Apache Pulsar Helm Chart

This project provides Helm Charts for installing Apache Pulsar on Kubernetes.

Read Deploying Pulsar on Kubernetes for more details.

⚠️ This helm chart is updated outside of the regular Pulsar release cycle and might lag behind a bit. It only supports basic Kubernetes features now. Currently, it can be used as no more than a template and starting point for a Kubernetes deployment. In many cases, it would require some customizations.

Important Security Advisory for Helm Chart Usage

Notice of Default Configuration

This Helm chart's default configuration DOES NOT meet production security requirements. Users MUST review and customize security settings for their specific environment.

IMPORTANT: This Helm chart provides a starting point for Pulsar deployments but requires significant security customization before use in production environments. We strongly recommend implementing:

1. Authentication and authorization for all components
2. TLS encryption for all communication channels
3. Proper network isolation and access controls
4. Regular security updates and vulnerability assessments

As an open source project, we welcome contributions to improve security features. Please consider submitting pull requests to address security gaps or enhance existing security implementations.

Pulsar Proxy Security Considerations

As per the Pulsar Proxy documentation, it is explicitly stated that the Pulsar proxy is not designed for exposure to the public internet. The design assumes that deployments will be protected by network perimeter security measures. It is crucial to understand that relying solely on the default configuration can expose your deployment to significant security vulnerabilities.

Important Change in 4.0.0 version of the Apache Pulsar Helm chart

The default service type for the Pulsar proxy has changed from LoadBalancer to ClusterIP for security reasons. This limits access to within the Kubernetes environment by default.

External Access Recommendations

If you need to expose the Pulsar Proxy outside the cluster:

1. USE INTERNAL LOAD BALANCERS ONLY

   • Set type to LoadBalancer only in secured environments with proper network controls
   • Add cloud provider-specific annotations for internal load balancers:
     • Kubernetes documentation about internal load balancers:
       • Internal load balancer
     • See cloud provider documentation:
       • AWS / EKS: AWS Load Balancer Controller / Service Annotations
       • Azure / AKS: Use an internal load balancer with Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
       • GCP / GKE: LoadBalancer service parameters
     • Examples (verify correctness for your environment):
       • AWS / EKS: service.beta.kubernetes.io/aws-load-balancer-internal: "true"
       • Azure / AKS: service.beta.kubernetes.io/azure-load-balancer-internal: "true"
       • GCP / GKE: networking.gke.io/load-balancer-type: "Internal"

2. IMPLEMENT AUTHENTICATION AND AUTHORIZATION

   • Configure all clients to authenticate properly
   • Set up appropriate authorization policies

3. USE TLS FOR ALL CONNECTIONS

   • Enable TLS for client-to-proxy connections
   • Enable TLS for proxy-to-broker connections
   • Enable TLS for all internal cluster communications
   • Note: TLS alone is NOT sufficient as a security solution. Even with TLS enabled, clusters exposed to untrusted networks remain vulnerable to denial-of-service attacks, authentication bypass attempts, and protocol-level exploits.

4. NETWORK SECURITY

   • Use private networks (VPCs)
   • Configure firewalls, security groups, and IP restrictions

5. CLIENT IP ADDRESS BASED ACCESS RESTRICTIONS

   • When using a LoadBalancer service type, restrict access to specific IP ranges by configuring proxy.service.loadBalancerSourceRanges in your values.yaml:

     proxy:
       service:
         loadBalancerSourceRanges:
           - 10.0.0.0/8     # Private network range
           - 172.16.0.0/12  # Private network range
           - 192.168.0.0/16 # Private network range

   • This feature:
     • Provides an additional defense layer by filtering traffic at the load balancer level
     • Only allows connections from specified CIDR blocks
     • Works only with LoadBalancer service type and when your cloud provider supports the loadBalancerSourceRanges parameter
   • Important: This should be implemented alongside other security measures (internal load balancer, authentication, TLS, network policies) as part of a defense-in-depth strategy, not as a standalone security solution

Alternative for External Access

As an alternative method for external access, Pulsar has support for SNI proxy routing. SNI Proxy routing is supported with proxy servers such as Apache Traffic Server, HAProxy and Nginx.

Note: This option isn't currently implemented in the Apache Pulsar Helm chart.

IMPORTANT: Pulsar binary protocol cannot be exposed outside of the Kubernetes cluster using Kubernetes Ingress. Kubernetes Ingress works for the Admin REST API and topic lookups, but clients would be connecting to the advertised listener addresses returned by the brokers and it would only work when clients can connect directly to brokers. This is not a supported secure option for exposing Pulsar to untrusted networks.

