Nexus HA Chart migration spike

This is a spike concerning migration to the Nexus HA Chart. We would like to determine the following

• Can this chart support running a single Nexus instance instead of a HA implementation?
• Can we deploy Nexus OSS instead (without a license)?

added Spike kindenhancement nexus priority3 teamDevelopment & Ops labels

assigned to @cnowicki

marked this issue as related to #161

marked this issue as related to big-bang/product/bbtoc#151

changed iteration to Big Bang Iterations Feb 4, 2025 - Feb 17, 2025

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added statusready-to-work label and removed statusdoing label

removed iteration Big Bang Iterations Feb 4, 2025 - Feb 17, 2025

changed iteration to Big Bang Iterations Feb 18, 2025 - Mar 3, 2025

added statusdoing label and removed statusready-to-work label

I reviewed several of the issues of the HA chart and there are a few migration items to consider. First is from support, stating that a number of issues arise from Nexus OSS not shutting down cleanly in kubernetes, which can lead to internal database corruption. They recommend using an external database to avoid this issue, which was a pro feature that requires a license until recently. https://github.com/sonatype/nxrm3-ha-repository/pull/80#issuecomment-2220854343

As of Nexus 3.77, the community edition allows support for external databases and is kubernetes friendly. HA still requires a license but there is a way to skip the license by passing a configuration flag. https://github.com/sonatype/nxrm3-ha-repository/issues/70#issuecomment-2228687398

A database migration will be required to migrate data on existing instances as detailed here https://help.sonatype.com/en/upgrading-to-nexus-repository-3-71-0-and-beyond.html

removed iteration Big Bang Iterations Feb 18, 2025 - Mar 3, 2025

changed iteration to Big Bang Iterations Mar 4, 2025 - Mar 17, 2025

I have been able to get Nexus working with the latest HA chart, however a small modification is required to the chart. I will see if I can make a PR to the upstream chart with my changes that will enable the Community edition of Nexus.

I used the following override file to set certain scale the replicas down to 1 and reduce the memory and CPU counts so the pod would start on my local system. I also provided database credentials for the external Postgres database that I needed to create.

# overrides.yaml
statefulset:
  replicaCount: 1
  clustered: false
  container:
    resources:
      requests:
        cpu: 2
        memory: "4Gi"
      limits: 
        cpu: 2
        memory: "4Gi"
    env:
      install4jAddVmParams: "-Xms2703m -Xmx2703m -Dnexus.loadAsOSS=true"
  requestLogContainer:
    resources:
license:
  licenseSecret:
    enabled: true
    fileContentsBase64: ""
secret:
  dbSecret:
    enabled: true
  db:
    user: nexus
    password: nexuspassword
    host: nexus-db-postgresql.nexusrepo.svc.cluster.local
  nexusAdminSecret:
    enabled: true

I used the following command to install the chart with overrides

helm install nxrm-ha -f overrides.yaml ./nxrm-ha

Prior to installing the chart, it is recommended to create a postgres database, otherwise you will have to apply the new settings over the existing deployment and scale down/up. I did so with the following commands:

helm install nexus-db oci://registry-1.docker.io/bitnamicharts/postgresql

# Once it is created, create a user and database for nexus. Start by connecting to the pod
kubectl run nexus-db-postgresql-client --rm --tty -i --restart='Never' --namespace nexusrepo --image docker.io/bitnami/postgresql:17.4.0-debian-12-r3 --env="PGPASSWORD=$POSTGRES_PASSWORD" \\n      --command -- psql --host nexus-db-postgresql -U postgres -d postgres -p 5432

Once I was connected to the database, I created a user and database

CREATE USER nexus WITH PASSWORD 'nexuspassword';
CREATE DATABASE nexus WITH OWNER 'nexus' ENCODING 'UTF8' LC_COLLATE='en_US.UTF-8' LC_CTYPE='en_US.UTF-8';

The change that needed to be made was done here https://github.com/sonatype/nxrm3-ha-repository/blob/main/nxrm-ha/templates/statefulset.yaml#L179

It was a quick and dirty change just to prove that it is possible to run community edition with the HA chart, however I would rewrite this if/else statement to include a third option for community edition deployments that removes the -Dnexus.licenseFile=${LICENSE_FILE} parameter and replaces it with -Dnexus.loadAsOSS=true. I think this would allow for a community edition deployment without impacting pro users who want a single instance deployment of Nexus.

added statusreview label and removed statusdoing label

unassigned @cnowicki

assigned to @cnowicki

removed iteration Big Bang Iterations Mar 4, 2025 - Mar 17, 2025