Redis sentinel HA on Kubernetes

You can deploy Redis Sentinel using the Helm package manager and the Redis Helm Chart.
If you don't have Helm3 installed yet, you can use this documentation to install it.

I will provide a few explanations to illustrate how it works.

First we need to get the values.yaml file from the Redis Helm Chart to customize our installation:

$ wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/bitnami/charts/master/bitnami/redis/values.yaml

We can configure a lot of parameters in the values.yaml file , but for demonstration purposes I only enabled Sentinel and set the redis password:
NOTE: For a list of parameters that can be configured during installation, see the Redis Helm Chart Parameters documentation.

# values.yamlglobal:  redis:    password: redispassword...replica:  replicaCount: 3...sentinel:  enabled: true...

Then we can deploy Redis using the configuration from the values.yaml file:
NOTE: It will deploy a three Pod cluster (one master and two slaves) managed by the StatefulSets with a sentinel container running inside each Pod.

$ helm install redis-sentinel bitnami/redis --values values.yaml

Be sure to carefully read the NOTES section of the chart installation output. It contains many useful information (e.g. how to connect to your database from outside the cluster)

After installation, check redis StatefulSet, Pods and Services (headless service can be used for internal access):

$ kubectl get pods -o wideNAME                    READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE     IPredis-sentinel-node-0   2/2     Running   0          2m13s   10.4.2.21redis-sentinel-node-1   2/2     Running   0          86s     10.4.0.10redis-sentinel-node-2   2/2     Running   0          47s     10.4.1.10$ kubectl get stsNAME                  READY   AGEredis-sentinel-node   3/3     2m41s$ kubectl get svcNAME                      TYPE        CLUSTER-IP    EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)              AGEredis-sentinel            ClusterIP   10.8.15.252   <none>        6379/TCP,26379/TCP   2mredis-sentinel-headless   ClusterIP   None          <none>        6379/TCP,26379/TCP   2m

As you can see, each redis-sentinel-node Pod contains the redis and sentinel containers:

$ kubectl get pods redis-sentinel-node-0 -o jsonpath={.spec.containers[*].name}redis sentinel

We can check the sentinel container logs to find out which redis-sentinel-node is the master:

$ kubectl logs -f redis-sentinel-node-0 sentinel...1:X 09 Jun 2021 09:52:01.017 # Configuration loaded1:X 09 Jun 2021 09:52:01.019 * monotonic clock: POSIX clock_gettime1:X 09 Jun 2021 09:52:01.019 * Running mode=sentinel, port=26379.1:X 09 Jun 2021 09:52:01.026 # Sentinel ID is 1bad9439401e44e749e2bf5868ad9ec7787e914e1:X 09 Jun 2021 09:52:01.026 # +monitor master mymaster 10.4.2.21 6379 quorum 2...1:X 09 Jun 2021 09:53:21.429 * +slave slave 10.4.0.10:6379 10.4.0.10 6379 @ mymaster 10.4.2.21 63791:X 09 Jun 2021 09:53:21.435 * +slave slave 10.4.1.10:6379 10.4.1.10 6379 @ mymaster 10.4.2.21 6379...

As you can see from the logs above, the redis-sentinel-node-0 Pod is the master and the redis-sentinel-node-1 & redis-sentinel-node-2 Pods are slaves.

For testing, let's delete the master and check if sentinel will switch the master role to one of the slaves:

    $ kubectl delete pod redis-sentinel-node-0    pod "redis-sentinel-node-0" deleted        $ kubectl logs -f redis-sentinel-node-1 sentinel    ...                                                                                               1:X 09 Jun 2021 09:55:20.902 # Executing user requested FAILOVER of 'mymaster'    ...    1:X 09 Jun 2021 09:55:22.666 # +switch-master mymaster 10.4.2.21 6379 10.4.1.10 6379    ...    1:X 09 Jun 2021 09:55:50.626 * +slave slave 10.4.0.10:6379 10.4.0.10 6379 @ mymaster 10.4.1.10 6379    1:X 09 Jun 2021 09:55:50.632 * +slave slave 10.4.2.22:6379 10.4.2.22 6379 @ mymaster 10.4.1.10 6379

A new master (redis-sentinel-node-2 10.4.1.10) has been selected, so everything works as expected.

Additionally, we can display more information by connecting to one of the Redis nodes:

$ kubectl run --namespace default redis-client --restart='Never' --env REDIS_PASSWORD=redispassword --image docker.io/bitnami/redis:6.2.1-debian-10-r47 --command -- sleep infinitypod/redis-client created$ kubectl exec --tty -i redis-client --namespace default -- bashI have no name!@redis-client:/$ redis-cli -h redis-sentinel-node-1.redis-sentinel-headless -p 6379 -a $REDIS_PASSWORDWarning: Using a password with '-a' or '-u' option on the command line interface may not be safe.redis-sentinel-node-1.redis-sentinel-headless:6379> info replication# Replicationrole:slavemaster_host:10.4.1.10master_port:6379master_link_status:up...