General Recommendations

• Network Perimeter Security: It is imperative to implement robust network perimeter security to safeguard your deployment. The absence of such security measures can lead to unauthorized access and potential data breaches.
• Restricted Access: For environments where security is less critical, such as certain development or testing scenarios, the use of loadBalancerSourceRanges may be employed to restrict access to specified IP addresses or ranges. This, however, should not be considered a substitute for comprehensive security measures in production environments.

User Responsibility

The user assumes full responsibility for the security and integrity of their deployment. This includes, but is not limited to, the proper configuration of security features and adherence to best practices for securing network access. The providers of this Helm chart disclaim all warranties, whether express or implied, including any warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement of third-party rights.

No Security Guarantees

The providers of this Helm chart make no guarantees regarding the security of the chart under any circumstances. It is the user's responsibility to ensure that their deployment is secure and complies with all relevant security standards and regulations.

By using this Helm chart, the user acknowledges the risks associated with its default configuration and the necessity for proper security customization. The user further agrees that the providers of the Helm chart shall not be liable for any security breaches or incidents resulting from the use of the chart.

Features

This Helm Chart includes all the components of Apache Pulsar for a complete experience.

• Pulsar core components:
  • ZooKeeper
  • Bookies
  • Brokers
  • Functions
  • Proxies
• Management & monitoring components:
  • Pulsar Manager
  • Optional PodMonitors for each component (enabled by default)
  • victoria-metrics-k8s-stack (as of 4.0.0)

It includes support for:

• Security
  • Automatically provisioned TLS certs, using Jetstack's cert-manager
    • self-signed
    • Let's Encrypt
  • TLS Encryption
    • Proxy
    • Broker
    • Toolset
    • Bookie
    • ZooKeeper
  • Authentication
    • JWT
    • Mutal TLS
    • Kerberos
  • Authorization
  • Non-root broker, bookkeeper, proxy, and zookeeper containers (version 2.10.0 and above)
• Storage
  • Non-persistence storage
  • Persistence Volume
  • Local Persistent Volumes
  • Tiered Storage
• Functions
  • Kubernetes Runtime
  • Process Runtime
  • Thread Runtime
• Operations
  • Independent Image Versions for all components, enabling controlled upgrades

Requirements

In order to use this chart to deploy Apache Pulsar on Kubernetes, the followings are required.

1. kubectl 1.25 or higher, compatible with your cluster (+/- 1 minor release from your cluster)
2. Helm v3 (3.12.0 or higher)
3. A Kubernetes cluster, version 1.25 or higher.

Environment setup

Before proceeding to deploying Pulsar, you need to prepare your environment.

Tools

helm and kubectl need to be installed on your computer.

Add to local Helm repository

To add this chart to your local Helm repository:

helm repo add apachepulsar https://pulsar.apache.org/charts
helm repo update

Kubernetes cluster preparation

You need a Kubernetes cluster whose version is 1.25 or higher in order to use this chart, due to the usage of certain Kubernetes features.

We provide some instructions to guide you through the preparation: http://pulsar.apache.org/docs/helm-prepare/

Deploy Pulsar to Kubernetes

1. Configure your values file. The best way to know which values are available is to read the values.yaml. A best practice is to start with an empty values file and only set the keys that differ from the default configuration.

   Anti-affinity rules for Zookeeper and Bookie components require at least one node per replica. For Kubernetes clusters with less than 3 nodes, you must disable this feature by adding this to your initial values.yaml file:

   affinity:
     anti_affinity: false

2. Install the chart:

   helm install -n <namespace> --create-namespace <release-name> -f your-values.yaml apachepulsar/pulsar

3. Observe the deployment progress

   Watching events to view progress of deployment:

   kubectl get -n <namespace> events -o wide --watch

   Watching state of deployed Kubernetes objects, updated every 2 seconds:

   watch kubectl get -n <namespace> all

   Waiting until Pulsar Proxy is available:

   kubectl wait --timeout=600s --for=condition=ready pod -n <namespace> -l component=proxy

   Watching state with k9s (https://k9scli.io/topics/install/):

   k9s -n <namespace>

4. Access the Pulsar cluster

   The default values will create a ClusterIP for the proxy you can use to interact with the cluster. To find the IP address of proxy use:

   kubectl get service -n <k8s-namespace>

For more information, please follow our detailed quick start guide.

