Getting Started¶

In this getting started guide, you will install Ververica Platform, integrate it with MinIO for Universal Blob Storage, and deploy your first Apache Flink application using Ververica Platform.

Setting the Stage
- Kubernetes
- Helm
Setting Up the Playground
- Anatomy of this Playground
- Installing the Components
Creating your First Deployment
Enabling Metrics Integration
Next Steps
Cleaning Up

Setting the Stage ¶

Kubernetes ¶

Ververica Platform runs on top of Kubernetes. In order to get started locally we recommend using minikube, but any other Kubernetes Cluster (1.11+) will do, too.

Minikube relies on virtualization support by your operating system as well as a hypervisor (e.g. Virtualbox). Please check the official installation guide for details.

Minikube on Mac OS (homebrew)¶

$ brew install kubectl minikube

Minikube on Windows (Chocolatey)¶

$ choco install kubernetes-cli minikube

Minikube on Linux¶

There are packages available for most distros and package managers. Please check the kubectl installation guide as well as the minikube installation guide for details.

Spinning up a Kubernetes Cluster¶

First, you start minikube. The platform (including a small Apache Flink application) requires at least 8G of memory and 4 CPUs.

$ minikube start --memory=8G --cpus=4

If this went well, you can continue and check if all system pods are ready.

$ kubectl get pods -n kube-system

Depending on your exact version of minikube, the output should look more or less similar to

NAME                               READY   STATUS    RESTARTS  AGE
coredns-5644d7b6d9-56zhg           1/1     Running   1         2m
coredns-5644d7b6d9-fdnts           1/1     Running   1         2m
etcd-minikube                      1/1     Running   1         2m
kube-addon-manager-minikube        1/1     Running   1         2m
kube-apiserver-minikube            1/1     Running   1         2m
kube-controller-manager-minikube   1/1     Running   1         2m
kube-proxy-9w92r                   1/1     Running   1         2m
kube-scheduler-minikube            1/1     Running   1         2m
storage-provisioner                1/1     Running   2         2m

If all pods are running, you are good to go.

Helm ¶

“Helm helps you manage Kubernetes applications — Helm Charts help you define, install, and upgrade even the most complex Kubernetes application.” - helm.sh

We distribute Ververica Platform as a Helm Chart. To install Helm please follow the instructions on the official installation guide or use one of the one-liners below.

Helm on Mac OS (homebrew)¶

$ brew install helm

Helm on Windows (Chocolatey)¶

$ choco install kubernetes-helm

Helm on Linux¶

As before, there is a package available for most distros and package managers. For details check the official installation guide.

Setting Up Tiller¶

Tiller is not required for Helm 3. You can skip this step.

Helm 2 requires a server-side component called Tiller. The commands below set up Tiller in the kube-system namespace with the required permissions to install Helm charts in this Kubernetes cluster.

# create service account
$ kubectl --namespace kube-system create serviceaccount tiller

# bind service account to "cluster-admin" role
$ kubectl create clusterrolebinding tiller \
    --clusterrole cluster-admin \
    --serviceaccount=kube-system:tiller

# initialize helm with previously created service account
$ helm init --service-account tiller

Please wait until the Tiller pod becomes ready before proceeding. The command helm list should return an empty list without any errors.

This guide is based on the Ververica Platform playground repository which contains scripts and Helm values files to make for a smooth getting-started experience. Please clone the repository before continuing; all commands below are meant to be executed from the repository root directory.

$ git clone --branch release-2.1 git@github.com:ververica/ververica-platform-playground.git
$ cd ververica-platform-playground

Anatomy of this Playground ¶

For this playground, you will create two Kubernetes namespaces: vvp and vvp-jobs. vvp will host the control plane of Ververica Platform and other services, while the Apache Flink jobs managed by the platform will run in the vvp-jobs namespace.

In addition to Ververica Platform, we will set up MinIO in the vvp namespace, which will be used for artifact storage and Apache Flink checkpoints & savepoints (see Universal Blob Storage).

Installing the Components ¶

TL;DR¶

You can skip all of the installation steps outlined below by running:

$ ./setup.sh --edition community

$ ./setup.sh --edition enterprise

Kubernetes Namespaces¶

Before installing any of the components you need to create the Kubernetes namespaces vvp and vvp-jobs.

$ kubectl create namespace vvp
$ kubectl create namespace vvp-jobs

MinIO¶

Install MinIO with Helm, using the official Helm chart from the stable repository.

If you have never added the stable Helm repository, do this now:

$ helm repo add stable https://kubernetes-charts.storage.googleapis.com

Then install MinIO with:

$ helm --namespace vvp \
    install minio stable/minio \
    --values values-minio.yaml

The stable repository is already preconfigured.

$ helm install stable/minio \
    --name minio \
    --namespace vvp \
    --values values-minio.yaml

Ververica Platform¶

Then, install Ververica Platform using helm. The required configurations slightly differ based on the product edition you would like to install.

