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Deploy Bufstream to AWS with RDS for PostgreSQL ​

This page walks you through installing Bufstream into your AWS deployment, using PostgreSQL for metadata storage. See Tuning and performance for defaults and recommendations about resources, replicas, storage, and scaling.Data from your Bufstream cluster never leaves your network or reports back to Buf.

Prerequisites ​

To deploy Bufstream on AWS, you need the following before you start:

  • A Kubernetes cluster (v1.27 or newer)
  • An S3 bucket
  • An RDS for PostgreSQL instance (v14.x or newer).
  • A Bufstream role, with read/write permission to the S3 bucket above.
  • Helm (v3.12.0 or newer)

If you don't yet have your AWS environment, you'll need the following:

  • For the EKS cluster
    • AmazonEC2FullAccess
    • A custom policy including eks:*, since there's no default AWS EKS policy including it.
  • For the S3 bucket
    • AmazonS3FullAccess
  • For the RDS for PostgreSQL instance
    • AmazonRDSFullAccess
  • For the Bufstream role
    • IAMFullAccess

Create an EKS cluster ​

Create an EKS cluster if you don't already have one. An EKS cluster involves many settings that vary depending on your use case. See the official documentation for details.

Set up Workload Identity Federation for Bufstream role ​

You can authenticate to S3 with access keys, or you can use Kubernetes Workload Identity Federation with either OIDC or EKS Pod Identity. We recommend using EKS Pod Identity. See the official documentation:

Create an S3 Bucket ​

If you don't already have one, you need the AmazonS3FullAccess role. To create a new S3 bucket, you need the AmazonS3FullAccess role.

console
$ aws s3api create-bucket \
  --bucket <bucket-name> \
  --region <region> \
  --create-bucket-configuration LocationConstraint=<region>

Create an RDS for PostgreSQL instance ​

console
$ aws rds create-db-instance \
    --db-instance-identifier <instance-name> \
    --db-instance-class db.c6gd.xlarge \
    --engine postgres \
    --engine-version 17 \
    --master-username postgres \
    --master-user-password <postgres password> \
    --allocated-storage 20 \
    --vpc-security-group-ids <security-group-ids> \
    --db-subnet-group-name <db-subnet-group-name> \
    --db-name bufstream

Create a Bufstream role and policy ​

You'll need the IAMFullAccess role.

console
$ aws iam create-role \
  --role-name BufstreamRole \
  --assume-role-policy-document file://<(echo '{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
      {
        "Effect": "Allow",
        "Principal": {
          "Service": "pods.eks.amazonaws.com"
        },
        "Action": [
          "sts:AssumeRole",
          "sts:TagSession"
        ],
        "Condition": {
          "StringEquals": {
            "aws:SourceAccount": "<aws-account-id>"
          },
          "ArnEquals": {
            "aws:SourceArn": "<eks-cluster-arn>"
          }
        }
      }
    ]
  }')

$ aws eks create-pod-identity-association \
  --cluster-name <cluster-name> \
  --namespace bufstream \
  --service-account bufstream-service-account \
  --role-arn <role-arn>
console
$ aws iam create-policy \
  --policy-name BufstreamS3 \
  --policy-document file://<(echo '{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
      {
        "Effect": "Allow",
        "Action": [
          "s3:GetObject",
          "s3:PutObject",
          "s3:DeleteObject",
          "s3:ListBucket",
          "s3:AbortMultipartUpload"
        ],
        "Resource": [
          "arn:aws:s3:::<bucket-name>",
          "arn:aws:s3:::<bucket-name>/*"
        ]
      }
    ]
  }')

$ aws iam attach-role-policy \
  --policy-arn arn:aws:iam::<aws-account-id>:policy/BufstreamS3 \
  --role-name BufstreamRole

Create a namespace ​

Create a Kubernetes namespace in the k8s cluster for the bufstream deployment to use:

console
$ kubectl create namespace bufstream

Deploy Bufstream ​

1. Authenticate helm ​

To get started, authenticate helm with the Bufstream OCI registry using the keyfile that was sent alongside this documentation. The keyfile should contain a base64 encoded string.

console
$ cat keyfile | helm registry login -u _json_key_base64 --password-stdin \
  https://us-docker.pkg.dev/buf-images-1/bufstream

2. Configure Bufstream's Helm values ​

Bufstream is configured using Helm values that are passed to the bufstream Helm chart. To configure the values:

  1. Create a Helm values file named bufstream-values.yaml, which is required by the helm install command in step 5. This file can be in any location, but we recommend creating it in the same directory where you run the helm commands.
  2. Add the values from the steps below to the bufstream-values.yaml file. Skip to Install the Helm chart for a full example chart.