Customize the deployment

We provide a detailed guideline for you to customize the Helm Chart for a production-ready deployment.

You can also checkout out the example values file for different deployments.

• Deploy ZooKeeper only
• Deploy a Pulsar cluster with an external configuration store
• Deploy a Pulsar cluster with local persistent volume
• Deploy a Pulsar cluster to Minikube
• Deploy a Pulsar cluster with no persistence
• Deploy a Pulsar cluster with TLS encryption
• Deploy a Pulsar cluster with JWT authentication using symmetric key
• Deploy a Pulsar cluster with JWT authentication using asymmetric key

Disabling victoria-metrics-k8s-stack components

In order to disable the victoria-metrics-k8s-stack, you can add the following to your values.yaml. Victoria Metrics components can also be disabled and enabled individually if you only need specific monitoring features. Please refer to the default values.yaml.

victoria-metrics-k8s-stack:
  enabled: false
  victoria-metrics-operator:
    enabled: false
  kube-state-metrics:
    enabled: false
  prometheus-node-exporter:
    enabled: false
  grafana:
    enabled: false

Additionally, you'll need to set each component's podMonitor property to false. This is shown in some examples and is verified in some tests.

Pulsar Manager

The Pulsar Manager can be deployed alongside the pulsar cluster instance. Depending on the given settings it uses an existing Secret within the given namespace or creates a new one, with random passwords for both, the UI and the internal database.

To forward the UI use (assumes you did not change the namespace):

kubectl port-forward $(kubectl get pods -l component=pulsar-manager -o jsonpath='{.items[0].metadata.name}') 9527:9527

And then opening the browser to http://localhost:9527

The default user is pulsar and you can find out the password with this command

kubectl get secret -l component=pulsar-manager -o=jsonpath="{.items[0].data.UI_PASSWORD}" | base64 --decode

Grafana Dashboards

The Apache Pulsar Helm Chart uses the victoria-metrics-k8s-stack Helm Chart to deploy Grafana.

There are several ways to configure Grafana dashboards. The default values.yaml comes with examples of Pulsar dashboards which get downloaded from the Apache-2.0 licensed lhotari/pulsar-grafana-dashboards OSS project by URL.

Dashboards can be configured in values.yaml or by adding ConfigMap items with the label grafana_dashboard: "1". In values.yaml, it's possible to include dashboards by URL or by grafana.com dashboard id (gnetId and revision). Please see the Grafana Helm chart documentation for importing dashboards.

You can connect to Grafana by forwarding port 3000

kubectl port-forward $(kubectl get pods -l app.kubernetes.io/name=grafana -o jsonpath='{.items[0].metadata.name}') 3000:3000

And then opening the browser to http://localhost:3000 . The default user is admin.

You can find out the password with this command

kubectl get secret -l app.kubernetes.io/name=grafana -o=jsonpath="{.items[0].data.admin-password}" | base64 --decode

Pulsar Grafana Dashboards

• The apache/pulsar GitHub repo contains some Grafana dashboards here.
• StreamNative provides Grafana Dashboards for Apache Pulsar in this GitHub repository.
• DataStax provides Grafana Dashboards for Apache Pulsar in this GitHub repository.

Note: if you have third party dashboards that you would like included in this list, please open a pull request.

Upgrading

Once your Pulsar Chart is installed, configuration changes and chart updates should be done using helm upgrade.

helm repo add apachepulsar https://pulsar.apache.org/charts
helm repo update
# If you are using the provided victoria-metrics-k8s-stack for monitoring, this installs or upgrades the required CRDs
./scripts/victoria-metrics-k8s-stack/upgrade_vm_operator_crds.sh
# get the existing values.yaml used for the most recent deployment
helm get values -n <namespace> <pulsar-release-name> > values.yaml
# upgrade the deployment
helm upgrade -n <namespace> -f values.yaml <pulsar-release-name> apachepulsar/pulsar

For more detailed information, see our Upgrading guide.

