Category: Kubernetes

GKE version: 1.20.12-gke.1500
Helm Chart version: 1.8.0

In pursuit of Elasticsearch knowledge, I attempted to install OpenSearch on a GKE cluster. Following the instructions in https://opensearch.org/docs/latest/opensearch/install/helm/ the pods crashed.

NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE
opensearch-cluster-master-1 0/1 CrashLoopBackOff 1 13s
opensearch-cluster-master-0 0/1 CrashLoopBackOff 1 13s


Looking at the logs from the pod:

[1]: max virtual memory areas vm.max_map_count [65530] is too low, increase to at least [262144]


Looking at values.yml I tried to add:

sysctl:
  enabled: false
sysctlVmMaxMapCount: 262144

But I was greeted with the following when I described the pods:

Events:
Type Reason Age From Message
---- ------ ---- ---- -------
Warning SysctlForbidden 1s kubelet forbidden sysctl: "vm.max_map_count" not whitelisted


Since I am using terraform, I looked at the documentation and found that the vm.max_map_count parameter is not supported by “linux_node_config parameter” in the “google_container_cluster” resource.

Searching through the Internet, I found this excellent post: A Guide to Deploy Elasticsearch Cluster on Google Kubernetes Engine but my init container still failed, it wasn’t able to change the vm.max_map_count value.

sysctl: error setting key 'vm.max_map_count': Permission denied


So I tried adding “runAsUser: 0” so that it runs as root and it worked. Final block in values.yml for my init containers (specifically to deal with the sysctl issue) is below:

extraInitContainers:
  - name: increase-the-vm-max-map-count
    image: busybox
    command:
    - sysctl
    - -w
    - vm.max_map_count=262144
    securityContext:
      privileged: true
      runAsUser: 0
  - name: increase-the-ulimit
    image: busybox
    command:
    - sh
    - -c
    - ulimit -n 65536
    securityContext:
      privileged: true
      runAsUser: 0


helm upgrade opensearch -n opensearch -f values.yml opensearch/opensearch --version 1.8.0


All is well

NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE
opensearch-cluster-master-0 1/1 Running 0 12m
opensearch-cluster-master-1 1/1 Running 0 12m
opensearch-cluster-master-2 1/1 Running 0 12m