Solr Operator Documentation

The SolrCloud CRD

The SolrCloud CRD allows users to spin up a Solr cloud in a very configurable way. Those configuration options are laid out on this page.

Solr Options

The SolrCloud CRD gives users the ability to customize how Solr is run.

Please note that the options described below are shown using the base SolrCloud resource, not the helm chart. Most options will have the same name and path, however there are differences such as customSolrKubeOptions. If using Helm, refer to the Helm Chart documentation to see the names for the options you are looking to use. This document should still be used to see how the SolrCloud options can be used.

Solr Modules and Additional Libraries

Since v0.5.0

Solr comes packaged with modules that can be loaded optionally, known as either Solr Modules or Solr Contrib Modules. By default they are not included in the classpath of Solr, so they have to be explicitly enabled. Use the SolrCloud.spec.solrModules property to add a list of module names, not paths, and they will automatically be enabled for the solrCloud.

However, users might want to include custom code that is not an official Solr Module. In order to facilitate this, the SolrCloud.spec.additionalLibs property takes a list of paths to folders, containing jars to load in the classpath of the SolrCloud.

Data Storage

The SolrCloud CRD gives the option for users to use either persistent storage, through PVCs, or ephemeral storage, through emptyDir volumes, to store Solr data. Ephemeral and persistent storage cannot be used together, if both are provided, the persistent options take precedence. If neither is provided, ephemeral storage will be used by default.

These options can be found in SolrCloud.spec.dataStorage

Update Strategy

Since v0.2.7

The SolrCloud CRD provides users the ability to define how Pod updates should be managed, through SolrCloud.Spec.updateStrategy. This provides the following options:

Under SolrCloud.Spec.updateStrategy:

Note: Both maxPodsUnavailable and maxShardReplicasUnavailable are intOrString fields. So either an int or string can be provided for the field.

Pod Disruption Budgets

Since v0.7.0

The Solr Operator can optionally create a PodDisruptionBudget to ensure that Kubernetes does not take down more than an acceptable amount of SolrCloud nodes at a time. This behavior is controlled by the .spec.availability.podDisruptionBudget.enabled setting, which defaults to “true” but can be disabled if desired as in the snippet below:

spec:
  availability:
    podDisruptionBudget:
      enabled: false

When not disabled, the PDB’s maxUnavailable setting is populated from the maxPodsUnavailable setting in SolrCloud.Spec.updateStrategy.managed. If this option is not set, it will use the default value (25%).

Currently, the implementation does not take shard/replica topology into account, like the update strategy does. So although Kubernetes might just take down 25% of a Cloud’s nodes, that might represent all nodes that host a shard’s replicas. This is ongoing work, and hopefully something the Solr Operator can protect against in the future. See this discussion for more information.

Addressability

Since v0.2.6

The SolrCloud CRD provides users the ability to define how it is addressed, through the following options:

Under SolrCloud.Spec.solrAddressability:

Note: Unless both external.method=Ingress and external.hideNodes=false, a headless service will be used to make each Solr Node in the statefulSet addressable. If both of those criteria are met, then an individual ClusterIP Service will be created for each Solr Node/Pod.

If you are using an Ingress for external addressability, you can customize the created Ingress through SolrCloud.spec.customSolrKubeOptions.ingressOptions. Under this property, you can set custom annotations, labels and an ingressClassName.

Note: If you have no need for an Ingress or a specific hostname to address your SolrCloud cluster you can create a simple loadbalancer that can be addressed from outside the kubernetes cluster. To achieve this you can add annotations to SolrCloud.spec.customSolrKubeOptions.commonServiceOptions.annotations. Exposing the headlessService is an option as well through SolrCloud.spec.customSolrKubeOptions.headlessServiceOptions.annotations, mind that using the headless service requires a load balancing implementation in the client calling the SolrCloud api. Snippet below shows you can create an NLB on AWS:

spec:
  customSolrKubeOptions:
    commonServiceOptions:
      annotations: 
        service.beta.kubernetes.io/aws-load-balancer-type: external
        service.beta.kubernetes.io/aws-load-balancer-nlb-target-type: ip
        service.beta.kubernetes.io/aws-load-balancer-scheme: internet-facing

Backups

Solr Backups are enabled via the Solr Operator. Please refer to the SolrBackup documentation for more information on setting up a SolrCloud with backups enabled.

Zookeeper Reference

Solr Clouds require an Apache Zookeeper to connect to.

The Solr operator gives a few options.

These options are configured under spec.zookeeperRef

Chroot

Both options below come with options to specify a chroot, or a ZNode path for solr to use as it’s base “directory” in Zookeeper. Before the operator creates or updates a StatefulSet with a given chroot, it will first ensure that the given ZNode path exists and if it doesn’t the operator will create all necessary ZNodes in the path. If no chroot is given, a default of / will be used, which doesn’t require the existence check previously mentioned. If a chroot is provided without a prefix of /, the operator will add the prefix, as it is required by Zookeeper.

ZK Connection Info

This is an external/internal connection string as well as an optional chRoot to an already running Zookeeeper ensemble. If you provide an external connection string, you do not have to provide an internal one as well.

Under spec.zookeeperRef:

External ZooKeeper clusters are often configured to use ZooKeeper features (e.g. securePort) which require corresponding configuration on the client side. To support these use-cases, users may provide arbitrary system properties under spec.solrZkOpts which will be passed down to all ZooKeeper clients (Solr, zkcli.sh, etc.) managed by the operator.

