Oracle Database Operator for Kubernetes

Make Oracle Database Kubernetes Native

As part of Oracle's resolution to make Oracle Database Kubernetes native (that is, observable and operable by Kubernetes), Oracle released the Oracle Database Operator for Kubernetes (OraOperator or the operator). OraOperator extends the Kubernetes API with custom resources and controllers for automating the management of the Oracle Database lifecycle.

Supported Database Configurations in V1.2.0

In this v1.2.0 production release, OraOperator supports the following database configurations, and controllers:

• Oracle Autonomous Database:
  • Oracle Autonomous Database shared Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) (ADB-S)
  • Oracle Autonomous Database on dedicated Cloud infrastructure (ADB-D)
  • Oracle Autonomous Container Database (ACD), the infrastructure for provisioning Autonomous Databases.
• Containerized Single Instance databases (SIDB) deployed in the Oracle Kubernetes Engine (OKE) and any k8s where OraOperator is deployed
• Containerized Oracle Globally Distributed Databases(GDD) deployed in OKE and any k8s where OraOperator is deployed
• Oracle Multitenant Databases (CDB/PDBs)
• Oracle Base Database Service (OBDS) on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI)
• Oracle Data Guard
• Oracle Database Observability
• Oracle Database Rest Service (ORDS) instances

New Lifecycle Features in V1.2.0 Release (Controllers Enhancements)

• ORDSSERVICES
  • Install on SIDB and ADB
  • Provision and Delete ORDS instances
• SIDB
  • Oracle Database 23ai Free support
  • Oracle Database 23ai Free-lite support
  • SIDB resource management
  • True Cache support for Free SIDB databases (Preview)
  • Observer for FastStartFailover with Data Guard
  • Snapshot Standby support in Data Guard setup
• Globally Distributed Database : Support for Oracle Database 23ai Raft replication
• Autonomous Database: support for Database cloning
• Multitenant DB:
  • ORDS-based Controller: assertive deletion policy.
  • New LRES based Controller (ARM & AM)
    • PDBs settings with init parameters config map
    • Assertive deletion policy.
• Database Observability (preview)
  • Support for Database Logs (in addition to Metrics)
  • Support for the latest Exporter container images
  • Bug Fix: Prometheus label config
• Oracle Base Database Service: support for Oracle Database 23ai Cloning, using KMS Vaults, PDB creation.

New Product Features

*The Operator itself, as a product, brings the following new features:

• Published on operatorhub.io
• Operator Lifecycle Manager (OLM) support (install from operatorhub.io)
• Validated on Google Kubernetes Engine

Overall Features Summary

This release of Oracle Database Operator for Kubernetes (the operator) supports the following lifecycle operations:

• ADB-S/ADB-D: Provision, bind, start, stop, terminate (soft/hard), scale (up/down), long-term backup, manual restore, cloning.
• ACD: Provision, bind, restart, terminate (soft/hard)
• SIDB: Provision, clone, patch (in-place/out-of-place), update database initialization parameters, update database configuration (Flashback, archiving), Oracle Enterprise Manager (EM) Express (basic console), Oracle REST Data Service (ORDS) to support REST based SQL, PDB management, SQL Developer Web, Application Express (Apex), Resource management, True Cache, Observer for FastStartFailover (Data Guard), and Snapshot Standby (Data Guard)
• ORDS Services: Provision and delete ORDS instances
• Globally Distrib. (Sharded): Provision/deploy sharded databases and the shard topology, Add a new shard, Delete an existing shard, Raft replication.
• Oracle Multitenant Database (choice of controller): Bind to a CDB, Create a  PDB, Plug a  PDB, Unplug a PDB, Delete a PDB, Clone a PDB, Open/Close a PDB, Assertive deletion policy
• Oracle Base Database Service (OBDS): Provision, bind, scale shape Up/Down, Scale Storage Up, Terminate and Update License, Cloning, PDB creation, using KMS Vaults on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI)
• Oracle Data Guard: Provision a Standby for the SIDB resource, Create a Data Guard Configuration, Perform a Switchover, Patch Primary and Standby databases in Data Guard Configuration
• Oracle Database Observability: create, patch, delete databaseObserver resources (Logs and Metrics)
• Watch over a set of namespaces or all the namespaces in the cluster using the WATCH_NAMESPACE environment variable of the operator deployment

Release Status

This production release has been installed and tested on the following Kubernetes platforms:

• Oracle Container Engine for Kubernetes (OKE) with Kubernetes 1.24
• Oracle Linux Cloud Native Environment(OLCNE) 1.6
• Azure Kubernetes Service
• Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service
• Google Kubernetes Engine
• Red Hat OKD
• Minikube with version v1.29.0

Prerequisites

Oracle strongly recommends that you ensure your system meets the following Prerequisites.

