Getting Started Off Platform with VMware GemFire for Kubernetes

This guide walks you through creating and testing a VMware GemFire cluster on Kubernetes using a Hello, World! client application connecting off platform

Before you start!

This guide assumes that the VMware GemFire Operator, contour and a cert-manager have been installed in your Kubernetes cluster.

In order to create a GemFire cluster, you will need a Broadcom Support Portal account, in order to pull the GemFire image from the registry.

You will also need permission to use kubectl.

Create A VMware GemFire Cluster

1. Verify that you are in the Kubernetes cluster you want to use for VMware GemFire

kubectl config current-context

2. Create a namespace for the VMware GemFire cluster (We use the creative namespace name of gemfire-cluster for this example)

kubectl create namespace gemfire-cluster

3. Create an image pull secret that will be used to pull down the VMware GemFire images needed to create the cluster

$ kubectl create secret docker-registry image-pull-secret --namespace=gemfire-cluster --docker-server=registry.tanzu.vmware.com --docker-username='BROADCOM SUPPORT EMAIL' --docker-password='BROADCOM SUPPORT ACCESS TOKEN'

Replace --namepsace=gemfire-cluster with the name of your namespace, if different.
Replace --docker-username='BROADCOM SUPPORT EMAIL' with your Broadcom Support Portal Email
Replace --docker-password='BROADCOM SUPPORT ACCESS TOKEN' with your Broadcom Support Portal Access Token

4. Create a Gateway and Gateway Class for your VMware GemFire Cluster.

 ---
 apiVersion: gateway.networking.k8s.io/v1beta1
 kind: GatewayClass
 metadata:
   name: my-contour-gateway-class
 spec:
   controllerName: projectcontour.io/gateway-controller

 ---
 apiVersion: gateway.networking.k8s.io/v1beta1
 kind: Gateway
 metadata:
   name: hello-world-cluster-gateway
 spec:
   gatewayClassName: my-contour-gateway-class
 listeners:
  - name: my-gateway-listener
    protocol: TLS
    port: 9000
    tls:
      mode: Passthrough

5. Apply the Gateway and Gateway class

kubectl apply -f GATEWAY-CRD-YAML

Replace GATEWAY-CRD-YAML with the name of the yaml file you created in Step 4.

6. Create your VMware GemFire CRD file.

Below is a simple yaml file that will create a VMware GemFire cluster named hello-world-gemfire-cluster with 1 locator and 2 servers, with TLS turned off. Save this as a YAML file in your current working directory.

apiVersion: gemfire.vmware.com/v1
kind: GemFireCluster
metadata:
  name: hello-world-gemfire-cluster
spec:
  image: registry.packages.broadcom.com/pivotal-gemfire/vmware-gemfire:9.15.12
  ingress:
    gatewayName: hello-world-cluster-gateway

For the full list of GemFire CRD configuration options and explanations check out the VMware GemFire Customer Resource Definition template.

7. Apply your VMware GemFire CRD YAML from Step 4 to create the VMware GemFire cluster

kubectl -n gemfire-cluster apply -f CLUSTER-CRD-YAML

Replace -n gemfire-cluster with the name of your namespace, if it’s different.
Replace CLUSTER-CRD-YAML with the name of the yaml file you created in Step 6.

8. If successful you should see in your terminal

 gemfirecluster.gemfire.vmware.com/hello-world-gemfire-cluster created

9. Confirm that VMware GemFire is up and ready to use

kubectl -n gemfire-cluster get GemFireClusters

Replace -n gemfire-cluster with the name of your namespace, if it’s different.

When the cluster is ready to use the output should look similar to

NAME                          LOCATORS   SERVERS   CLUSTER IMAGE                                                     OPERATOR VERSION
hello-world-gemfire-cluster   1/1        2/2       registry.packages.broadcom.com/pivotal-gemfire/vmware-gemfire:9.15.12   2.0.0-build.73

Where the NAME will be the value you have for the name entry in your CRD file from Step 4 .