ACLs

Since v0.2.7

The Solr Operator allows for users to specify ZK ACL references in their Solr Cloud CRDs. The user must specify the name of a secret that resides in the same namespace as the cloud, that contains an ACL username value and an ACL password value. This ACL must have admin permissions for the chroot given.

The ACL information can be provided through an ADMIN acl and a READ ONLY acl.

All ACL fields are required if an ACL is used.

Provided Instance

If you do not require the Solr cloud to run cross-kube cluster, and do not want to manage your own Zookeeper ensemble, the solr-operator can manage Zookeeper ensemble(s) for you.

Using the zookeeper-operator, a new Zookeeper ensemble can be spun up for each solrCloud that has this option specified.

The startup parameter zookeeper-operator must be provided on startup of the solr-operator for this parameter to be available.

To find all Provided zookeeper options, run kubectl explain solrcloud.spec.zookeeperRef.provided. Zookeeper Conf and PodOptions provided in the linked Zookeeper Operator version should be supported in the SolrCloud CRD. However, this is a manual task, so not all options might be available. If there is an option available in the ZookeeperCluster CRD that is not exposed via the SolrCloud CRD, please create a Github Issue.

Zookeeper Storage Options

Since v0.4.0

The Zookeeper Operator allows for both ephemeral and persistent storage, and the Solr Operator supports both as of v0.4.0.

spec:
  zookeeperRef:
    provided:
      ephemeral:
        emptydirvolumesource: {}
      persistence:
        reclaimPolicy: "Retain" # Either Retain or Delete
        spec: {} # PVC Spec for the Zookeeper volumes

By default, if you do not provide either ephemeral or persistence, the Solr Operator will default to the type of storage you are using for your Solr pods.

However, if you provide either object above, even if the object is empty, that storage type will be used for the created Zookeeper pods. If both ephemeral and persistence is provided, then persistence is preferred.

ACLs for Provided Ensembles

Since v0.3.0

If you want Solr to set ZK ACLs for znodes it creates in the provided ensemble, you can supply ACL credentials for an ADMIN and optionally a READ ONLY user using the following config settings:

All ACL fields are required if an ACL is used.

Warning: There is a known issue with the Zookeeper operator where it deploys pods with skipACL=yes, see: https://github.com/pravega/zookeeper-operator/issues/316. This means that even if Solr sets the ACLs on znodes, they will not be enforced by Zookeeper. If your organization requires Solr to use ZK ACLs, then you’ll need to deploy Zookeeper to Kubernetes using another approach, such as using a Helm chart.

Scaling

Since v0.8.0

spec:
  scaling:
    vacatePodsOnScaleDown: true
    populatePodsOnScaleUp: true

Please refer to the Scaling page for more information.

Override Built-in Solr Configuration Files

Since v0.2.7

The Solr operator deploys well-configured SolrCloud instances with minimal input required from human operators. As such, the operator installs various configuration files automatically, including solr.xml for node-level settings and log4j2.xml for logging. However, there may come a time when you need to override the built-in configuration files with custom settings.

In general, users can provide custom config files by providing a ConfigMap in the same namespace as the SolrCloud instance; all custom config files should be stored in the same user-provided ConfigMap under different keys. Point your SolrCloud definition to a user-provided ConfigMap using the following structure:

spec:
  ...
  customSolrKubeOptions:
    configMapOptions:
      providedConfigMap: <Custom-ConfigMap-Here>

Custom solr.xml

Solr pods load node-level configuration settings from /var/solr/data/solr.xml. This important configuration file gets created by the cp-solr-xml initContainer which bootstraps the solr.home directory on each pod before starting the main container. The default solr.xml is mounted into the cp-solr-xml initContainer from a ConfigMap named <INSTANCE>-solrcloud-configmap (where <INSTANCE> is the name of your SolrCloud instance) created by the Solr operator.

Note: The data in the default ConfigMap is not editable! Any changes to the solr.xml in the default ConfigMap created by the operator will be overwritten during the next reconcile cycle.

Many of the specific values in solr.xml can be set using Java system properties; for instance, the following setting controls the read timeout for the HTTP client used by Solr’s HttpShardHandlerFactory:

<int name="socketTimeout">${socketTimeout:600000}</int>

The ${socketTimeout:600000} syntax means pull the value from a Java system property named socketTimeout with default 600000 if not set.

You can set Java system properties using the solrOpts string in your SolrCloud definition, such as:

spec:
  solrOpts: -DsocketTimeout=300000

This same approach works for a number of settings in solrconfig.xml as well.

However, if you need to customize solr.xml beyond what can be accomplished with Java system properties, then you need to supply your own solr.xml in a ConfigMap in the same namespace where you deploy your SolrCloud instance. Provide your custom XML in the ConfigMap using solr.xml as the key as shown in the example below:

---
kind: ConfigMap
apiVersion: v1
metadata:
  name: custom-solr-xml
data:
  solr.xml: |
    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
    <solr>
      ... CUSTOM CONFIG HERE ...
    </solr>

Important: Your custom solr.xml must include <int name="hostPort">${solr.port.advertise:0}</int> as the operator relies on this element to set the port Solr pods advertise to ZooKeeper. If this element is missing, then your Solr pods will not be created.

You can get the default solr.xml from a Solr pod as a starting point for creating a custom config using kubectl cp as shown in the example below:

SOLR_POD_ID=$(kubectl get pod -l technology=solr-cloud --no-headers -o custom-columns=":metadata.name" | head -1)
kubectl cp $SOLR_POD_ID:/var/solr/data/solr.xml ./custom-solr.xml

This copies the default config from the first Solr pod found in the namespace and names it custom-solr.xml. Customize the settings in custom-solr.xml as needed and then create a ConfigMap using YAML.

