bb-dist-noti-operator

This Kubernetes operator automatically manages node roles (leader/follower) for applications running as StatefulSets by monitoring their leader status via gRPC. It simplifies the process of identifying and tracking leader and follower nodes in distributed systems within Kubernetes.

Description

The bb-dist-noti-operator is specifically designed to work in conjunction with the bb-dist-noti application (and similar distributed systems) to enhance routing and management within Kubernetes. bb-dist-noti and comparable applications often utilize a leader-follower architecture. This operator automates the critical task of identifying and labeling leader and follower pods within a Kubernetes StatefulSet deployment of such applications.

A key intended use case is to integrate this operator with an Nginx Ingress controller. By leveraging the node-role labels applied by the bb-dist-noti-operator, you can configure your Nginx Ingress to intelligently route incoming HTTP traffic exclusively to the follower nodes of your application.
This setup is beneficial in scenarios where follower nodes are designed to handle read requests or other types of user traffic, while the leader node is primarily responsible for write operations, coordination, or background tasks.

By automatically and dynamically managing node-role labels, the bb-dist-noti-operator simplifies the configuration and ensures the consistent and accurate routing of traffic based on the real-time leader/follower status of your distributed application. This leads to improved application availability, scalability, and maintainability by decoupling routing logic from manual pod status tracking.

Getting Started

Prerequisites

• go version v1.23.0+
• docker version 17.03+.
• kubectl version v1.11.3+.
• Access to a Kubernetes v1.11.3+ cluster.

To Deploy on the cluster

Build and push your image to the location specified by IMG:

make docker-build docker-push IMG=<some-registry>/bb-dist-noti-operator:tag

NOTE: This image ought to be published in the personal registry you specified. And it is required to have access to pull the image from the working environment. Make sure you have the proper permission to the registry if the above commands don’t work.

Install the CRDs into the cluster:

make install

Deploy the Manager to the cluster with the image specified by IMG:

make deploy IMG=<some-registry>/bb-dist-noti-operator:tag

NOTE: If you encounter RBAC errors, you may need to grant yourself cluster-admin privileges or be logged in as admin.

Create instances of your solution You can apply the samples (examples) from the config/sample:

Set localDev to false to prevent gRPC calls during local development.

kubectl apply -k config/samples/

NOTE: Ensure that the samples has default values to test it out.

To Uninstall

Delete the instances (CRs) from the cluster:

kubectl delete -k config/samples/

Delete the APIs(CRDs) from the cluster:

make uninstall

UnDeploy the controller from the cluster:

make undeploy

Project Distribution

Following the options to release and provide this solution to the users.

By providing a bundle with all YAML files

1. Build the installer for the image built and published in the registry:

make build-installer IMG=<some-registry>/bb-dist-noti-operator:tag

NOTE: The makefile target mentioned above generates an 'install.yaml' file in the dist directory. This file contains all the resources built with Kustomize, which are necessary to install this project without its dependencies.

2. Using the installer

Users can just run 'kubectl apply -f ' to install the project, i.e.:

kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/<org>/bb-dist-noti-operator/<tag or branch>/dist/install.yaml

By providing a Helm Chart

1. Build the chart using the optional helm plugin

kubebuilder edit --plugins=helm/v1-alpha

2. See that a chart was generated under 'dist/chart', and users can obtain this solution from there.

NOTE: If you change the project, you need to update the Helm Chart using the same command above to sync the latest changes. Furthermore, if you create webhooks, you need to use the above command with the '--force' flag and manually ensure that any custom configuration previously added to 'dist/chart/values.yaml' or 'dist/chart/manager/manager.yaml' is manually re-applied afterwards.

License

Copyright 2025.

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.