Upgrading from Helm Chart versions before 4.0.0 to 4.0.0 version and above

Pulsar Proxy service's default type has been changed from LoadBalancer to ClusterIP

Please check the section "External Access Recommendations" for guidance and also check the security advisory section. You will need to configure keys under proxy.service in your values.yaml to preserve existing functionality since the default has been changed.

kube-prometheus-stack replaced with victoria-metrics-k8s-stack

The kube-prometheus-stack version has been removed in Pulsar Helm Chart version 4.0.0 due to Prometheus incompatibility with Pulsar metrics since Pulsar 2.11.0 . Pulsar exposes metrics in a format that is partially OpenMetrics 1.0.0 text format, but isn't fully compatible. Prometheus doesn't provide proper support for OpenMetrics 1.0.0 text format, even in Prometheus version 3.2.1 where it was extensively tested before switching to Victoria Metrics in Pulsar Helm chart version 4.0.0 . Victoria Metrics is Apache 2.0 Licensed OSS and it's fully compatible with Prometheus.

Before upgrading to Pulsar Helm Chart version 4.0.0, it is recommended to disable kube-prometheus-stack in the original Helm chart version that is used:

# get the existing values.yaml used for the most recent deployment
helm get values -n <namespace> <pulsar-release-name> > values.yaml
# disable kube-prometheus-stack in the currently used version before upgrading to Pulsar Helm chart 4.0.0
helm upgrade -n <namespace> -f values.yaml --version <your-current-chart-version> --set kube-prometheus-stack.enabled=false  <pulsar-release-name> apachepulsar/pulsar

After, this you can proceed with helm upgrade.

Upgrading to Apache Pulsar 2.10.0 and above (or Helm Chart version 3.0.0 and above)

The 2.10.0+ Apache Pulsar docker image is a non-root container, by default. That complicates an upgrade to 2.10.0 because the existing files are owned by the root user but are not writable by the root group. In order to leverage this new security feature, the Bookkeeper and Zookeeper StatefulSet securityContexts are configurable in the values.yaml. They default to:

  securityContext:
    fsGroup: 0
    fsGroupChangePolicy: "OnRootMismatch"

This configuration is ideal for regular Kubernetes clusters where the UID is stable across restarts. If the process UID is subject to change (like it is in OpenShift), you'll need to set fsGroupChangePolicy: "Always".

The official docker image assumes that it is run as a member of the root group.

If you upgrade to the latest version of the helm chart before upgrading to Pulsar 2.10.0, then when you perform your first upgrade to version >= 2.10.0, you will need to set fsGroupChangePolicy: "Always" on the first upgrade and then set it back to fsGroupChangePolicy: "OnRootMismatch" on subsequent upgrades. This is because the root file won't mismatch permissions, but the RocksDB lock file will. If you have direct access to the persistent volumes, you can alternatively run chgrp -R g+w /pulsar/data before upgrading.

Here is a sample error you can expect if the RocksDB lock file is not correctly owned by the root group:

