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What is NebulaGraph Operator

Concept of NebulaGraph Operator

NebulaGraph Operator is a tool to automate the deployment, operation, and maintenance of NebulaGraph clusters on Kubernetes. Building upon the excellent scalability mechanism of Kubernetes, NebulaGraph introduced its operation and maintenance knowledge into the Kubernetes system, which makes NebulaGraph a real cloud-native graph database.

How it works

For resource types that do not exist within Kubernetes, you can register them by adding custom API objects. The common way is to use the CustomResourceDefinition.

NebulaGraph Operator abstracts the deployment management of NebulaGraph clusters as a CRD. By combining multiple built-in API objects including StatefulSet, Service, and ConfigMap, the routine management and maintenance of a NebulaGraph cluster are coded as a control loop in the Kubernetes system. When a CR instance is submitted, NebulaGraph Operator drives database clusters to the final state according to the control process.

Features of NebulaGraph Operator

The following features are already available in NebulaGraph Operator:

  • Scale clusters: NebulaGraph Operator calls NebulaGraph's native scaling interfaces in a control loop to implement the scaling logic. You can simply perform scaling operations with YAML configurations and ensure the stability of data. For more information, see Scale clusters with Kubectl or Scale clusters with Helm.
  • Cluster Upgrade: NebulaGraph Operator supports cluster upgrading from version 3.0.0 to version 3.1.x.
  • Self-Healing: NebulaGraph Operator calls interfaces provided by NebulaGraph clusters to dynamically sense cluster service status. Once an exception is detected, NebulaGraph Operator performs fault tolerance. For more information, see Self-Healing.
  • Balance Scheduling: Based on the scheduler extension interface, the scheduler provided by NebulaGraph Operator evenly distributes Pods in a NebulaGraph cluster across all nodes.

Limitations

Version limitations

NebulaGraph Operator does not support the v1.x version of NebulaGraph. NebulaGraph Operator version and the corresponding NebulaGraph version are as follows:

NebulaGraph Operator version NebulaGraph version
1.2.0 3.0.0 ~ 3.1.x
1.0.0 3.0.0 ~ 3.1.x
0.9.0 2.5.x ~ 2.6.x
0.8.0 2.5.x

Legacy version compatibility

  • The 1.x version NebulaGraph Operator is not compatible with NebulaGraph of version below v3.x.
  • Starting from NebulaGraph Operator 0.9.0, logs and data are stored separately. Using NebulaGraph Operator 0.9.0 or later versions to manage a NebulaGraph 2.5.x cluster created with Operator 0.8.0 can cause compatibility issues. You can backup the data of the NebulaGraph 2.5.x cluster and then create a 2.6.x cluster with Operator 0.9.0.

Feature limitations

The NebulaGraph Operator scaling feature is only available for the Enterprise Edition of NebulaGraph clusters and does not support scaling the Community Edition version of NebulaGraph clusters.

Release note

Release


Last update: February 19, 2024