Operator configuration

The operator for CloudNativePG is installed from a standard deployment manifest and follows the convention over configuration paradigm. While this is fine in most cases, there are some scenarios where you want to change the default behavior, such as:

defining annotations and labels to be inherited by all resources created by the operator and that are set in the cluster resource
defining a different default image for PostgreSQL or an additional pull secret

By default, the operator is installed in the cnpg-system namespace as a Kubernetes Deployment called cnpg-controller-manager.

Note

In the examples below we assume the default name and namespace for the operator deployment.

The behavior of the operator can be customized through a ConfigMap/Secret that is located in the same namespace of the operator deployment and with cnpg-controller-manager-config as the name.

Important

Any change to the config's ConfigMap/Secret will not be automatically detected by the operator, - and as such, it needs to be reloaded (see below). Moreover, changes only apply to the resources created after the configuration is reloaded.

Important

The operator first processes the ConfigMap values and then the Secret’s, in this order. As a result, if a parameter is defined in both places, the one in the Secret will be used.

Available options

The operator looks for the following environment variables to be defined in the ConfigMap/Secret:

Name	Description
`CERTIFICATE_DURATION`	Determines the lifetime of the generated certificates in days. Default is 90.
`CLUSTERS_ROLLOUT_DELAY`	The duration (in seconds) to wait between the roll-outs of different clusters during an operator upgrade. This setting controls the timing of upgrades across clusters, spreading them out to reduce system impact. The default value is `0` which means no delay between PostgreSQL cluster upgrades.
`CREATE_ANY_SERVICE`	When set to `true`, will create `-any` service for the cluster. Default is `false`
`ENABLE_INSTANCE_MANAGER_INPLACE_UPDATES`	When set to `true`, enables in-place updates of the instance manager after an update of the operator, avoiding rolling updates of the cluster (default `false`)
`EXPIRING_CHECK_THRESHOLD`	Determines the threshold, in days, for identifying a certificate as expiring. Default is 7.
`INCLUDE_PLUGINS`	A comma-separated list of plugins to be always included in the Cluster's reconciliation.
`INHERITED_ANNOTATIONS`	List of annotation names that, when defined in a `Cluster` metadata, will be inherited by all the generated resources, including pods
`INHERITED_LABELS`	List of label names that, when defined in a `Cluster` metadata, will be inherited by all the generated resources, including pods
`INSTANCES_ROLLOUT_DELAY`	The duration (in seconds) to wait between roll-outs of individual PostgreSQL instances within the same cluster during an operator upgrade. The default value is `0`, meaning no delay between upgrades of instances in the same PostgreSQL cluster.
`KUBERNETES_CLUSTER_DOMAIN`	Defines the domain suffix for service FQDNs within the Kubernetes cluster. If left unset, it defaults to "cluster.local".
`MONITORING_QUERIES_CONFIGMAP`	The name of a ConfigMap in the operator's namespace with a set of default queries (to be specified under the key `queries`) to be applied to all created Clusters
`MONITORING_QUERIES_SECRET`	The name of a Secret in the operator's namespace with a set of default queries (to be specified under the key `queries`) to be applied to all created Clusters
`OPERATOR_IMAGE_NAME`	The name of the operator image used to bootstrap Pods. Defaults to the image specified during installation.
`POSTGRES_IMAGE_NAME`	The name of the PostgreSQL image used by default for new clusters. Defaults to the version specified in the operator.
`PULL_SECRET_NAME`	Name of an additional pull secret to be defined in the operator's namespace and to be used to download images
`STANDBY_TCP_USER_TIMEOUT`	Defines the `TCP_USER_TIMEOUT` socket option for replication connections from standby instances to the primary. Default is 0 (system's default).
`DRAIN_TAINTS`	Specifies the taint keys that should be interpreted as indicators of node drain. By default, it includes the taints commonly applied by kubectl, Cluster Autoscaler, and Karpenter: `node.kubernetes.io/unschedulable`, `ToBeDeletedByClusterAutoscaler`, `karpenter.sh/disrupted`, `karpenter.sh/disruption`.