Configure object storage ​

Bufstream requires S3-compatible object storage.

Bufstream attempts to acquire credentials from the environment using EKS Pod Identity.To configure storage, set the following Helm values, filling in your S3 variables:

bufstream-values.yaml

yaml
storage:
  use: s3
  s3:
    bucket: <bucket-name>
    region: <region>
    # forcePathStyle: false # Optional, use path-style bucket URLs (http://s3.amazonaws.com/BUCKET/KEY)
    # endpoint: "https://example.com" # Optional

The k8s service account to create the pod identity association for is named bufstream-service-account.

Configure PostgreSQL ​

Get the endpoint address of the PostgreSQL instance:

console
$ aws rds describe-db-instances --db-instance-identifier=<instance-name> --query='DBInstances[0].Endpoint.Address'

Create a secret with the DSN to connect to the PostgreSQL instance:

console
kubectl create secret --namespace bufstream generic bufstream-postgres \
      --from-literal=dsn='postgresql://postgres:<postgres-user-password>@<endpoint-address>:5432/bufstream?sslmode=require'

Then, configure Bufstream to connect to PostgreSQL:

bufstream-values.yaml

yaml
metadata:
  use: postgres
  postgres:
    secretName: bufstream-postgres

Note that using the postgres user password is not recommended for production and a separate user should be used instead. Read the AWS RDS docs for more details.

3. Install the Helm chart ​

Proceed to the zonal deployment steps if you want to deploy Bufstream with zone-aware routing. If not, follow the instructions below to deploy the basic Helm chart.After following the steps above, the set of Helm values should be similar to the example below:

bufstream-values.yaml

yaml
storage:
  use: s3
  s3:
    bucket: <bucket-name>
    region: <region>
metadata:
  use: postgres
  postgres:
    secretName: bufstream-postgres

Using the bufstream-values.yaml Helm values file, install the Helm chart for the cluster and set the correct Bufstream version:

console
$ helm install bufstream oci://us-docker.pkg.dev/buf-images-1/bufstream/charts/bufstream \
  --version "<version>" \
  --namespace=bufstream \
  --values bufstream-values.yaml

If you change any configuration in the bufstream-values.yaml file, re-run the Helm install command to apply the changes.

Network load balancer ​

To access the Bufstream cluster from outside the Kubernetes cluster, create an AWS Network Load Balancer (NLB). The easiest way to create an NLB is to use the AWS Load Balancer Controller. Once the controller is successfully installed in the EKS cluster, add the following configuration to bufstream-values.yaml file:

bufstream-values.yaml

yaml
bufstream:
  service:
    type: LoadBalancer
    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: "internal"

Run the helm upgrade command for Bufstream:

console
$ helm upgrade bufstream oci://us-docker.pkg.dev/buf-images-1/bufstream/charts/bufstream \
  --version "<version>" \
  --namespace=bufstream \
  --values bufstream-values.yaml

Check the progress of the NLB creation using the following command:

console
$ kubectl describe service bufstream

Once the NLB is created, use the following commands to get its DNS name and more details:

console
# save the dns name into a variable
$ NLBDNSNAME=$(kubectl -n bufstream get service bufstream -o "jsonpath={.status.loadBalancer.ingress[*].hostname}")
# print the dns name
$ echo "$NLBDNSNAME"
# show more details like arn of the created NLB:
$ aws elbv2 describe-load-balancers --query "LoadBalancers[?DNSName=='${NLBDNSNAME}']"

The Bufstream cluster needs to advertise its public address to the connecting clients. Make sure the address advertised is the same as the one that the clients are connecting to by adding the following configuration to bufstream-values.yaml:

bufstream-values.yaml

yaml
kafka:
  publicAddress:
    host: <dns name of the NLB address>
    port: 9092

Run the helm upgrade command for Bufstream to update the public address:

console
$ helm upgrade bufstream oci://us-docker.pkg.dev/buf-images-1/bufstream/charts/bufstream \
  --version "<version>" \
  --namespace=bufstream \
  --values bufstream-values.yaml

