Cron Jobs in Kubernetes - connect to existing Pod, execute script - kubernetes

Question

I'm certain I'm missing something obvious. I have looked through the documentation for ScheduledJobs / CronJobs on Kubernetes, but I cannot find a way to do the following on a schedule:
Connect to an existing Pod
Execute a script
Disconnect
I have alternative methods of doing this, but they don't feel right.
Schedule a cron task for: kubectl exec -it $(kubectl get pods --selector=some-selector | head -1) /path/to/script
Create one deployment that has a "Cron Pod" which also houses the application, and many "Non Cron Pods" which are just the application. The Cron Pod would use a different image (one with cron tasks scheduled).
I would prefer to use the Kubernetes ScheduledJobs if possible to prevent the same Job running multiple times at once and also because it strikes me as the more appropriate way of doing it.
Is there a way to do this by ScheduledJobs / CronJobs?
http://kubernetes.io/docs/user-guide/cron-jobs/

Answer 1

As far as I'm aware there is no "official" way to do this the way you want, and that is I believe by design. Pods are supposed to be ephemeral and horizontally scalable, and Jobs are designed to exit. Having a cron job "attach" to an existing pod doesn't fit that module. The Scheduler would have no idea if the job completed.
Instead, a Job can to bring up an instance of your application specifically for running the Job and then take it down once the Job is complete. To do this you can use the same Image for the Job as for your Deployment but use a different "Entrypoint" by setting command:.
If they job needs access to data created by your application then that data will need to be persisted outside the application/Pod, you could so this a few ways but the obvious ways would be a database or a persistent volume.
For example useing a database would look something like this:
apiVersion: extensions/v1beta1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
name: APP
spec:
template:
metadata:
labels:
name: THIS
app: THAT
spec:
containers:
- image: APP:IMAGE
name: APP
command:
- app-start
env:
- name: DB_HOST
value: "127.0.0.1"
- name: DB_DATABASE
value: "app_db"
And a job that connects to the same database, but with a different "Entrypoint" :
apiVersion: batch/v1
kind: Job
metadata:
name: APP-JOB
spec:
template:
metadata:
name: APP-JOB
labels:
app: THAT
spec:
containers:
- image: APP:IMAGE
name: APP-JOB
command:
- app-job
env:
- name: DB_HOST
value: "127.0.0.1"
- name: DB_DATABASE
value: "app_db"
Or the persistent volume approach would look something like this:
apiVersion: extensions/v1beta1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
name: APP
spec:
template:
metadata:
labels:
name: THIS
app: THAT
spec:
containers:
- image: APP:IMAGE
name: APP
command:
- app-start
volumeMounts:
- mountPath: "/var/www/html"
name: APP-VOLUME
volumes:
- name: APP-VOLUME
persistentVolumeClaim:
claimName: APP-CLAIM
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: PersistentVolume
metadata:
name: APP-VOLUME
spec:
capacity:
storage: 10Gi
accessModes:
- ReadWriteMany
persistentVolumeReclaimPolicy: Retain
nfs:
path: /app
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: PersistentVolumeClaim
metadata:
name: APP-CLAIM
spec:
accessModes:
- ReadWriteMany
resources:
requests:
storage: 10Gi
selector:
matchLabels:
service: app
With a job like this, attaching to the same volume:
apiVersion: batch/v1
kind: Job
metadata:
name: APP-JOB
spec:
template:
metadata:
name: APP-JOB
labels:
app: THAT
spec:
containers:
- image: APP:IMAGE
name: APP-JOB
command:
- app-job
volumeMounts:
- mountPath: "/var/www/html"
name: APP-VOLUME
volumes:
- name: APP-VOLUME
persistentVolumeClaim:
claimName: APP-CLAIM