10. Obtain Gateway IP Address from the Gateway that was created

kubectl get gateways -n gemfire-cluster

The output will look similar to the following:

NAME         CLASS                      ADDRESS         PROGRAMMED   AGE
 my-gateway   my-contour-gateway-class   35.192.190.183   True         41s

The address may be empty and take a few minutes to be assigned. Rerun the command until the address appears.

Run a Spring Boot for VMware GemFire app

This section will guide you through testing a Hello, World! client application, that utilizes Spring Boot for VMware GemFire.

What You’ll Need

The Hello, World! example
JDK 8, 11, or 17. JDK 17 is required to use Spring Boot 3.0 or higher.
Spring Boot 2.6 or above
Spring Boot for VMware GemFire
VMware GemFire for Kubernetes 2.0+
A Broadcom Support account

1. Download the Hello, World! Example

Clone the Hello, World! app from the examples repo.

$ git clone https://github.com/gemfire/spring-for-gemfire-examples.git

2. Edit the `gradle.properties` File

Navigate to the spring-for-gemfire-examples/hello-world directory
Open the gradle.properties
Replace the value for gemfireRepoUsername= with your Commercial Maven Repo Username
Replace the value for gemfireRepoPassword with your Commercial Maven Repo Password

3. Edit the `application.properties` File

Navigate to the spring-for-gemfire-examples/hello-world directory
Open the application.properties in src/main/resources
Uncomment the two listed properties
Replace the value for spring.data.gemfire.pool.locators: with your
VMware GemFire cluster information, for each locator (in this example we only have one locator). The information will follow the form:

[GEMFIRE-CLUSTER-NAME]-locator-[LOCATOR-NUMBER].[GEMFIRE-CLUSTER-NAME]-locator.[NAMESPACE-NAME].svc.cluster.local[10334]

For our example the value looks like this:

spring.data.gemfire.pool.locators: hello-world-gemfire-cluster-locator-0.hello-world-gemfire-cluster-locator.gemfire-cluster.svc.cluster.local[10334]

Replace the value for spring.data.gemfire.management.http.host: with your VMware GemFire cluster information. This will allow Spring Boot for VMware GemFire to push your initial cluster configuration to GemFire. The information follows a similar form as above:

[GEMFIRE-CLUSTER-NAME]-locator-[LOCATOR-NUMBER].[GEMFIRE-CLUSTER-NAME]-locator.[NAMESPACE-NAME].svc.cluster.local

For our example the value looks like this:

spring.data.gemfire.management.http.host: hello-world-gemfire-cluster-locator-0.hello-world-gemfire-cluster-locator.gemfire-cluster.svc.cluster.local

Pull down certificates from the GemFire Cluster

mkdir certs
kubectl get secret -n gemfire-cluster hello-world-gemfire-cluster-cert -o=jsonpath='{.data.password}' | base64 --decode > ./certs/password
kubectl get secret -n gemfire-cluster hello-world-gemfire-cluster-cert -o=jsonpath='{.data.keystore\.p12}' | base64 --decode > ./certs/keystore.p12
kubectl get secret -n gemfire-cluster hello-world-gemfire-cluster-cert -o=jsonpath='{.data.truststore\.p12}' | base64 --decode > ./certs/truststore.p12

Add and modify ssl configuration for the client application.properties

Replace thePassword with the string value found in password file created in the certs directory from the previous step

spring.data.gemfire.security.ssl.keystore = /absolute/file/system/path/to/keystore.jks
spring.data.gemfire.security.ssl.keystore.password = thePassword
spring.data.gemfire.security.ssl.truststore = /absolute/file/system/path/to/truststore.jks
spring.data.gemfire.security.ssl.truststore.password = thePassword

Configure a SNI Proxy Socket Factory for the Hello World Application

Add the following property to the application.properties file. The name of the bean can be replaced by a value of your choosing

 spring.data.gemfire.pool.socket-factory-bean-name=myProxySocketFactory

Create the Proxy Socket Factory Bean in the Hello World Application Now that the socket factory bean has been configured, a corresponding bean needs to be created. A simple way to do this is to modify the HelloWorldApplication.java and insert the following lines
Note the ip address will need to be modified to match the Gateway IP address found in the steps above.

