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ThingsBoard Professional Edition cluster setup with Kubernetes and Minikube guide
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ThingsBoard Professional Edition cluster setup with Kubernetes and Minikube guide

This guide will help you to setup ThingsBoard in cluster mode with Kubernetes and Minikube. For this purpose, we will use docker container images available on Docker Hub.

Prerequisites

ThingsBoard Microservices run on the Kubernetes cluster. You need to have a Kubernetes cluster, and the kubectl command-line tool must be configured to communicate with your cluster. If you don’t have Minikube installed, please follow these instructions.

Enable ingress addon

Ingress addon disabled by default in the Minikube, and available only in cluster providers. To enable ingress, please execute the following command:

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minikube addons enable ingress

Pull ThingsBoard PE images from docker hub

Run the following commands to verify that you can pull the images from the Docker hub.

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docker pull thingsboard/tb-pe-node:4.2.1.1PE
docker pull thingsboard/tb-pe-web-report:4.2.1.1PE
docker pull thingsboard/tb-pe-web-ui:4.2.1.1PE
docker pull thingsboard/tb-pe-js-executor:4.2.1.1PE
docker pull thingsboard/tb-pe-http-transport:4.2.1.1PE
docker pull thingsboard/tb-pe-mqtt-transport:4.2.1.1PE
docker pull thingsboard/tb-pe-coap-transport:4.2.1.1PE
docker pull thingsboard/tb-pe-lwm2m-transport:4.2.1.1PE
docker pull thingsboard/tb-pe-snmp-transport:4.2.1.1PE

Step 1. Review the architecture page

Starting ThingsBoard v2.2, it is possible to install ThingsBoard cluster using new microservices architecture and docker containers. See microservices architecture page for more details.

Step 2. Clone ThingsBoard PE Kubernetes scripts

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git clone -b release-4.2.1.1 https://github.com/thingsboard/thingsboard-pe-k8s.git --depth 1
cd thingsboard-pe-k8s/minikube

Step 3. Obtain your license key

We assume you have already chosen your subscription plan or decided to purchase a perpetual license. If not, please navigate to pricing page to select the best license option for your case and get your license. See How-to get pay-as-you-go subscription or How-to get perpetual license for more details.

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We will reference the license key you have obtained during this step as PUT_YOUR_LICENSE_SECRET_HERE later in this guide.

Step 4. Configure your license key

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nano tb-node.yml

and put the license secret parameter:

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# tb-node StatefulSet configuration

- name: TB_LICENSE_SECRET
  value: "PUT_YOUR_LICENSE_SECRET_HERE"

Step 5. Review the architecture page

Starting ThingsBoard v2.2, it is possible to install ThingsBoard cluster using new microservices architecture and docker containers. See microservices architecture page for more details.

Step 6. Configure Minikube

By default ingress addon is disabled in the Minikube, and available only in cluster providers. To enable ingress, please execute the following command:

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minikube addons enable ingress

Step 7. Configure ThingsBoard database

Before performing initial installation you can configure the type of database to be used with ThingsBoard. In order to set database type change the value of DATABASE variable in .env file to one of the following:

  • postgres - use PostgreSQL database;
  • hybrid - use PostgreSQL for entities database and Cassandra for timeseries database;

NOTE: According to the database type corresponding kubernetes resources will be deployed (see postgres.yml, cassandra.yml for details).

Step 8. Configure Trendz (Optional)

8.1. Pull Trendz images from docker hub

Run the following commands to verify that you can pull the images from the Docker hub.

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docker pull thingsboard/trendz:1.14.0
docker pull thingsboard/trendz-python-executor:1.14.0

8.2. Create a Trendz database in the existing RDS instance

Edit “trendz/trendz-secret.yml” and replace YOUR_RDS_ENDPOINT_URL and YOUR_RDS_PASSWORD and apply Kubernetes Job:

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kubectl apply -f ./trendz/trendz-secret.yml
kubectl apply -f ./trendz/trendz-create-db.yml

You can see logs if you run the next command:

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kubectl logs job/trendz-create-db -n thingsboard

8.3. Trendz starting

Execute the following command to run the initial setup of the database. This command will launch short-living ThingsBoard pod to provision necessary DB tables, indexes, etc

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 ./k8s-deploy-trendz.sh

After this command finish you should see the next line in the console:

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Trendz installed successfully!
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Otherwise, please check if you set the PostgreSQL URL and PostgreSQL password in the trendz-secret.yml correctly.

Step 9. Running

Execute the following command to run installation:

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./k8s-install-tb.sh --loadDemo

Where:

  • --loadDemo - optional argument. Whether to load additional demo data.

Execute the following command to deploy third-party resources:

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./k8s-deploy-thirdparty.sh

Type ‘yes’ when prompted, if you are running ThingsBoard in high-availability DEPLOYMENT_TYPE for the first time or don’t have configured Redis cluster.

Execute the following command to deploy ThingsBoard resources:

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./k8s-deploy-resources.sh

After a while when all resources will be successfully started you can open http://{your-cluster-ip} in your browser (for ex. http://192.168.99.101). You can see your cluster IP using command:

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minikube ip

You should see ThingsBoard login page.

Use the following default credentials:

  • System Administrator: sysadmin@thingsboard.org / sysadmin

If you installed DataBase with demo data (using --loadDemo flag) you can also use the following credentials:

  • Tenant Administrator: tenant@thingsboard.org / tenant
  • Customer User: customer@thingsboard.org / customer

In case of any issues you can examine service logs for errors. For example to see ThingsBoard node logs execute the following command:

1) Get the list of the running tb-node pods:

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kubectl get pods -l app=tb-node

2) Fetch logs of the tb-node pod:

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kubectl logs -f [tb-node-pod-name]

Where:

  • tb-node-pod-name - tb-node pod name obtained from the list of the running tb-node pods.

Or use kubectl get pods to see the state of all the pods. Or use kubectl get services to see the state of all the services. Or use kubectl get deployments to see the state of all the deployments. See kubectl Cheat Sheet command reference for details.

Execute the following command to delete all ThingsBoard microservices:

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./k8s-delete-resources.sh

Execute the following command to delete all third-party microservices:

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./k8s-delete-thirdparty.sh

Execute the following command to delete all resources (including database):

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./k8s-delete-all.sh

Upgrading

Upgrading to new ThingsBoard version

In case you would like to upgrade, please pull the latest changes from master branch:

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git pull origin master

Then, execute the following commands:

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./k8s-delete-resources.sh
./k8s-upgrade-tb.sh
./k8s-deploy-resources.sh

Note, that you have to upgrade versions one by one (for example 4.0.0 -> 4.0.1 -> 4.1.0 etc).

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"--fromVersion" flag is required for earlier upgrade versions (prior to 3.9.1), for example:

# upgrading to v3.9.0...
./k8s-upgrade-tb.sh --fromVersion=3.8.1

See Upgrade Instructions for valid "fromVersion" values.

Upgrading to new Trendz version (Optional)

Merge your local changes with the latest release branch from the repo you have used in the Step 1.

In case when database upgrade is needed, execute the following commands:

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 ./k8s-upgrade-trendz.sh

Note: You may optionally stop the tb-node pods while you run the upgrade of the database. This will cause downtime, but will make sure that the DB state will be consistent after the update. Most of the updates do not require the tb-nodes to be stopped.

Next steps