Deploy Bufstream with zone-aware routing ​

1. Specify a list of target zones ​

First, specify a list of target zones in a ZONES variable, which are used for future commands.

console
$ ZONES=(<zone1> <zone2> <zone3>)

2. Create EKS Pod Association for all zones ​

If you're using EKS Pod association, you'll need to create a pod association for each service account in each zone.

console
$ for ZONE in $ZONES; do
  aws eks create-pod-identity-association \
    --cluster-name <cluster-name> \
    --namespace bufstream \
    --service-account bufstream-service-account-${ZONE} \
    --role-arn <role-arn>
done

3. Create Helm values files for each zone ​

Then, use this script to iterate through the availability zones saved in the ZONES variable and create a Helm values file for each zone:

console
$ for ZONE in $ZONES; do
  cat <<EOF > "bufstream-${ZONE}-values.yaml"
nameOverride: bufstream-${ZONE}
name: bufstream-${ZONE}
zone: ${ZONE}
bufstream:
  serviceAccount:
    name: bufstream-service-account-${ZONE}
  deployment:
    replicaCount: 2
    affinity:
      nodeAffinity:
        requiredDuringSchedulingIgnoredDuringExecution:
          nodeSelectorTerms:
          - matchExpressions:
            - key: topology.kubernetes.io/zone
              operator: In
              values:
              - ${ZONE}
kafka:
  publicAddress:
    host: bufstream-${ZONE}.bufstream.svc.cluster.local
    port: 9092
EOF
done

Using the example ZONES variable above creates three values files: bufstream-<zone1>-values.yaml, bufstream-<zone2>-values.yaml and bufstream-<zone3>-values.yaml. However, Bufstream is available in all AWS regions, so you can specify AZs in any region such as us-east-1, us-west-2 or eu-central-2 in the variable.

4. Install the Helm chart for each zone ​

After following the steps above and creating the zone-specific values files, the collection of Helm values should be structurally similar to the example below:

bufstream-values.yaml

yaml
storage:
  use: s3
  s3:
    bucket: <bucket-name>
    region: <region>
metadata:
  use: postgres
  postgres:
    secretName: bufstream-postgres
observability:
  metrics:
    exporter: "PROMETHEUS"

bufstream-zone1-values.yaml

yaml
nameOverride: bufstream-<zone1>
name: bufstream-<zone1>
bufstream:
  serviceAccount:
    name: bufstream-service-account-<zone1>
  deployment:
    replicaCount: 2
    affinity:
      nodeAffinity:
        requiredDuringSchedulingIgnoredDuringExecution:
          nodeSelectorTerms:
            - matchExpressions:
                - key: topology.kubernetes.io/zone
                  operator: In
                  values:
                    - <zone1>
kafka:
  publicAddress:
    host: bufstream-<zone1>.bufstream.svc.cluster.local
    port: 9092

To deploy a zone-aware Bufstream using the bufstream-values.yaml Helm values file, install the Helm chart for the cluster, set the target Bufstream version, and supply the ZONES variable:

console
$ for ZONE in $ZONES; do
  helm install "bufstream-${ZONE}" oci://us-docker.pkg.dev/buf-images-1/bufstream/charts/bufstream \
    --version "<version>" \
    --namespace=bufstream \
    --values bufstream-values.yaml \
    --values "bufstream-${ZONE}-values.yaml"
done

If you change any configuration in the bufstream-values.yaml file, re-run the Helm install command to apply the changes.

5. Create a regional service for the cluster ​

Create a regional service which creates a bootstrap address for Bufstream across all the zones.

console
$ cat <<EOF | kubectl apply -f -
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  labels:
    bufstream.buf.build/cluster: bufstream
  name: bufstream
  namespace: bufstream
spec:
  type: ClusterIP
  ports:
  - name: connect
    port: 8080
    protocol: TCP
    targetPort: 8080
  - name: admin
    port: 9089
    protocol: TCP
    targetPort: 9089
  - name: kafka
    port: 9092
    protocol: TCP
    targetPort: 9092
  selector:
    bufstream.buf.build/cluster: bufstream
EOF

Running CLI commands ​

Once you've deployed, you can run the Bufstream CLI commands directly using kubectl exec bufstream <command> on the running Bufstream pods. You don't need to install anything else.