@Bean
SocketFactory myProxySocketFactory() {
 return ProxySocketFactories.sni("34.71.205.43", 9000);
}

Remove unused Annotations in the Hello World Application

Remove the cluster aware annotation so that it won’t connect to a local cluster Delete the following from HelloWorldApplication.java

@EnableClusterAware  <-Remove this annotation

5. Deploy the Hello World Application

In a terminal, navigate to the hello-world directory
Build the application with ./gradlew clean bootRun

6. Access the Hello, World! Application

Now that the application is running locally, you can access the application by using your local browser. Navigate to localhost:8080

You should see something similar to this, which represents an artificial time delay simulating a database query.

key: hello

value: 2019-10-01T16:17:51.557 (this will be your current date & time)

time to look up: 3057ms (quantity of time that it took to acquire the key-value pair).

Refresh the page and you should see something similar to

key: hello

value: 2019-10-01T16:17:51.557 (this will be your current date & time)

time to look up: 6ms (quantity of time that it took to acquire the key-value pair).

Note that the time to look up has been significantly reduced. This represents the app getting the information from the cache, VMware GemFire, instead of querying the database.

7. Confirm that the Hello, World! App is connected

If you would like to confirm that your Hello World! app is connected to your VMware GemFire cluster you can connect through the VMware GemFire shell - commonly referred to as gfsh

In a terminal

Start gfsh for kubernetes

kubectl -n gemfire-cluster exec -it hello-world-gemfire-cluster-locator-0 -- gfsh

Replace -n gemfire-cluster with the name of your namespace, if it’s different.

Once you see that GFSH has started, connect to your cluster with the connect command

connect --locator=hello-world-gemfire-cluster-locator-0.hello-world-gemfire-cluster-locator.gemfire-cluster.svc.cluster.local[10334] --security-properties-file=/security/gfsecurity.properties

Once connected run the list regions command

list regions

You should see something similar to

List of regions
  ------------------
  Hello

Confirm the web page timestamp has the same value as that stored in your Hello region. Run the gfsh command

  get --key hello --region=/Hello

You should see something similar to this, where the “Value” listed in your terminal should match the “value” shown on the web page.

Response from the gfsh command

Result      : true
 Key Class   : java.lang.String
 Key         : hello
 Value Class : java.lang.String
 Value       : "2022-11-17T19:22:30.894"

Shown on the Webpage

 key: hello
 value: 2022-11-17T19:22:30.894
 time to look up: 2ms

Congratulations! You’re ready to start using VMware GemFire for Kubernetes.

Delete the Hello, World! app

To delete the Hello, World! app you will need to delete the deployment and the service.

This will remove the Hello, World! deployment, replicaset, and pod.

kubectl -n gemfire-cluster delete deployment hello-world-deployment

This will remove the Hello, World! service.

kubectl -n gemfire-cluster delete service hello-world-deployment

Delete the VMware GemFire Cluster

If you need to delete your VMware GemFire cluster, first remove the cluster

kubectl -n gemfire-cluster delete GemFireCluster hello-world-gemfire-cluster

Replace -n gemfire-cluster with your namespace if different.
Replace hello-world-gemfire-cluster with the name of your GemFire instance if different.

When the VMware GemFire cluster has been completely deleted, remove the persistent volume claims of the Kubernetes cluster. These are disk claims that Kubernetes makes on the underlying system.

kubectl -n gemfire-cluster get persistentvolumeclaims

Replace -n gemfire-cluster with your namespace if different.

To delete all the persistent volume claim listed, run the following command

kubectl delete pvc -n gemfire-cluster --all

Replace -n gemfire-cluster with your namespace if different.

Learn More

Now that you have successfully created a running VMware GemFire cluster on Kubernetes, check out some other guides.

Create an application that utilizes Spring Boot for VMware GemFire and Spring Session for session state caching.