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Version: 22.3

Kubernetes Cluster Requirements

This topic is a checklist with the prerequisites and system requirements for installing production Redpanda in a Kubernetes cluster using the Helm chart.

Operating system​

Minimum required version of the Linux kernel: 3.10.0-514 or 4.18

Kubernetes​

Minimum required Kubernetes version: 1.21

Make sure to do the following:

  1. Install kubectl.

  2. Configure the kubeconfig file for your cluster.

Helm​

Minimum required Helm version: 3.6.0

Install Helm.

Number of worker nodes​

You must provision one worker node for each Redpanda broker that you plan to deploy in your Redpanda cluster. Each Pod replica that runs a Redpanda broker requires its own dedicated worker node for the following reasons:

  • Redpanda brokers are designed to have access to all resources, such as CPU and memory, on their host machine.
  • External clients access Redpanda brokers using the address of a worker node. See External networking.

Storage volumes​

Redpanda brokers must store their data on disk. As a result, each Pod that runs a Redpanda broker must have its own storage volume.

To learn what Redpanda recommends, see the storage best practices.

To learn how to configure storage, see Configure storage.

External networking​

For external access, each worker node in your cluster must have a static, externally accessible IP address to allow clients to connect to the NodePort Service and access the Redpanda broker. Redpanda uses the following default ports:

Node portPurpose
30081Schema registry
30082HTTP proxy
31092Kafka API
31644Admin API

Redpanda recommends using NodePorts instead of Loadbalancers. See the external networking best practices.

Tuning​

Before deploying Redpanda to production, each worker node that runs Redpanda must be tuned to optimize the Linux kernel for Redpanda processes.

See Tuning Kubernetes Worker Nodes for Production

Next steps​

Review the best practices.

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