Ververica Platform Community Edition

$ helm repo add ververica https://charts.ververica.com
$ helm --namespace vvp \
    install vvp ververica/ververica-platform \
    --values values-vvp.yaml

When running the command above you will be asked to accept the Ververica Platform Community Edition license agreement. Please read it carefully and except it by setting acceptCommunityEditionLicense to true:

$ helm --namespace vvp \
    install vvp ververica/ververica-platform \
    --values values-vvp.yaml \
    --set acceptCommunityEditionLicense=true

$ helm repo add ververica https://charts.ververica.com
$ helm install ververica/ververica-platform \
    --name vvp \
    --namespace vvp \
    --values values-vvp.yaml

When running the command above you will be asked to accept the Ververica Platform Community Edition license agreement. Please read it carefully and except it by setting acceptCommunityEditionLicense to true:

$ helm install ververica/ververica-platform \
    --name vvp \
    --namespace vvp \
    --values values-vvp.yaml \
    --set acceptCommunityEditionLicense=true

Before you can run Ververica Platform Stream Edition, you must add your license to a values file values-license.yaml under vvp.license.data. If you do not have a license yet, you can request a 30 day free trial license from the Ververica website.

The values-license.yaml file should look similar to:

### Provide Ververica Platform License (free trial: ververica.com/enterprise-trial)
vvp:
  license:
    data: {
      "kind": "License",
      "apiVersion": "v1",
      "metadata": {
        "id": "53b8cf22-1af2-44bd-a7ba-7420418f6572",
        "createdAt": "2020-02-21T12:56:52.407899Z",
        "annotations": {
          "signature": "<omitted>",
          "licenseSpec": "ewogICJsaWNlbnNlSWQiIDogIjUzYjhjZjIyLTFhZjItNDRiZC1hN2JhLTc0MjA0MThmNjU3MiIsCiAgImxpY2Vuc2VkVG8iIDogInRlc3QiLAogICJleHBpcmVzIiA6ICIyMDIwLTAzLTIyVDEyOjU2OjUxLjg3MzU1M1oiLAogICJwYXJhbXMiIDogewogICAgInF1b3RhLnR5cGUiIDogIlVOTElNSVRFRCIsCiAgICAidHJpYWwiIDogInRydWUiCiAgfQp9"
        }
      },
      "spec": {
        "licenseId": "53b8cf22-1af2-44bd-a7ba-7420418f6572",
        "licensedTo": "My Company Inc.",
        "expires": "2020-03-22T12:56:51.873553Z",
        "params": {
          "quota.type": "UNLIMITED",
          "trial": "true"
        }
      }
    }

$ helm repo add ververica https://charts.ververica.com
$ helm install vvp ververica/ververica-platform \
  --namespace vvp \
  --values values-vvp.yaml \
  --values values-license.yaml

$ helm repo add ververica https://charts.ververica.com
$ helm install ververica/ververica-platform \
  --name vvp \
  --namespace vvp \
  --values values-vvp.yaml \
  --values values-license.yaml

In order to access the web user interface or the REST API set up a port forward to the Ververica Platform Kubernetes service:

$ kubectl --namespace vvp port-forward services/vvp-ververica-platform 8080:80

The web interface and API are both now available under localhost:8080. The UI will show that you do not have any Deployments yet.

Creating your First Deployment ¶

Deployments are the core resource to manage Apache Flink jobs within Ververica Platform. A Deployment specifies the desired state of an application and its configuration. At the same time, Ververica Platform tracks and reports each Deployment’s status and derives other resources from it. Whenever the Deployment specification is modified, Ververica Platform will ensure the running application will eventually reflect this change.

Before you create your first Deployment you need to create a Deployment Target. A Deployment Target links a Deployment to a Kubernetes namespace, which your Apache Flink applications will be deployed into. In this case you can use the vvp-jobs namespace, that we created earlier.

Choose Deployment Targets in the left side-bar and click Add Deployment Target. Give it the name vvp-jobs and point it to the vvp-jobs namespace.

POST vvp-resources/deployment_target.yaml to Ververica Platform REST API to create the Deployment Target:

$ curl localhost:8080/api/v1/namespaces/default/deployment-targets \
    -H "Content-Type: application/yaml" \
    -H "Accept: application/yaml" \
    --data-binary @vvp-resources/deployment_target.yaml

Now, you can create your first Deployment.

Choose + Create Deployment in the left sidebar. For the first Deployment we recommend to use the Standard view.

Name: provide a name such as Top Speed Windowing
Deployment Target: select the Deployment Target that you just created.
Parallelism: set the parallelism to 1
Jar URI: provide a URI to the Jar containing your Flink program. There are two ways to do this.

Either you switch to the Artifacts screen and upload your artifact directly to the platform, or you point Ververica Platform to an externally stored artifact via http(s).

Note

If you do not have an artifact to upload, you can use the Top Speed Windowing examples which the Flink community uploads to Maven Central for each release:

https://repo1.maven.org/maven2/org/apache/flink/flink-examples-streaming_2.12/1.10.2/flink-examples-streaming_2.12-1.10.2-TopSpeedWindowing.jar

Finally, you click Create Deployment to start your Apache Flink® application.

