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bitnamicharts/nats

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By VMware

Updated 1 day ago

Bitnami Helm chart for NATS

Helm
Image
Internet of Things
Message Queues
Monitoring & Observability
0

100K+

Bitnami package for NATS

NATS is an open source, lightweight and high-performance messaging system. It is ideal for distributed systems and supports modern cloud architectures and pub-sub, request-reply and queuing models.

Overview of NATS

Trademarks: This software listing is packaged by Bitnami. The respective trademarks mentioned in the offering are owned by the respective companies, and use of them does not imply any affiliation or endorsement.

TL;DR

helm install my-release oci://registry-1.docker.io/bitnamicharts/nats

Looking to use NATS in production? Try VMware Tanzu Application Catalog, the commercial edition of the Bitnami catalog.

Introduction

This chart bootstraps a NATS deployment on a Kubernetes cluster using the Helm package manager.

Bitnami charts can be used with Kubeapps for deployment and management of Helm Charts in clusters.

Prerequisites

  • Kubernetes 1.23+
  • Helm 3.8.0+

Installing the Chart

To install the chart with the release name my-release:

helm install my-release oci://REGISTRY_NAME/REPOSITORY_NAME/nats

Note: You need to substitute the placeholders REGISTRY_NAME and REPOSITORY_NAME with a reference to your Helm chart registry and repository. For example, in the case of Bitnami, you need to use REGISTRY_NAME=registry-1.docker.io and REPOSITORY_NAME=bitnamicharts.

The command deploys NATS on the Kubernetes cluster in the default configuration. The Parameters section lists the parameters that can be configured during installation.

Tip: List all releases using helm list

Configuration and installation details

Resource requests and limits

Bitnami charts allow setting resource requests and limits for all containers inside the chart deployment. These are inside the resources value (check parameter table). Setting requests is essential for production workloads and these should be adapted to your specific use case.

To make this process easier, the chart contains the resourcesPreset values, which automatically sets the resources section according to different presets. Check these presets in the bitnami/common chart. However, in production workloads using resourcesPreset is discouraged as it may not fully adapt to your specific needs. Find more information on container resource management in the official Kubernetes documentation.

Update credentials

The Bitnami NATS chart, when upgrading, reuses the secret previously rendered by the chart or the one specified in existingSecret. To update credentials, use one of the following:

  • Run helm upgrade specifying a new password in auth.password
  • Run helm upgrade specifying a new secret in existingSecret
Backup and restore

To back up and restore Helm chart deployments on Kubernetes, you need to back up the persistent volumes from the source deployment and attach them to a new deployment using Velero, a Kubernetes backup/restore tool. Find the instructions for using Velero in this guide.

Prometheus metrics

This chart can be integrated with Prometheus by setting metrics.enabled to true. This will deploy a sidecar container with prometheus-nats-exporter in all pods and a metrics service, which can be configured under the metrics.service section. This metrics service will have the necessary annotations to be automatically scraped by Prometheus.

Prometheus requirements

It is necessary to have a working installation of Prometheus or Prometheus Operator for the integration to work. Install the Bitnami Prometheus helm chart or the Bitnami Kube Prometheus helm chart to easily have a working Prometheus in your cluster.

Integration with Prometheus Operator

The chart can deploy ServiceMonitor objects for integration with Prometheus Operator installations. To do so, set the value metrics.serviceMonitor.enabled=true. Ensure that the Prometheus Operator CustomResourceDefinitions are installed in the cluster or it will fail with the following error:

no matches for kind "ServiceMonitor" in version "monitoring.coreos.com/v1"

Install the Bitnami Kube Prometheus helm chart for having the necessary CRDs and the Prometheus Operator.

Rolling vs Immutable tags

It is strongly recommended to use immutable tags in a production environment. This ensures your deployment does not change automatically if the same tag is updated with a different image.

Bitnami will release a new chart updating its containers if a new version of the main container, significant changes, or critical vulnerabilities exist.

Add extra environment variables

In case you want to add extra environment variables (useful for advanced operations like custom init scripts), you can use the extraEnvVars property.

extraEnvVars:
  - name: LOG_LEVEL
    value: DEBUG

Alternatively, you can use a ConfigMap or a Secret with the environment variables. To do so, use the extraEnvVarsCM or the extraEnvVarsSecret values.

Use Sidecars and Init Containers

If additional containers are needed in the same pod (such as additional metrics or logging exporters), they can be defined using the sidecars config parameter.

sidecars:
- name: your-image-name
  image: your-image
  imagePullPolicy: Always
  ports:
  - name: portname
    containerPort: 1234

If these sidecars export extra ports, extra port definitions can be added using the service.extraPorts parameter (where available), as shown in the example below:

service:
  extraPorts:
  - name: extraPort
    port: 11311
    targetPort: 11311

NOTE: This Helm chart already includes sidecar containers for the Prometheus exporters (where applicable). These can be activated by adding the --enable-metrics=true parameter at deployment time. The sidecars parameter should therefore only be used for any extra sidecar containers.

If additional init containers are needed in the same pod, they can be defined using the initContainers parameter. Here is an example:

initContainers:
  - name: your-image-name
    image: your-image
    imagePullPolicy: Always
    ports:
      - name: portname
        containerPort: 1234

Learn more about sidecar containers and init containers.

Deploy extra resources

There are cases where you may want to deploy extra objects, such a ConfigMap containing your app's configuration or some extra deployment with a micro service used by your app. For covering this case, the chart allows adding the full specification of other objects using the extraDeploy parameter.