Note: Using kubectl create configmap --from-file scrambles the XML formatting, so we recommend defining the configmap YAML as shown above to keep the XML formatted properly.

Point your SolrCloud instance at the custom ConfigMap using:

spec:
  customSolrKubeOptions:
    configMapOptions:
      providedConfigMap: custom-solr-xml

Note: If you set providedConfigMap, then the ConfigMap must include the solr.xml or log4j2.xml key, otherwise the SolrCloud will fail to reconcile.

Changes to Custom Config Trigger Rolling Restarts

The Solr operator stores the MD5 hash of your custom XML in the StatefulSet’s pod spec annotations (spec.template.metadata.annotations). To see the current annotations for your Solr pods, you can do:

kubectl annotate pod -l technology=solr-cloud --list=true

If the custom solr.xml changes in the user-provided ConfigMap, then the operator triggers a rolling restart of Solr pods to apply the updated configuration settings automatically.

To summarize, if you need to customize solr.xml, provide your own version in a ConfigMap and changes made to the XML in the ConfigMap are automatically applied to your Solr pods.

Custom Log Configuration

Since v0.3.0

By default, the Solr Docker image configures Solr to load its log configuration from /var/solr/log4j2.xml. If you need to fine-tune the log configuration, then you can provide a custom log4j2.xml in a ConfigMap using the same basic process as described in the previous section for customizing solr.xml. If supplied, the operator overrides the log config using the LOG4J_PROPS env var.

As with custom solr.xml, the operator can track the MD5 hash of your log4j2.xml in the pod spec annotations to trigger a rolling restart if the log config changes. However, Log4j2 supports hot reloading of log configuration using the monitorInterval attribute on the root <Configuration> element. For more information on this, see: Log4j Automatic Reconfiguration. If your custom log config has a monitorInterval set, then the operator does not watch for changes to the log config and will not trigger a rolling restart if the config changes. Kubernetes will automatically update the file on each pod’s filesystem when the data in the ConfigMap changes. Once Kubernetes updates the file, Log4j will pick up the changes and apply them without restarting the Solr pod.

If you need to customize both solr.xml and log4j2.xml then you need to supply both in the same ConfigMap using multiple keys as shown below:

---
kind: ConfigMap
apiVersion: v1
metadata:
  name: custom-solr-xml
data:
  log4j2.xml: |
    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
    <Configuration monitorInterval="30">
     ... YOUR CUSTOM LOG4J CONFIG HERE ...
    </Configuration>


  solr.xml: |
    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
    <solr>
     ... YOUR CUSTOM SOLR XML CONFIG HERE ...
    </solr>

Enable TLS Between Solr Pods

Since v0.3.0

A common approach to securing traffic to your Solr cluster is to perform TLS termination at the Ingress and leave all traffic between Solr pods un-encrypted. However, depending on how you expose Solr on your network, you may also want to encrypt traffic between Solr pods. The Solr operator provides optional configuration settings to enable TLS for encrypting traffic between Solr pods.

Enabling TLS for Solr is a straight-forward process once you have a PKCS12 keystore containing an X.509 certificate and private key; as of Java 8, PKCS12 is the default keystore format supported by the JVM.

There are three basic use cases supported by the Solr operator. First, you can use cert-manager to issue a certificate and store the resulting PKCS12 keystore in a Kubernetes TLS secret. Alternatively, you can create the TLS secret manually from a certificate obtained by some other means. In both cases, you simply point your SolrCloud CRD to the resulting TLS secret and corresponding keystore password secret. Lastly, as of v0.4.0, you can supply the path to a directory containing TLS files that are mounted by some external agent or CSI driver.

Use cert-manager to issue the certificate

cert-manager is a popular Kubernetes controller for managing TLS certificates, including renewing certificates prior to expiration. One of the primary benefits of cert-manager is it supports pluggable certificate Issuer implementations, including a self-signed Issuer for local development and an ACME compliant Issuer for working with services like Let’s Encrypt.

If you already have a TLS certificate you want to use for Solr, then you don’t need cert-manager and can skip down to I already have a TLS Certificate later in this section. If you do not have a TLS certificate, then we recommend installing cert-manager as it makes working with TLS in Kubernetes much easier.

Install cert-manager

Given its popularity, cert-manager may already be installed in your Kubernetes cluster. To check if cert-manager is already installed, do:

kubectl get crds -l app.kubernetes.io/instance=cert-manager

If installed, you should see the following cert-manager related CRDs:

certificaterequests.cert-manager.io
certificates.cert-manager.io
challenges.acme.cert-manager.io
clusterissuers.cert-manager.io
issuers.cert-manager.io
orders.acme.cert-manager.io

If not installed, use Helm to install it into the cert-manager namespace:

if ! helm repo list | grep -q "https://charts.jetstack.io"; then
  helm repo add jetstack https://charts.jetstack.io
  helm repo update
fi

kubectl create ns cert-manager
helm upgrade --install cert-manager jetstack/cert-manager \
  --namespace cert-manager \
  --version v1.1.0 \
  --set installCRDs=true

You’ll need admin privileges to install the CRDs in a shared K8s cluster, so work with your friendly Kubernetes admin to install if needed (most likely cert-manager will already be installed). Refer to the cert-manager Installation instructions for more information.

