Automated Object Storage Management Approach with Operator SDK and Custom Resource Definition

Abstract

The work is devoted to the study of automation tools for managing stateful applications in the Kubernetes environment, particularly object storage systems. A review of existing management tools capable solving the set tasks is made. A comparative description of the considered tools based on review is given and a tool is selected that meets the introduced criteria: popularity, support form Kubernetes, reactivity of developed operator, additional features, and others. An approach to automatic object storage management using the Operator SDK and Custom Resource Definition is suggested. As a result of comprehensive comparative analysis of tools Kubebuilder, Juju, Metacontroller, Kudo and Operator SDK, the last one was chosen as a base of approach implementation. The architecture of the system for managing a containerized version of storage systems based on the Kubernetes platform and integrating the operator with a user monitoring system is proposed. The described approach is implemented in a software tool – an operator of the object data storage system resource. The paper describes the details of software implementation, the structure of the storage custom resource descriptor, and methods for testing the end system. As a result, an object storage management system based on the Kubernetes platform was created, which made it possible to reduce both labor costs for supporting and maintaining the system, and it’s cost by reducing dependence on hardware. Moreover, described approach corresponds to such features of modern object storages as multi-tier, erasure coding support, geo-replication, cluster topology that is quite innovative among existing automated storage management approaches on Kubernetes platforms.