Installation on Google Cloud

You can install Portworx Enterprise on Google Cloud to run stateful workloads across Kubernetes environments such as Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), OpenShift on Google Cloud, or Google Anthos. The installation process typically includes preparing your Google Cloud environment, configuring the Kubernetes cluster, and deploying Portworx with a generated specification.

You can install Portworx on a Google Cloud with a PX-StoreV2 datastore, but there are some limitations. For more information on PX-StoreV2 datastore, see PX-StoreV2.

Depending on the whether you want to deploy Portworx with Google Kubenetes Engine, OpenShift or Google Anthos, proceed to one of the following topic:

• Installation on Google Kubernetes Engine Cluster
• Installation on Google Cloud Openshift Cluster
• Installation on Anthos Cluster

Each Kubernetes distribution might require specific steps to prepare the cluster before you deploy Portworx Enterprise.

Prerequisites

In addition to the System Requirements, ensure that your cluster meets the following requirements before installing Portworx Enterprise:

Google Cloud OpenShift

• Install and configure the Google Cloud command-line tool (gcloud) to set up the required permissions for deploying Portworx.
• Configure your network settings to allow the following traffic:
  • Ports 17001–17021: Required for Portworx node-to-node communication.
  • Ports 111, 2049, and 20048: Required to support SharedV4 volumes using NFSv3.
  • Port 2049 (NFS server): Required only when using SharedV4 services with NFSv4.
• If you're planning to have a disaggregated setup, designate your nodes as storage or storageless (compute) before installing Portworx. Portworx uses the following labels on Kubernetes nodes to determine their roles:
  • portworx.io/node-type: storage
  • portworx.io/node-type: storageless

Google Kubernetes Engine

• Portworx is supported only on GKE clusters that use Ubuntu node images. Ensure you've created cluster using the right Ubuntu image type and machine type while meeting the hardware requirements.
• For production environments, deploy across three Availability Zones (AZs) with at least one node in each zone.
  • Configure the maximum number of storage nodes per availability zone to ensure Portworx maintains the required storage node count in each zone.
  • Portworx recommends using a zonal cluster. For instructions, see the GCP documentation.
• Portworx requires access to the Google Cloud APIs to provision & manage disks. Make sure that the user or service account creating the GKE cluster has the following roles:
  • Compute Admin
  • Service Account User
  • Kubernetes Engine Cluster Viewer
• If you're planning to have a disaggregated setup, designate your nodes as storage or storageless (compute) before installing Portworx. Portworx uses the following labels on Kubernetes nodes to determine their roles:
  • portworx.io/node-type: storage
  • portworx.io/node-type: storageless

Google Cloud Marketplace/CLI

• Install and configure the Google Cloud command-line tool (gcloud) to set up the required permissions for deploying Portworx.
• Portworx is supported only on GKE clusters that use Ubuntu node images. Ensure you've created cluster using the right Ubuntu image type and machine type while meeting the hardware requirements.
• For production environments, deploy across three Availability Zones (AZs) with at least one node in each zone.
  • Portworx recommends using a zonal cluster. For instructions, see the GCP documentation.
• Portworx requires access to the Google Cloud APIs to provision & manage disks. Make sure that the user or service account creating the GKE cluster has the following roles:
  • Compute Admin
  • Service Account User
  • Kubernetes Engine Cluster Viewer
• If you're planning to have a disaggregated setup, designate your nodes as storage or storageless (compute) before installing Portworx. Portworx uses the following labels on Kubernetes nodes to determine their roles:
  • portworx.io/node-type: storage
  • portworx.io/node-type: storageless

Anthos

• Ensure your cluster is using the supported Google Anthos kernel versions.
• Ensure your cluster have the supported disk types.
• By default, Google includes Kernel version 5.15 from Anthos version 1.14 for vSphere. Therefore, upgrading to Anthos version 1.14 or newer can result in Kernel performance issues, leading to a drop in the sequential write operations. Avoid using this Anthos version and Kernel version until the issue is fixed. See the bug description for more information.
• If you're planning to have a disaggregated setup, designate your nodes as storage or storageless (compute) before installing Portworx. Portworx uses the following labels on Kubernetes nodes to determine their roles:
  • portworx.io/node-type: storage
  • portworx.io/node-type: storageless

Best practices

Prevent Accidental Deletion: If your virtualization software has a feature to prevent accidental deletion, you should enable it for the VMs hosting PX nodes. While PX is designed to handle the loss of some nodes without issue, losing a significant number of storage nodes due to VM deletion can result in a loss of quorum and an outage. For more information on how to prevent accidental deletion of VM, refer to Prevent accidental VM deletion on Google cloud compute engine.