Create cert-manager Certificate

Once cert-manager is installed, you need to create an Issuer or ClusterIssuer CRD and then request a certificate using a Certificate CRD. Refer to the cert-manager docs on how to define a certificate.

Certificate Issuers are typically platform specific. For instance, on GKE, to create a Let’s Encrypt Issuer you need a service account with various cloud DNS permissions granted for DNS01 challenges to work, see: https://cert-manager.io/docs/configuration/acme/dns01/google/.

The DNS names in your certificate should match the Solr addressability settings in your SolrCloud CRD. For instance, if your SolrCloud CRD uses the following settings:

spec:
  solrAddressability:
    external:
      domainName: k8s.solr.cloud

Then your certificate needs the following domains specified:

apiVersion: cert-manager.io/v1
kind: Certificate
metadata:
  ...
spec:
  dnsNames:
  - '*.k8s.solr.cloud'
  - k8s.solr.cloud

The wildcard DNS name will cover all SolrCloud nodes such as <NS>-solrcloud-1.k8s.solr.cloud.

Also, when requesting your certificate, keep in mind that internal DNS names in Kubernetes are not valid for public certificates. For instance <svc>.<namespace>.svc.cluster.local is internal to Kubernetes and certificate issuer services like LetsEncrypt will not generate a certificate for K8s internal DNS names (you’ll get errors during certificate issuing).

Another benefit is cert-manager can create a PKCS12 keystore automatically when issuing a Certificate, which allows the Solr operator to mount the keystore directly on our Solr pods. Ensure your certificate instance requests pkcs12 keystore gets created using config similar to the following:

  keystores:
    pkcs12:
      create: true
      passwordSecretRef:
        key: password-key
        name: pkcs12-password-secret

Note: the example structure above goes in your certificate CRD YAML, not SolrCloud.

You need to create the keystore secret (e.g. pkcs12-password-secret) in the same namespace before requesting the certificate, see: https://cert-manager.io/docs/reference/api-docs/#cert-manager.io/v1.PKCS12Keystore. Although a keystore password is not required for PKCS12, cert-manager requires a password when requesting a pkcs12 keystore for your certificate. Moreover, most JVMs require a password for pkcs12 keystores, not supplying a password typically results in errors like the following:

Caused by: java.security.UnrecoverableKeyException: Get Key failed: null
	at java.base/sun.security.pkcs12.PKCS12KeyStore.engineGetKey(Unknown Source)
	at java.base/sun.security.util.KeyStoreDelegator.engineGetKey(Unknown Source)
	at java.base/java.security.KeyStore.getKey(Unknown Source)
	at java.base/sun.security.ssl.SunX509KeyManagerImpl.<init>(Unknown Source)

Consequently, the Solr operator requires you to use a non-null password for your keystore.

Here’s an example of how to use cert-manager to generate a self-signed certificate:

---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
  name: pkcs12-password-secret
data:
  password-key: SOME_PASSWORD_HERE

---
apiVersion: cert-manager.io/v1
kind: Issuer
metadata:
  name: selfsigned-issuer
spec:
  selfSigned: {}

---
apiVersion: cert-manager.io/v1
kind: Certificate
metadata:
  name: selfsigned-cert
spec:
  subject:
    organizations: ["dev"]
  dnsNames:
    - localhost
    - dev-dev-solrcloud.ing.local.domain
    - "*.ing.local.domain"
  secretName: dev-selfsigned-cert-tls
  issuerRef:
    name: selfsigned-issuer
  keystores:
    pkcs12:
      create: true
      passwordSecretRef:
        key: password-key
        name: pkcs12-password-secret

Once created, simply point the SolrCloud deployment at the TLS and keystore password secrets, e.g.

spec:
  ... other SolrCloud CRD settings ...

  solrTLS:
    keyStorePasswordSecret:
      name: pkcs12-password-secret
      key: password-key
    pkcs12Secret:
      name: selfsigned-cert
      key: keystore.p12

Note: when using self-signed certificates, you’ll have to configure HTTP client libraries to skip hostname and CA verification.

I already have a TLS Certificate

Users may bring their own cert stored in a kubernetes.io/tls secret; for this use case, cert-manager is not required. There are many ways to get a certificate, such as from the GKE managed certificate process or from a CA directly. Regardless of how you obtain a Certificate, it needs to be stored in a Kubernetes TLS secret that contains a tls.crt file (x.509 certificate with a public key and info about the issuer) and a tls.key file (the private key).

Ideally, the TLS secret will also have a pkcs12 keystore. If the supplied TLS secret does not contain a keystore.p12 key, then the Solr operator creates an initContainer on the StatefulSet to generate the keystore from the TLS secret using the following command:

openssl pkcs12 -export -in tls.crt -inkey tls.key -out keystore.p12 -passout pass:${SOLR_SSL_KEY_STORE_PASSWORD}"

The initContainer uses the main Solr image as it has openssl installed.

Configure the SolrCloud deployment to point to the user-provided keystore and TLS secrets:

spec:
  ... other SolrCloud CRD settings ...

  solrTLS:
    keyStorePasswordSecret:
      name: pkcs12-keystore-manual
      key: password-key
    pkcs12Secret:
      name: pkcs12-keystore-manual
      key: keystore.p12

Separate TrustStore

A truststore holds public keys for certificates you trust. By default, Solr pods are configured to use the keystore as the truststore. However, you may have a separate truststore you want to use for Solr TLS. As with the keystore, you need to provide a PKCS12 truststore in a secret and then configure your SolrCloud TLS settings as shown below:

spec:
  ... other SolrCloud CRD settings ...

  solrTLS:
    keyStorePasswordSecret:
      name: pkcs12-keystore-manual
      key: password-key
    pkcs12Secret:
      name: pkcs12-keystore-manual
      key: keystore.p12
    trustStorePasswordSecret:
      name: pkcs12-truststore
      key: password-key
    trustStoreSecret:
      name: pkcs12-truststore
      key: truststore.p12

Tip: if your truststore is not in PKCS12 format, use openssl to convert it.