2022-05-14T03:45:06,903+0000  ERROR org.apache.bookkeeper.server.Main - Failed to build bookie server
java.io.IOException: Error open RocksDB database
    at org.apache.bookkeeper.bookie.storage.ldb.KeyValueStorageRocksDB.<init>(KeyValueStorageRocksDB.java:199) ~[org.apache.bookkeeper-bookkeeper-server-4.14.4.jar:4.14.4]
    at org.apache.bookkeeper.bookie.storage.ldb.KeyValueStorageRocksDB.<init>(KeyValueStorageRocksDB.java:88) ~[org.apache.bookkeeper-bookkeeper-server-4.14.4.jar:4.14.4]
    at org.apache.bookkeeper.bookie.storage.ldb.KeyValueStorageRocksDB.lambda$static$0(KeyValueStorageRocksDB.java:62) ~[org.apache.bookkeeper-bookkeeper-server-4.14.4.jar:4.14.4]
    at org.apache.bookkeeper.bookie.storage.ldb.LedgerMetadataIndex.<init>(LedgerMetadataIndex.java:68) ~[org.apache.bookkeeper-bookkeeper-server-4.14.4.jar:4.14.4]
    at org.apache.bookkeeper.bookie.storage.ldb.SingleDirectoryDbLedgerStorage.<init>(SingleDirectoryDbLedgerStorage.java:169) ~[org.apache.bookkeeper-bookkeeper-server-4.14.4.jar:4.14.4]
    at org.apache.bookkeeper.bookie.storage.ldb.DbLedgerStorage.newSingleDirectoryDbLedgerStorage(DbLedgerStorage.java:150) ~[org.apache.bookkeeper-bookkeeper-server-4.14.4.jar:4.14.4]
    at org.apache.bookkeeper.bookie.storage.ldb.DbLedgerStorage.initialize(DbLedgerStorage.java:129) ~[org.apache.bookkeeper-bookkeeper-server-4.14.4.jar:4.14.4]
    at org.apache.bookkeeper.bookie.Bookie.<init>(Bookie.java:818) ~[org.apache.bookkeeper-bookkeeper-server-4.14.4.jar:4.14.4]
    at org.apache.bookkeeper.proto.BookieServer.newBookie(BookieServer.java:152) ~[org.apache.bookkeeper-bookkeeper-server-4.14.4.jar:4.14.4]
    at org.apache.bookkeeper.proto.BookieServer.<init>(BookieServer.java:120) ~[org.apache.bookkeeper-bookkeeper-server-4.14.4.jar:4.14.4]
    at org.apache.bookkeeper.server.service.BookieService.<init>(BookieService.java:52) ~[org.apache.bookkeeper-bookkeeper-server-4.14.4.jar:4.14.4]
    at org.apache.bookkeeper.server.Main.buildBookieServer(Main.java:304) ~[org.apache.bookkeeper-bookkeeper-server-4.14.4.jar:4.14.4]
    at org.apache.bookkeeper.server.Main.doMain(Main.java:226) [org.apache.bookkeeper-bookkeeper-server-4.14.4.jar:4.14.4]
    at org.apache.bookkeeper.server.Main.main(Main.java:208) [org.apache.bookkeeper-bookkeeper-server-4.14.4.jar:4.14.4]
Caused by: org.rocksdb.RocksDBException: while open a file for lock: /pulsar/data/bookkeeper/ledgers/current/ledgers/LOCK: Permission denied
    at org.rocksdb.RocksDB.open(Native Method) ~[org.rocksdb-rocksdbjni-6.10.2.jar:?]
    at org.rocksdb.RocksDB.open(RocksDB.java:239) ~[org.rocksdb-rocksdbjni-6.10.2.jar:?]
    at org.apache.bookkeeper.bookie.storage.ldb.KeyValueStorageRocksDB.<init>(KeyValueStorageRocksDB.java:196) ~[org.apache.bookkeeper-bookkeeper-server-4.14.4.jar:4.14.4]
    ... 13 more

Recovering from helm upgrade error "unable to build kubernetes objects from current release manifest"

Example of the error message:

Error: UPGRADE FAILED: unable to build kubernetes objects from current release manifest:
[resource mapping not found for name: "pulsar-bookie" namespace: "pulsar" from "":
no matches for kind "PodDisruptionBudget" in version "policy/v1beta1" ensure CRDs are installed first,
resource mapping not found for name: "pulsar-broker" namespace: "pulsar" from "":
no matches for kind "PodDisruptionBudget" in version "policy/v1beta1" ensure CRDs are installed first,
resource mapping not found for name: "pulsar-zookeeper" namespace: "pulsar" from "":
no matches for kind "PodDisruptionBudget" in version "policy/v1beta1" ensure CRDs are installed first]

Helm documentation explains issues with managing releases deployed using outdated APIs when the Kubernetes cluster has been upgraded to a version where these APIs are removed. This happens regardless of whether the chart in the upgrade includes supported API versions. In this case, you can use the following workaround:

1. Install the Helm mapkubeapis plugin:

   helm plugin install https://github.com/helm/helm-mapkubeapis

2. Run the helm mapkubeapis command with the appropriate namespace and release name. In this example, we use the namespace "pulsar" and release name "pulsar":

   helm mapkubeapis --namespace pulsar pulsar

This workaround addresses the issue by updating in-place Helm release metadata that contains deprecated or removed Kubernetes APIs to a new instance with supported Kubernetes APIs and should allow for a successful Helm upgrade.

Uninstall

To uninstall the Pulsar Chart, run the following command:

helm uninstall <pulsar-release-name>

For the purposes of continuity, these charts have some Kubernetes objects that are not removed when performing helm uninstall. These items we require you to conciously remove them, as they affect re-deployment should you choose to.

• PVCs for stateful data, which you must consciously remove
  • ZooKeeper: This is your metadata.
  • BookKeeper: This is your data.
  • Prometheus: This is your metrics data, which can be safely removed.
• Secrets, if generated by our prepare release script. They contain secret keys, tokens, etc. You can use cleanup release script to remove these secrets and tokens as needed.

Troubleshooting

We've done our best to make these charts as seamless as possible, occasionally troubles do surface outside of our control. We've collected tips and tricks for troubleshooting common issues. Please examine these first before raising an issue, and feel free to add to them by raising a Pull Request!

Release Process

See RELEASE.md