Stopping and Starting the Containerized Masking Engine

Overview

This article describes how to stop and start the Containerized Delphix Masking Engine. For information on performing the tasks for the Virtual Machine Masking Engine, please see the documentation located in the document Starting, Stopping, and Restarting the Masking Engine.

Containerized deployments are dependent on a customer created configuration file which can be named anything. For the purposes of this document, the default name of kubernetes-config.yaml will be used. Also, any command-line examples will assume that this file is in the current directory to simplify the example.

Starting the Containerized Masking Engine

Starting the engine is a simple matter of asking kubernetes to create the Pod described by the Pod configuration file. This is done with a single kubectl command.

$ kubectl create -f ./kubernetes-config.yaml

The Pod will take some time to start. The status of the Pod can be verified with another simple kubectl command.

$ kubectl get pods
NAME                READY   STATUS    RESTARTS        AGE
delphix-masking-0   3/3     Running   2 (5d14h ago)   13d

A Containerized Masking Pod consists of 3 containers. The above output demonstrates a Pod where 3/3 containers are READY. This is a Pod that is up and running and ready to accept connections.

Note

It is common for the first 2 containers of the Pod to enter a READY state very quickly and for the 3rd container to take some time to become ready. How long is dependent on a number of factors including the underlying infrastructure. (how powerful, how busy)

If the Pod STATUS indicates an error or the number of restarts is consistently climbing, that indicates that there is a problem with the Pod and debugging will need to be done to determine the problem and the appropriate resolution.

Stopping the Containerized Masking Engine

Stopping a running Pod is simple despite some confusing terminology. The kubernetes terminology for stopping a Pod is delete, but this command does not delete any of the containers or persistent volumes. It only stops the running Pod. The command to stop a running pod is of the same form as starting the Pod.

$ kubectl delete -f ./kubernetes-config.yaml

This tells kubernetes to shutdown whatever it previously started. Because the Containerized Masking Engine is a Stateful application, it has persistent storage. This persistent storage is not deleted when the Pod is shutdown.

If a Pod that was shutdown is then restarted, it will attempt to re-attach any persistent storage defined in the kubernetes-config.yaml file.

Removing Persistent Volumes / Persistent Volume Claims

If it is necessary to delete any persistent volumes (PVs) and persistent volume claims (PVCs) associated with the Pod, that will have to be done manually. It is possible to locate any PVs and PVCs that exist with some simple kubectl commands.

$ kubectl get pv
NAME                                       CAPACITY   ACCESS MODES   RECLAIM POLICY   STATUS   CLAIM                                                  STORAGECLASS        REASON   AGE
pvc-7fe1d352-de17-4132-b2a1-152f4e9cfefc   20Gi       RWX            Delete           Bound    container-registry/registry-claim                      microk8s-hostpath            183d
pvc-a7275ce3-b630-4d4c-9712-b5124358cb7f   4Gi        RWO            Delete           Bound    default/masking-persistent-storage-delphix-masking-0   microk8s-hostpath            15d
nfs-pv                                     500Mi      RWO            Retain           Bound    default/nfs-pvc                                        nfs-storage                  13d

$ kubectl get pvc
NAME                                           STATUS   VOLUME                                     CAPACITY   ACCESS MODES   STORAGECLASS        AGE
masking-persistent-storage-delphix-masking-0   Bound    pvc-a7275ce3-b630-4d4c-9712-b5124358cb7f   4Gi        RWO            microk8s-hostpath   15d
nfs-pvc                                        Bound    nfs-pv                                     500Mi      RWO            nfs-storage         13d

To completely remove a Pod (a clean slate) would require the removal of any PVs and PVCs associated with the Pod. The first step is to shutdown the Pod. Once the Pod is no longer running, removing the PVC will frequently also remove the associated PV.

Removing either the PV or PVC is a simple matter of using the appropriate kubectl command. To illustrate removing a PVC, simply take note of the name of the object. From the example output above, there is a PVC named masking-persistent-storage-delphix-masking-0. To remove it, use the following command.

$ kubectl delete pvc masking-persistent-storage-delphix-masking-0