Mounted TLS Directory

Since v0.4.0

The options discussed to this point require that all Solr pods share the same certificate and truststore. An emerging pattern in the Kubernetes ecosystem is to issue a unique certificate for each pod. Typically this operation is performed by an external agent, such as a cert-manager extension, that uses mutating webhooks to mount a unique certificate and supporting files on each pod dynamically. How the pod-specific certificates get issued is beyond the scope of the Solr operator. Under this scheme, you can use spec.solrTLS.mountedTLSDir.path to specify the path where the TLS files are mounted on the main pod. The following example illustrates how to configure a keystore and truststore in PKCS12 format using the mountedTLSDir option:

spec:
  ... other SolrCloud CRD settings ...

  solrTLS:
    clientAuth: Want
    checkPeerName: true
    verifyClientHostname: true
    mountedTLSDir:
      path: /pod-server-tls
      keystoreFile: keystore.p12
      keystorePasswordFile: keystore-password
      truststoreFile: truststore.p12

When using the mounted TLS directory option, you need to ensure each Solr pod gets restarted before the certificate expires. Solr does not support hot reloading of the keystore or truststore. Consequently, we recommend using the spec.updateStrategy.restartSchedule to restart pods before the certificate expires. Typically, with this scheme, a new certificate is issued whenever a pod is restarted.

When using the Cert Manager CSI Driver, a file is not generated for the keystore password. Instead, users can provide an annotation to manually set the password. For this use case, the solrTLS.mountedTLSDir.keystorePassword and solrTLS.mountedTLSDir.truststorePassword options are available. These take strings that are plain-text passwords for the keystore or truststore. They will be ignored when keystorePasswordFile and truststorePasswordFile are provided.

Client TLS

Since v0.4.0

Solr supports using separate client and server TLS certificates. Solr uses the client certificate in mutual TLS (mTLS) scenarios to make requests to other Solr pods. Use the spec.solrClientTLS configuration options to configure a separate client certificate. As this is an advanced option, the supplied client certificate keystore and truststore must already be in PKCS12 format. As with the server certificate loaded from spec.solrTLS.pkcs12Secret, you can have the operator restart Solr pods after the client TLS secret updates by setting spec.solrClientTLS.restartOnTLSSecretUpdate to true.

You may need to increase the timeout for the liveness / readiness probes when using mTLS with a separate client certificate, such as:

spec:
  ... other SolrCloud CRD settings ...

  customSolrKubeOptions:
    podOptions:
      livenessProbe:
        timeoutSeconds: 10
      readinessProbe:
        timeoutSeconds: 10

You may also use the spec.solrClientTLS.mountedTLSDir option to load a pod specific client certificate from a directory mounted by an external agent or CSI driver.

Ingress with TLS protected Solr

The Solr operator may create an Ingress for exposing Solr pods externally. When TLS is enabled, the operator adds the following annotation and TLS settings to the Ingress manifest, such as:

apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
  annotations:
    nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/backend-protocol: HTTPS
spec:
  rules:
    ...
  tls:
  - secretName: my-selfsigned-cert-tls

If using the mounted TLS Directory option with an Ingress, you will need to inject the ingress with TLS information as well. The Ingress TLS Termination section below shows how this can be done when using cert-manager.

Certificate Renewal and Rolling Restarts

cert-manager automatically handles certificate renewal. From the docs:

The default duration for all certificates is 90 days and the default renewal windows is 30 days. This means that certificates are considered valid for 3 months and renewal will be attempted within 1 month of expiration. https://docs.cert-manager.io/en/release-0.8/reference/certificates.html

However, this only covers updating the underlying TLS secret and mounted secrets in each Solr pod do get updated on the filesystem, see: https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/configuration/secret/#mounted-secrets-are-updated-automatically. However, the JVM only reads key and trust stores once during initialization and does not reload them if they change. Thus, we need to recycle the Solr container in each pod to pick up the updated keystore.

The operator tracks the MD5 hash of the tls.crt from the TLS secret in an annotation on the StatefulSet pod spec so that when the TLS secret changes, it will trigger a rolling restart of the affected Solr pods. The operator guards this behavior with an opt-in flag restartOnTLSSecretUpdate as some users may not want to restart Solr pods when the TLS secret holding the cert changes and may instead choose to restart the pods during a maintenance window (presumably before the certs expire).

spec:
  ... other SolrCloud CRD settings ...

  solrTLS:
    restartOnTLSSecretUpdate: true
    ...