Replace the value of the spec.deploymentTargetId in vvp-resources/deployment.yaml by the value of the metadata.id field of the Deployment Target that you just created. You can use the following GET request to get a list of all Deployment Targets:

$ curl localhost:8080/api/v1/namespaces/default/deployment-targets \
    -H "Accept: application/yaml"

Afterwards, you can POST vvp-resources/deployment.yaml to Ververica Platform REST API to create the Deployment:

$ curl localhost:8080/api/v1/namespaces/default/deployments \
    -H "Content-Type: application/yaml" \
    -H "Accept: application/yaml" \
    --data-binary @vvp-resources/deployment.yaml

Ververica Platform will now go ahead and create a highly available Flink cluster, which runs your Flink application in vvp-jobs. Checkpointing and Savepoints, as well as Flink master failover, have automatically been configured by the platform.

Once the Deployment has reached the RUNNING state you can also checkout the Flink UI.

One of the core features of Ververica Platform is application lifecycle management for stateful stream processing applications. As part of this, Ververica Platform takes care of migrating your distributed state consistently when you make changes to your application. For example, you can change your Deployment by changing the parallelism, i.e. rescaling your Flink job.

In the Deployment overview page, click Configure Deployment, change the parallelism to 2, and click Apply Changes.

Change the value of spec.template.parallelism in vvp-resources/deployment.yaml to 2. Then PATCH the existing Deployment with the changed resource. For this, you need the metadata.id of your Deployment. You can use the following GET request to list all Deployments:

$ curl localhost:8080/api/v1/namespaces/default/deployments \
    -H "Accept: application/yaml"

Afterwards, you can PATCH your Deployment with the modified version of vvp-resources/deployment.yaml to scale up the Deployment.

$ curl localhost:8080/api/v1/namespaces/default/deployments/{deploymentId} \
    -X PATCH \
    -H "Content-Type: application/yaml" \
    -H "Accept: application/yaml" \
    --data-binary @vvp-resources/deployment.yaml

Under the hood, Ververica Platform now performs an application upgrade according to the configured Upgrade and Restore Strategy. For your Deployment, these default to STATEFUL and LATEST_STATE and Ververica Platform has triggered a graceful shutdown of your Flink application while taking a consistent snapshot of its state via a savepoint. You can see a list of all past savepoints and retained checkpoints for this Deployment in the Snapshots tab. It then restarts your application from the latest snapshot, which is the one taken during shutdown.

Enabling Metrics Integration ¶

Ververica Platform can be integrated with metrics collection and visualization systems to help monitor and debug your Flink applications.

The setup.sh script included in the playground repository accepts a flag --with-metrics which will additionally install Prometheus, a metrics collection and storage system, and Grafana, a time series visualization web application, to demonstrate this kind of integration.

This setup uses Global Deployment Defaults to ensure each Flink job is configured to use the built-in Prometheus metrics reporter and that each Kubernetes Pod running Flink gets an annotation that makes it discoverable by the Prometheus server.

After installing the platform using with ./setup.sh --with-metrics, run the following command to port-forward Grafana:

$ kubectl --namespace vvp port-forward services/grafana 3000:80

Note

If you already installed the platform without metrics, you must first run ./teardown.sh.

Then, when viewing one of your Deployments in the web UI, click the “Metrics” button to be linked to a sample monitoring dashboard in Grafana for that Deployment. It may take a few minutes for metrics to appear.

To understand this setup, check out the following files:

values-prometheus.yaml: Configuration for the Prometheus Helm chart. This example uses the default configuration except for disabling components we don’t need.
values-grafana.yaml: Configuration for the Grafana Helm chart. A datasource and dashboard are preconfigured, and auth is disabled to make for a convenient demonstration.
values-vvp-with-metrics.yaml: See the globalDeploymentDefaults section for how the Prometheus metrics reporter and Pod annotations are automatically configured for all Deployments, and see ui.linkTemplates.metrics for how the “Metrics” button in the web UI is connected to Grafana.

Next Steps ¶

Now that you have a Ververica Platform instance and your first Deployment up and running, there are multiple areas you can look into to learn more about the platform.

Have a look at the Advanced tab for configuring Deployments and learn more about Apache Flink Deployments and how to manage their lifecycle
Take a deep-dive into administration and customization, e.g. around logging and metrics, deployment defaults or access control
Have a look at how to manage artifacts.

Cleaning Up ¶

Run the script ./teardown.sh to clean up all applications deployed with Helm created in this tutorial and delete the namespaces created in the first step.

Alternately, do this manually with the following commands:

$ kubectl delete namespace vvp vvp-jobs

$ helm delete --purge vvp
$ helm delete --purge minio

# If installed with --with-metrics
$ helm delete --purge prometheus
$ helm delete --purge grafana

$ kubectl delete namespace vvp vvp-jobs