Values in INHERITED_ANNOTATIONS and INHERITED_LABELS support path-like wildcards. For example, the value example.com/* will match both the value example.com/one and example.com/two.

When you specify an additional pull secret name using the PULL_SECRET_NAME parameter, the operator will use that secret to create a pull secret for every created PostgreSQL cluster. That secret will be named <cluster-name>-pull.

The namespace where the operator looks for the PULL_SECRET_NAME secret is where you installed the operator. If the operator is not able to find that secret, it will ignore the configuration parameter.

Defining an operator config map

The example below customizes the behavior of the operator, by defining the label/annotation names to be inherited by the resources created by any Cluster object that is deployed at a later time, by enabling in-place updates for the instance manager, and by spreading upgrades.

apiVersion: v1
kind: ConfigMap
metadata:
  name: cnpg-controller-manager-config
  namespace: cnpg-system
data:
  CLUSTERS_ROLLOUT_DELAY: '60'
  ENABLE_INSTANCE_MANAGER_INPLACE_UPDATES: 'true'
  INHERITED_ANNOTATIONS: categories
  INHERITED_LABELS: environment, workload, app
  INSTANCES_ROLLOUT_DELAY: '10'

Defining an operator secret

The example below customizes the behavior of the operator, by defining the label/annotation names to be inherited by the resources created by any Cluster object that is deployed at a later time, and by enabling in-place updates for the instance manager, and by spreading upgrades.

apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
  name: cnpg-controller-manager-config
  namespace: cnpg-system
type: Opaque
stringData:
  CLUSTERS_ROLLOUT_DELAY: '60'
  ENABLE_INSTANCE_MANAGER_INPLACE_UPDATES: 'true'
  INHERITED_ANNOTATIONS: categories
  INHERITED_LABELS: environment, workload, app
  INSTANCES_ROLLOUT_DELAY: '10'

Restarting the operator to reload configs

For the change to be effective, you need to recreate the operator pods to reload the config map. If you have installed the operator on Kubernetes using the manifest you can do that by issuing:

kubectl rollout restart deployment \
    -n cnpg-system \
    cnpg-controller-manager

In general, given a specific namespace, you can delete the operator pods with the following command:

kubectl delete pods -n [NAMESPACE_NAME_HERE] \
  -l app.kubernetes.io/name=cloudnative-pg

Warning

Customizations will be applied only to Cluster resources created after the reload of the operator deployment.

Following the above example, if the Cluster definition contains a categories annotation and any of the environment, workload, or app labels, these will be inherited by all the resources generated by the deployment.

Profiling tools

The operator can expose a pprof HTTP server on localhost:6060. To enable it, edit the operator deployment and add the flag --pprof-server=true to the container args:

kubectl edit deployment -n cnpg-system cnpg-controller-manager

Add --pprof-server=true to the args list, for example:

      containers:
      - args:
        - controller
        - --enable-leader-election
        - --config-map-name=cnpg-controller-manager-config
        - --secret-name=cnpg-controller-manager-config
        - --log-level=info
        - --pprof-server=true # relevant line
        command:
        - /manager

After saving, the deployment will roll out and the new pod will have the pprof server enabled.

Important

The pprof server only serves plain HTTP on port 6060.

To access the pprof endpoints from your local machine, use port-forwarding:

kubectl port-forward -n cnpg-system deploy/cnpg-controller-manager 6060
curl -sS http://localhost:6060/debug/pprof/
go tool pprof http://localhost:6060/debug/pprof/profile?seconds=30

You can also access pprof using the browser at http://localhost:6060/debug/pprof/.

Warning

The example above uses kubectl port-forward for local testing only. This is not the intended way to expose the feature in production. Treat pprof as a sensitive debugging interface and never expose it publicly. If you must access it remotely, secure it with proper network policies and access controls.