Misc Config Settings for TLS Enabled Solr

Although not required, we recommend setting the commonServicePort and nodePortOverride to 443 instead of the default port 80 under solrAddressability to avoid confusion when working with https.

spec:
  ... other SolrCloud CRD settings ...

  solrAddressability:
    commonServicePort: 443
    external:
      nodePortOverride: 443

Prometheus Exporter

If you’re relying on a self-signed certificate (or any certificate that requires importing the CA into the Java trust store) for Solr pods, then the Prometheus Exporter will not be able to make requests for metrics. You’ll need to duplicate your TLS config from your SolrCloud CRD definition to your Prometheus exporter CRD definition as shown in the example below:

  solrReference:
    cloud:
      name: "dev"
    solrTLS:
      restartOnTLSSecretUpdate: true
      keyStorePasswordSecret:
        name: pkcs12-password-secret
        key: password-key
      pkcs12Secret:
        name: dev-selfsigned-cert-tls
        key: keystore.p12

This only applies to the SolrJ client the exporter uses to make requests to your TLS-enabled Solr pods and does not enable HTTPS for the exporter service.

Public / Private Domain Names

If your Solr pods use Kubernetes internal domain names, such as <cloud>-solrcloud-<oridinal>.<ns> or <cloud>-solrcloud-<oridinal>.<ns>.svc.cluster.local then you cannot request a certificate from a service like LetsEncrypt. You’ll receive an error like (from the cert-manager controller pod logs):

   Cannot issue for \"*.<ns>.svc.cluster.local\": Domain name does not end with a valid public suffix (TLD)"

This is policy enforced by trusted certificate authorities, see: https://www.digicert.com/kb/advisories/internal-names.htm. Intuitively, this makes sense because services like LetsEncrypt cannot determine if you own a private domain because they cannot reach it from the Internet.

Some CA’s provide TLS certificates for private domains but that topic is beyond the scope of the Solr operator. You may want to use a self-signed certificate for internal traffic and then a public certificate for your Ingress. Alternatively, you can choose to expose Solr pods with an external name using SolrCloud solrAddressability settings:

kind: SolrCloud
metadata:
  name: search
spec:
  ... other SolrCloud CRD settings ...

  solrAddressability:    
    commonServicePort: 443
    external:
      nodePortOverride: 443
      domainName: k8s.solr.cloud
      method: Ingress
      useExternalAddress: true

The example settings above will result in your Solr pods getting names like: <ns>-search-solrcloud-0.k8s.solr.cloud which you can request TLS certificates from LetsEncrypt assuming you own the k8s.solr.cloud domain.

mTLS

Mutual TLS (mTLS) provides an additional layer of security by ensuring the client applications sending requests to Solr are trusted. To enable mTLS, simply set spec.solrTLS.clientAuth to either Want or Need. When mTLS is enabled, the Solr operator needs to supply a client certificate that is trusted by Solr; the operator makes API calls to Solr to get cluster status. To configure the client certificate for the operator, see Running the Operator > mTLS

When mTLS is enabled, the liveness and readiness probes are configured to execute a local command on each Solr pod instead of the default HTTP Get request. Using a command is required so that we can use the correct TLS certificate when making an HTTPs call to the probe endpoints.

To help with debugging the TLS handshake between client and server, you can add the -Djavax.net.debug=SSL,keymanager,trustmanager,ssl:handshake Java system property to the spec.solrOpts for your SolrCloud instance.

To verify mTLS is working for your Solr pods, you can supply the client certificate (and CA cert if needed) via curl after opening a port-forward to one of your Solr pods:

curl "https://localhost:8983/solr/admin/info/system" -v \
  --key client/private_key.pem \
  --cert client/client.pem \
  --cacert root-ca/root-ca.pem

The --cacert option supplies the CA’s certificate needed to trust the server certificate provided by the Solr pods during TLS handshake.

Enable Ingress TLS Termination

Since v0.4.0

A common approach to securing traffic to your Solr cluster is to perform TLS termination at the Ingress and either leave all traffic between Solr pods un-encrypted or use private CAs for inter-pod communication. The operator supports this paradigm, to ensure all external traffic is encrypted.

kind: SolrCloud
metadata:
  name: search
spec:
  ... other SolrCloud CRD settings ...

  solrAddressability:
    external:
      domainName: k8s.solr.cloud
      method: Ingress
      hideNodes: true
      useExternalAddress: false
      ingressTLSTermination:
        tlsSecret: my-selfsigned-cert-tls

The only additional settings required here are:

To generate a TLS secret, follow the instructions above and use the templated Hostname: <namespace>-<name>-solrcloud.<domain>

If you configure your SolrCloud correctly, cert-manager can auto-inject the TLS secrets for you as well:

kind: SolrCloud
metadata:
  name: search
  namespace: explore
spec:
  ... other SolrCloud CRD settings ...
  customSolrKubeOptions:
    ingressOptions:
      annotations:
        kubernetes.io/ingress.class: "nginx"
        cert-manager.io/issuer: "<issuer-name>"
        cert-manager.io/common-name: explore-search-solrcloud.apple.com
  solrAddressability:
    external:
      domainName: k8s.solr.cloud
      method: Ingress
      hideNodes: true
      useExternalAddress: false
      ingressTLSTermination:
        tlsSecret: myingress-cert

For more information on the Ingress TLS Termination options for cert-manager, refer to the documentation.

Authentication and Authorization

Since v0.3.0

All well-configured Solr clusters should enforce users to authenticate, even for read-only operations. Even if you want to allow anonymous query requests from unknown users, you should make this explicit using Solr’s rule-based authorization plugin. In other words, always enforce security and then relax constraints as needed for specific endpoints based on your use case. The Solr operator can bootstrap a default security configuration for your SolrCloud during initialization. As such, there is no reason to deploy an unsecured SolrCloud cluster when using the Solr operator. In most cases, you’ll want to combine basic authentication with TLS to ensure credentials are never passed in clear text.

