Introducing Couchbase Autonomous Operator 2.0 Beta

Today, we are delighted to announce the latest preview of the Couchbase Autonomous Operator (CAO) 2.0 beta. This release is a significant update to the Couchbase Autonomous Operator.

This release introduces several new enterprise-grade features with fully autonomous capabilities – security, monitoring, high-availability, and manageability. Many of our customers have been successfully running Couchbase Autonomous Operator in a production environment for the past year. Most of them engaged with us over the last 18 months to define the requirements of Couchbase Autonomous Operator 2.0. Thank you so much!!

Kubernetes at the Core with Advanced Capabilities

Couchbase Autonomous Operator 2.0 builds on features in the Kubernetes platform 1.13+ at its core. In this release, we have re-architected how we install, upgrade, and manage, including Couchbase role-based access control (RBAC) security, cross datacenter replication (XDCR) management, monitoring through Prometheus, and scheduled backups. These advancements are based on many latest innovations in Couchbase Server and the improvement of the Kubernetes ecosystem with better support for custom resources.

We hope you’ll enjoy trying it out and let us know your feedback.

What’s New in Couchbase Autonomous Operator 2.0 Beta?

New Custom Resource Model

This release introduces a new model for deploying and managing Couchbase custom resources. Previously, you would deploy a cluster using a single, monolithic CouchbaseCluster resource configuration that defined everything about a cluster (e.g., nodes, buckets, XDCR, etc.). Starting with Autonomous Operator 2.0, parts of the CouchbaseCluster resource got separated into their custom resource types, which the Autonomous Operator aggregates together using label selection.

Moving to this new model is crucial for the Autonomous Operator to be able to support future evolutions in the Kubernetes platform. You’ll find that these changes also provide immediate advantages in terms of manageability. One of the most practical benefits is that you can achieve fine-grained access control over different parts of a Couchbase deployment through the enactment of custom resource role-based access control (RBAC).

Autonomous Operator 2.0 requires that all Couchbase custom resources use the new format. Couchbase custom resources — such as CouchbaseCluster – are not backward compatible between Autonomous Operator versions 1 and 2. If you’re upgrading from Autonomous Operator 1.x, a tool (cbopconv) has been provided to convert your existing CouchbaseCluster resources to version 2.0.

User and RBAC Management

The Autonomous Operator can now directly manage the creation and authorization of Couchbase users (both local and LDAP). When combined with label selection, the new CouchbaseUser, CouchbaseGroup, and CouchbaseRoleBinding resources allow a great deal of flexibility in how the Autonomous Operator can manage users in multi-cluster deployments.

Support for LDAP and RBAC is available starting with Couchbase Server 6.5.

Backup Management

Backup is one of the most mundane and repetitive activities for a database administrator. However, it is an equally important task that cannot be ignored.

Autonomous Operator 2.0 users of Couchbase will have a completely seamless automated/scheduled backup experience with all the enterprise-grade functionality provided by Couchbase Server cbbackupmgr. This also includes the ability to restore a backup to the Couchbase cluster using the CouchbaseBackupRestore resources definition.

Prometheus Metrics Collection

Proactive monitoring and alerting is essential to managing a healthy Couchbase environment. While the Couchbase Web Console provides detailed statistics and alerting functionality, it is intended to be a realtime dashboard and does not tie into many of the other things a system operator may need to monitor. Integration with external monitoring systems such as Prometheus is required for two primary purposes: proactive alerting and real-time metrics gathering across multiple Couchbase clusters.

The latest operator provides native integration with the Couchbase Prometheus Exporter for collecting and exposing Couchbase Server metrics. These exported metrics can be scraped by Prometheus and then visualized in tools like Grafana.

Certificate Authentication using Mutual TLS Support

Mutual TLS (mTLS) authentication between Couchbase Server and SDK clients are now fully supported by this release. With this mode of operation, not only do clients verify that they are talking to a trusted entity, but the Couchbase Server instance can also establish trust in the client.

XDCR Management

The Autonomous Operator can now directly manage Cross Data Center Replication (XDCR) using the new CouchbaseReplication resource.

Tutorials on Couchbase Mobile Integration

We have improved our tutorials and best practices on deploying Couchbase Sync Gateway in Kubernetes alongside Autonomous Operator managed Couchbase custom resources.

Resources:

Author

Posted by Anil Kumar, Director Product Management, Couchbase Cloud-Native Database

Anil Kumar is the Director of Product Management at Couchbase. Anil’s career spans more than 19+ years of building software products across various domains, including enterprise software and cloud services. He is a hands-on product leader responsible for Couchbase Server, Couchbase Cloud, and Kubernetes product lines, including evangelizing the product strategy and vision with customers, partners, developers, and analysts. Before joining Couchbase, Anil spent several years working at Microsoft Redmond. Anil holds a master’s degree in computer science from the University of Toronto (Canada) and a bachelor’s in information technology from Visvesvaraya Technological University (India).

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