Set Pod affinity

This chart allows you to set custom Pod affinity using the affinity parameter. Find more information about Pod affinity in the Kubernetes documentation.

As an alternative, you can use of the preset configurations for pod affinity, pod anti-affinity, and node affinity available at the bitnami/common chart. To do so, set the podAffinityPreset, podAntiAffinityPreset, or nodeAffinityPreset parameters.

Parameters

Global parameters
NameDescriptionValue
global.imageRegistryGlobal Docker image registry""
global.imagePullSecretsGlobal Docker registry secret names as an array[]
global.defaultStorageClassGlobal default StorageClass for Persistent Volume(s)""
global.security.allowInsecureImagesAllows skipping image verificationfalse
global.compatibility.openshift.adaptSecurityContextAdapt the securityContext sections of the deployment to make them compatible with Openshift restricted-v2 SCC: remove runAsUser, runAsGroup and fsGroup and let the platform use their allowed default IDs. Possible values: auto (apply if the detected running cluster is Openshift), force (perform the adaptation always), disabled (do not perform adaptation)auto
Common parameters
NameDescriptionValue
kubeVersionForce target Kubernetes version (using Helm capabilities if not set)""
nameOverrideString to partially override common.names.fullname template (will maintain the release name)""
fullnameOverrideString to fully override common.names.fullname template""
commonLabelsAdd labels to all the deployed resources{}
commonAnnotationsAdd annotations to all the deployed resources{}
clusterDomainKubernetes Cluster Domaincluster.local
extraDeployArray of extra objects to deploy with the release[]
diagnosticMode.enabledEnable diagnostic mode (all probes will be disabled and the command will be overridden)false
diagnosticMode.commandCommand to override all containers in the deployment["sleep"]
diagnosticMode.argsArgs to override all containers in the deployment["infinity"]
NATS parameters
NameDescriptionValue
image.registryNATS image registryREGISTRY_NAME
image.repositoryNATS image repositoryREPOSITORY_NAME/nats
image.digestNATS image digest in the way sha256:aa.... Please note this parameter, if set, will override the tag""
image.pullPolicyNATS image pull policyIfNotPresent
image.pullSecretsNATS image pull secrets[]
image.debugEnable NATS image debug modefalse
auth.enabledSwitch to enable/disable client authenticationtrue
auth.userClient authentication usernats_client
auth.passwordClient authentication password""
auth.tokenClient authentication token""
auth.timeoutClient authentication timeout (seconds)1
auth.usersCredentialsClient authentication users credentials collection[]
auth.noAuthUserClient authentication username from auth.usersCredentials map to be used when no credentials provided""
cluster.nameCluster namenats
cluster.connectRetriesConfigure number of connect retries for implicit routes, otherwise leave blank""
cluster.auth.enabledSwitch to enable/disable cluster authenticationtrue
cluster.auth.userCluster authentication usernats_cluster
cluster.auth.passwordCluster authentication password""
jetstream.enabledSwitch to enable/disable JetStreamfalse
jetstream.maxMemoryMax memory usage for JetStream1G
debug.enabledSwitch to enable/disable debug on loggingfalse
debug.traceSwitch to enable/disable trace debug level on loggingfalse
debug.logtimeSwitch to enable/disable logtime on loggingfalse
maxConnectionsMax. number of client connections""
maxControlLineMax. protocol control line""
maxPayloadMax. payload""
writeDeadlineDuration the server can block on a socket write to a client""
natsFilenameFilename used by several NATS files (binary, configuration file, and pid file)nats-server
configurationSpecify content for NATS configuration file (generated based on other parameters otherwise)""
existingSecretThe name of an existing Secret with your custom configuration for NATS""
commandOverride default container command (useful when using custom images)[]
argsOverride default container args (useful when using custom images)[]
extraEnvVarsExtra environment variables to be set on NATS container[]
extraEnvVarsCMConfigMap with extra environment variables""
extraEnvVarsSecretSecret with extra environment variables""
NATS deployment/statefulset parameters
NameDescriptionValue
resourceTypeNATS cluster resource type under Kubernetes. Allowed values: statefulset (default) or deploymentstatefulset
replicaCountNumber of NATS nodes1
schedulerNameUse an alternate scheduler, e.g. "stork".""
priorityClassNameName of pod priority class""
updateStrategy.typeStrategyType. Can be set to RollingUpdate or OnDeleteRollingUpdate
podManagementPolicyStatefulSet pod management policyOrderedReady
containerPorts.clientNATS client container port4222
containerPorts.clusterNATS cluster container port6222
containerPorts.monitoringNATS monitoring container port8222
podSecurityContext.enabledEnabled NATS pods' Security Contexttrue
podSecurityContext.fsGroupChangePolicySet filesystem group change policyAlways
podSecurityContext.sysctlsSet kernel settings using the sysctl interface[]
podSecurityContext.supplementalGroupsSet filesystem extra groups[]
podSecurityContext.fsGroupSet NATS pod's Security Context fsGroup1001
containerSecurityContext.enabledEnabled containers' Security Contexttrue
containerSecurityContext.seLinuxOptionsSet SELinux options in container{}
containerSecurityContext.runAsUserSet containers' Security Context runAsUser1001
containerSecurityContext.runAsGroupSet containers' Security Context runAsGroup1001
`containerSecurityContext.runAsNonR

Note: the README for this chart is longer than the DockerHub length limit of 25000, so it has been trimmed. The full README can be found at https://github.com/bitnami/charts/blob/main/bitnami/nats/README.md

Docker Pull Command

docker pull bitnamicharts/nats
Bitnami