For background on Solr security, please refer to the Reference Guide for your version of Solr.

The Solr operator only supports the Basic authentication scheme. In general, you have two primary options for configuring authentication with the Solr operator:

  1. Let the Solr operator bootstrap the security.json to configure basic authentication for Solr.
  2. Supply your own security.json to Solr, which must define a user account that the operator can use to make API requests to secured Solr pods.

If you choose option 2, then you need to provide the credentials the Solr operator should use to make requests to Solr via a Kubernetes secret. With option 1, the operator creates a Basic Authentication Secret for you, which contains the username and password for the k8s-oper user.

Option 1: Bootstrap Security

The easiest way to get started with Solr security is to have the operator bootstrap a security.json (stored in ZK) as part of the initial deployment process. To activate this feature, add the following configuration to your SolrCloud CRD definition YAML:

spec:
  ...
  solrSecurity:
    authenticationType: Basic

Once the cluster is up, you’ll need the admin user password to login to the Solr Admin UI. The admin user will have a random password generated by the operator during security.json bootstrapping. Use the following command to retrieve the password from the bootstrap secret created by the operator:

kubectl get secret <CLOUD>-solrcloud-security-bootstrap -o jsonpath='{.data.admin}' | base64 --decode

where <CLOUD> is the name of your SolrCloud

Once security.json is bootstrapped, the operator will not update it! You’re expected to use the admin user to access the Security API to make further changes. In addition to the admin user, the operator defines a solr user, which has basic read access to Solr resources. You can retrieve the solr user password using:

kubectl get secret <CLOUD>-solrcloud-security-bootstrap -o jsonpath='{.data.solr}' | base64 --decode

You can safely delete the bootstrap secret, provided you’ve captured the admin password, after your SolrCloud deploys with the bootstrapped security.json. However, this will trigger a rolling restart across all pods as the setup-zk initContainer definition changes.

k8s-oper user

The operator makes requests to secured Solr endpoints as the k8s-oper user; credentials for the k8s-oper user are stored in a separate secret of type kubernetes.io/basic-auth with name <CLOUD>-solrcloud-basic-auth. The k8s-oper user is configured with read-only access to a minimal set of endpoints, see details in the Authorization sub-section below. Remember, if you change the k8s-oper password using the Solr security API, then you must update the secret with the new password or the operator will be locked out. Also, changing the password for the k8s-oper user in the K8s secret after bootstrapping will not update Solr! You’re responsible for changing the password in both places.

Liveness and Readiness Probes

We recommend configuring Solr to allow un-authenticated access over HTTP to the probe endpoint(s) and the bootstrapped security.json does this for you automatically (see next sub-section). However, if you want to secure the probe endpoints, then you need to set probesRequireAuth: true as shown below:

spec:
  ...
  solrSecurity:
    authenticationType: Basic
    probesRequireAuth: true

When probesRequireAuth is set to true, the liveness and readiness probes execute a command instead of using HTTP. The operator configures a command instead of setting the Authorization header for the HTTP probes, as that would require a restart of all pods if the password changes. With a command, we can load the username and password from a secret; Kubernetes will update the mounted secret files when the secret changes automatically.

By default, the operator will use Solr’s /admin/info/system endpoint for startup and liveness probes, and the /admin/info/health endpoint for readiness probes. This default can be customized by changing the HTTP path for any probes (under spec.customSolrKubeOptions.podOptions), however this also requires users to set probesRequireAuth=false as the operator does not reconfigure custom HTTP probes to use the command needed to support probesRequireAuth=true.

Custom readiness and liveness probes can be specified using configuration like the following:

spec:
  ...
  customSolrKubeOptions:
    podOptions:
      livenessProbe:
        httpGet:
          scheme: HTTP
          path: /solr/admin/customliveness
          port: 8983
      readinessProbe:
        httpGet:
          scheme: HTTP
          path: /solr/admin/customreadiness
          port: 8983

Consequently, the bootstrapped security.json will include additional rules to allow access to the endpoints used by the startup, liveness, and readiness probes:

      {
        "name": "k8s-probe-1",
        "role": null,
        "collection": null,
        "path": "/admin/customliveness"
      },
      {
        "name": "k8s-probe-2",
        "role": null,
        "collection": null,
        "path": "/admin/customreadiness"
      }

Note, if you change the probes after creating your solrcloud, then the new probe paths will not be added to the security.json. The security file is bootstrapped just once, so if your probes need to change you must add it to the allowed paths via the Solr Security API using the admin credentials.

Authorization

The default security.json created by the operator during initialization is shown below; the passwords for each user are randomized for every SolrCloud you create. In addition to configuring the solr.BasicAuthPlugin, the operator initializes a set of authorization rules for the default user accounts: admin, solr, and k8s-oper. Take a moment to review these authorization rules so that you’re aware of the roles and access granted to each user in your cluster.

