSION   AGE
local-path (default)   rancher.io/local-path                           Delete          WaitForFirstConsumer   false                  461d

Install Helm Chart for Milvus

Helm is a K8s package manager that can help you deploy Milvus quickly.

1. Add Milvus to Helm's repository.

$ helm repo add milvus https://zilliztech.github.io/milvus-helm/

helm repo add zilliztech https://zilliztech.github.io/milvus-helm
helm repo update
# upgrade existing helm release
helm upgrade my-release zilliztech/milvus

2. Update your local chart repository.

$ helm repo update

Start Milvus

Once you have installed the Helm chart, you can start Milvus on Kubernetes. In this section, we will guide you through the steps to start Milvus.

You should start Milvus with Helm by specifying the release name, the chart, and the parameters you expect to change. In this guide, we use my-release as the release name. To use a different release name, replace my-release in the following commands with the one you are using.

$ helm install my-release milvus/milvus --set cluster.enabled=false --set etcd.replicaCount=1 --set minio.mode=standalone --set pulsar.enabled=false

Check the status of the running pods.

$ kubectl get pods

After Milvus starts, the READY column displays 1/1 for all pods.

NAME                                               READY   STATUS      RESTARTS   AGE
my-release-etcd-0                                  1/1     Running     0          30s
my-release-milvus-standalone-54c4f88cb9-f84pf      1/1     Running     0          30s
my-release-minio-5564fbbddc-mz7f5                  1/1     Running     0          30s

Connect to Milvus

Verify which local port the Milvus server is listening on. Replace the pod name with your own.

$ kubectl get pod my-release-milvus-standalone-54c4f88cb9-f84pf --template='{{(index (index .spec.containers 0).ports 0).containerPort}}{{"\n"}}'

19530

Open a new terminal and run the following command to forward a local port to the port that Milvus uses. Optionally, omit the designated port and use :19530 to let kubectl allocate a local port for you so that you don't have to manage port conflicts.

$ kubectl port-forward service/my-release-milvus 27017:19530

Forwarding from 127.0.0.1:27017 -> 19530

By default, ports forwarded by kubectl only listen on localhost. Use flag address if you want Milvus server to listen on selected IP or all addresses.

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

Uninstall Milvus

Run the following command to uninstall Milvus.

$ helm uninstall my-release

Stop the K8s cluster

Stop the cluster and the minikube VM without deleting the resources you created.

$ minikube stop

Run minikube start to restart the cluster.

Delete the K8s cluster

Delete the cluster, the minikube VM, and all resources you created including persistent volumes.

$ minikube delete

What's next

Having installed Milvus, you can:

• Check Hello Milvus to run an example code with different SDKs to see what Milvus can do.

• Learn the basic operations of Milvus:

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

• Upgrade Milvus Using Helm Chart.

• 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.