Answer 2

Create a scheduled pod that uses the Kubernetes API to run the command you want on the target pods, via the exec function. The pod image should contain the client libraries to access the API -- many of these are available or you can build your own.
For example, here is a solution using the Python client that execs to each ZooKeeper pod and runs a database maintenance command:
import time
from kubernetes import config
from kubernetes.client import Configuration
from kubernetes.client.apis import core_v1_api
from kubernetes.client.rest import ApiException
from kubernetes.stream import stream
import urllib3
config.load_incluster_config()
configuration = Configuration()
configuration.verify_ssl = False
configuration.assert_hostname = False
urllib3.disable_warnings()
Configuration.set_default(configuration)
api = core_v1_api.CoreV1Api()
label_selector = 'app=zk,tier=backend'
namespace = 'default'
resp = api.list_namespaced_pod(namespace=namespace,
label_selector=label_selector)
for x in resp.items:
name = x.spec.hostname
resp = api.read_namespaced_pod(name=name,
namespace=namespace)
exec_command = [
'/bin/sh',
'-c',
'opt/zookeeper/bin/zkCleanup.sh -n 10'
]
resp = stream(api.connect_get_namespaced_pod_exec, name, namespace,
command=exec_command,
stderr=True, stdin=False,
stdout=True, tty=False)
print("============================ Cleanup %s: ============================\n%s\n" % (name, resp if resp else "<no output>"))
and the associated Dockerfile:
FROM ubuntu:18.04
ADD ./cleanupZk.py /
RUN apt-get update \
&& apt-get install -y python-pip \
&& pip install kubernetes \
&& chmod +x /cleanupZk.py
CMD /cleanupZk.py
Note that if you have an RBAC-enabled cluster, you may need to create a service account and appropriate roles to make this API call possible. A role such as the following is sufficient to list pods and to run exec, such as the example script above requires:
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
kind: Role
metadata:
name: pod-list-exec
namespace: default
rules:
- apiGroups: [""] # "" indicates the core API group
resources: ["pods"]
verbs: ["get", "list"]
- apiGroups: [""] # "" indicates the core API group
resources: ["pods/exec"]
verbs: ["create", "get"]
An example of the associated cron job:
apiVersion: v1
kind: ServiceAccount
metadata:
name: zk-maint
namespace: default
---
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
kind: RoleBinding
metadata:
name: zk-maint-pod-list-exec
namespace: default
subjects:
- kind: ServiceAccount
name: zk-maint
namespace: default
roleRef:
kind: Role
name: pod-list-exec
apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io
---
apiVersion: batch/v1beta1
kind: CronJob
metadata:
name: zk-maint
namespace: default
labels:
app: zk-maint
tier: jobs
spec:
schedule: "45 3 * * *"
successfulJobsHistoryLimit: 3
failedJobsHistoryLimit: 1
concurrencyPolicy: Forbid
jobTemplate:
spec:
template:
spec:
containers:
- name: zk-maint
image: myorg/zkmaint:latest
serviceAccountName: zk-maint
restartPolicy: OnFailure
imagePullSecrets:
- name: azure-container-registry

Answer 3

This seems like an anti-pattern. Why can't you just run your worker pod as a job pod?
Regardless you seem pretty convinced you need to do this. Here is what I would do.
Take your worker pod and wrap your shell execution in a simple webservice, it's 10 minutes of work with just about any language. Expose the port and put a service in front of that worker/workers. Then your job pods can simply curl ..svc.cluster.local:/ (unless you've futzed with dns).

Answer 4

It sounds as though you might want to run scheduled work within the pod itself rather than doing this at the Kubernetes level. I would approach this as a cronjob within the container, using traditional Linux crontab. Consider:
kind: Pod
apiVersion: v1
metadata:
name: shell
spec:
init-containers:
- name: shell
image: "nicolaka/netshoot"
command:
- /bin/sh
- -c
- |
echo "0 */5 * * * /opt/whatever/bin/do-the-thing" | crontab -
sleep infinity
If you want to track logs from those processes, that will require a fluentd type of mechanism to track those log files.

Answer 5

I managed to do this by creating a custom image with doctl (DigitalOcean's command line interface) and kubectl. The CronJob object would use these two commands to download the cluster configuration and run a command against a container.
Here is a sample CronJob:
apiVersion: batch/v1beta1
kind: CronJob
metadata:
name: drupal-cron
spec:
schedule: "*/5 * * * *"
concurrencyPolicy: Forbid
jobTemplate:
spec:
template:
spec:
containers:
- name: drupal-cron
image: juampynr/digital-ocean-cronjob:latest
env:
- name: DIGITALOCEAN_ACCESS_TOKEN
valueFrom:
secretKeyRef:
name: api
key: key
command: ["/bin/bash","-c"]
args:
- doctl kubernetes cluster kubeconfig save drupster;
POD_NAME=$(kubectl get pods -l tier=frontend -o=jsonpath='{.items[0].metadata.name}');
kubectl exec $POD_NAME -c drupal -- vendor/bin/drush core:cron;
restartPolicy: OnFailure
Here is the Docker image that the CronJob uses: https://hub.docker.com/repository/docker/juampynr/digital-ocean-cronjob
If you are not using DigitalOcean, figure out how to download the cluster configuration so kubectl can use it. For example, with Google Cloud, you would have to download gcloud.
Here is the project repository where I implemented this https://github.com/juampynr/drupal8-do.

Answer 6

This one should help .
apiVersion: batch/v1beta1
kind: CronJob
metadata:
name: hello
spec:
schedule: "*/30 * * * *"
jobTemplate:
spec:
template:
spec:
containers:
- name: hello
image: busybox
args:
- /bin/sh
- -c
kubectl exec -it <podname> "sh script.sh ";
restartPolicy: OnFailure