{
  "authentication": {
    "blockUnknown": false,
    "class": "solr.BasicAuthPlugin",
    "credentials": {
      "admin": "...",
      "k8s-oper": "...",
      "solr": "..."
    },
    "realm": "Solr Basic Auth",
    "forwardCredentials": false
  },
  "authorization": {
    "class": "solr.RuleBasedAuthorizationPlugin",
    "user-role": {
      "admin": [ "admin", "k8s" ],
      "k8s-oper": [ "k8s" ],
      "solr": [ "users", "k8s" ]
    },
    "permissions": [
      {
        "name": "k8s-probe-0",
        "role": null,
        "collection": null,
        "path": "/admin/info/system"
      },
      {
        "name": "k8s-probe-1",
        "role": null,
        "collection": null,
        "path": "/admin/info/health"
      },
      {
        "name": "k8s-status",
        "role": "k8s",
        "collection": null,
        "path": "/admin/collections"
      },
      {
        "name": "k8s-metrics",
        "role": "k8s",
        "collection": null,
        "path": "/admin/metrics"
      },
      { 
         "name": "k8s-zk", 
         "role":"k8s", 
         "collection": null, 
         "path":"/admin/zookeeper/status" 
      },
      {
        "name": "k8s-ping",
        "role": "k8s",
        "collection": "*",
        "path": "/admin/ping"
      },
      {
        "name": "read",
        "role": [ "admin", "users" ]
      },
      {
        "name": "update",
        "role": [ "admin" ]
      },
      {
        "name": "security-read",
        "role": [ "admin" ]
      },
      {
        "name": "security-edit",
        "role": [ "admin" ]
      },
      {
        "name": "all",
        "role": [ "admin" ]
      }
    ]
  }
}

A few aspects of the default security.json configuration warrant a closer look. First, the probesRequireAuth setting (defaults to false) governs the value for blockUnknown (under authentication) and whether the probe endpoint(s) require authentication:

      {
        "name": "k8s-probe-0",
        "role": null,
        "collection": null,
        "path": "/admin/info/system"
      }

In this case, the "role":null indicates this endpoint allows anonymous access by unknown users. The "collection":null value indicates the path is not associated with any collection, i.e. it is a top-level system path.

The operator sends GET requests to the /admin/collections endpoint to get cluster status to determine the rolling restart order:

      {
        "name": "k8s-status",
        "role": "k8s",
        "collection": null,
        "path": "/admin/collections"
      },

In this case, the "role":"k8s" indicates the requesting user must be in the k8s role; notice that all default users have the k8s role.

The Prometheus exporter sends GET requests to the /admin/metrics endpoint to collect metrics from each pod. The exporter also hits the /admin/ping endpoint for every collection, which requires the following authorization rules:

      {
        "name": "k8s-metrics",
        "role": "k8s",
        "collection": null,
        "path": "/admin/metrics"
      },
      {
        "name": "k8s-ping",
        "role": "k8s",
        "collection": "*",
        "path": "/admin/ping"
      },
      { 
         "name": "k8s-zk", 
         "role":"k8s", 
         "collection": null, 
         "path":"/admin/zookeeper/status" 
      },

The "collection":"*" setting indicates this path applies to all collections, which maps to endpoint /collections/<COLL>/admin/ping at runtime.

The initial authorization config grants the read permission to the users role, which allows users to send query requests but cannot add / update / delete documents. For instance, the solr user is mapped to the users role, so the solr user can send query requests only. In general, please verify the initial authorization rules for each role before sharing user credentials.

Option 2: User-provided security.json and credentials secret

If users want full control over their cluster’s security config, then they can provide the Solr security.json via a Secret and the credentials the operator should use to make requests to Solr in a Secret.

Custom security.json Secret

Since v0.5.0

For full control over the Solr security configuration, supply a security.json in a Secret. The following example illustrates how to point the operator to a Secret containing a custom security.json:

spec:
  ...
  solrSecurity:
    authenticationType: Basic
    bootstrapSecurityJson:
      name: my-custom-security-json
      key: security.json

For Basic authentication, if you don’t supply a security.json Secret, then the operator assumes you are bootstrapping the security configuration via some other means.

Refer to the example security.json shown in the Authorization section above to help you get started crafting your own custom configuration.

Basic Authentication

For Basic authentication, the supplied secret must be of type Basic Authentication Secret and define both a username and password.

spec:
  ...
  solrSecurity:
    authenticationType: Basic
    basicAuthSecret: user-provided-secret

Here is an example of how to define a basic auth secret using YAML:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
  name: my-basic-auth-secret
type: kubernetes.io/basic-auth
stringData:
  username: k8s-oper
  password: Test1234

With this config, the operator will make API requests to secured Solr pods as the k8s-oper user. Note: be sure to use a stronger password for real deployments

Users need to ensure their security.json contains the user supplied in the basicAuthSecret has read access to the following endpoints:

/admin/info/system
/admin/info/health
/admin/collections
/admin/metrics
/admin/ping (for collection="*")
/admin/zookeeper/status

Tip: see the authorization rules defined by the default security.json as a guide for configuring access for the operator user

Changing the Password

If you change the password for the user configured in your basicAuthSecret using the Solr security API, then you must update the secret with the new password or the operator will be locked out. Also, changing the password for this user in the K8s secret will not update Solr! You’re responsible for changing the password in both places.

Prometheus Exporter with Basic Auth

If you enable basic auth for your SolrCloud cluster, then you need to point the Prometheus exporter at the basic auth secret; refer to Prometheus Exporter with Basic Auth for more details.

Various Runtime Parameters

There are various runtime parameters that allow you to customize the running of your Solr Cloud via the Solr Operator.

Time to wait for Solr to be killed gracefully

Since v0.3.0

The Solr Operator manages the Solr StatefulSet in a way that when a Solr pod needs to be stopped, or deleted, Kubernetes and Solr are on the same page for how long to wait for the process to die gracefully.

The default time given is 60 seconds, before Solr or Kubernetes tries to forcefully stop the Solr process. You can override this default with the field:

spec:
  ...
  customSolrKubeOptions:
    podOptions:
      terminationGracePeriodSeconds: 120
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