• Install cert-manager

  The operator uses webhooks for validating user input before persisting it in etcd. Webhooks require TLS certificates that are generated and managed by a certificate manager.

  Install the certificate manager with the following command:

  kubectl apply -f https://github.com/cert-manager/cert-manager/releases/download/v1.16.2/cert-manager.yaml

• Create Role Bindings for Access Management

  OraOperator supports the following two modes of deployment:

  1. Cluster Scoped Deployment

  This is the default mode, in which OraOperator is deployed to operate in a cluster, and to monitor all the namespaces in the cluster.

  • Grant the serviceaccount:oracle-database-operator-system:default clusterwide access for the resources by applying cluster-role-binding.yaml

      kubectl apply -f rbac/cluster-role-binding.yaml

  • Next, apply the oracle-database-operator.yaml to deploy the Operator

      kubectl apply -f oracle-database-operator.yaml

  2. Namespace Scoped Deployment

  In this mode, OraOperator can be deployed to operate in a namespace, and to monitor one or many namespaces.

  • Grant serviceaccount:oracle-database-operator-system:default service account with resource access in the required namespaces. For example, to monitor only the default namespace, apply the default-ns-role-binding.yaml

      kubectl apply -f rbac/default-ns-role-binding.yaml

    To watch additional namespaces, create different role binding files for each namespace, using default-ns-role-binding.yaml as a template, and changing the metadata.name and metadata.namespace fields

  • Next, edit the oracle-database-operator.yaml to add the required namespaces under WATCH_NAMESPACE. Use comma-delimited values for multiple namespaces.

    - name: WATCH_NAMESPACE
      value: "default"

  • Finally, apply the edited oracle-database-operator.yaml to deploy the Operator

      kubectl apply -f oracle-database-operator.yaml

• ClusterRole and ClusterRoleBinding for NodePort services

  To expose services on each node's IP and port (the NodePort), apply the node-rbac.yaml. Note that this step is not required for LoadBalancer services.

    kubectl apply -f rbac/node-rbac.yaml

Installation

Install Oracle DB Operator

After you have completed the preceding prerequisite changes, you can install the operator. To install the operator in the cluster quickly, you can apply the modified oracle-database-operator.yaml file from the preceding step.

Run the following command

kubectl apply -f oracle-database-operator.yaml

Install Oracle DB Operator

After you have completed the preceding prerequisite changes, you can install the operator. To install the operator in the cluster quickly, you can apply the modified oracle-database-operator.yaml file from the preceding step.

Run the following command

kubectl apply -f oracle-database-operator.yaml

Ensure that the operator pods are up and running. For high availability, operator pod replicas are set to a default of 3. You can scale this setting up or down.

$ kubectl get pods -n oracle-database-operator-system

  NAME                                                                 READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
  pod/oracle-database-operator-controller-manager-78666fdddb-s4xcm     1/1     Running   0          11d
  pod/oracle-database-operator-controller-manager-78666fdddb-5k6n4     1/1     Running   0          11d
  pod/oracle-database-operator-controller-manager-78666fdddb-t6bzb     1/1     Running   0          11d

• Check the resources

You should see that the operator is up and running, along with the shipped controllers.

For more details, see Oracle Database Operator Installation Instructions.

Documentation

Getting Started with the Operator (Quickstart)

The following quickstarts are designed for specific database configurations:

• Oracle Autonomous Database
• Oracle Autonomous Container Database
• Containerized Oracle Single Instance Database and Data Guard
• Containerized Oracle Globally Distributed Database
• Oracle Multitenant Database
• Oracle Base Database Service (OBDS)

The following quickstart is designed for non-database configurations:

• Oracle Database Observability

The following quickstart is designed for non-database configurations:

• Oracle Database Observability

Examples

YAML file templates are available under /config/samples. You can copy and edit these template files to configure them for your use cases.

Uninstall the Operator

To uninstall the operator, the final step consists of deciding whether you want to delete the custom resource definitions (CRDs) and Kubernetes APIServices introduced into the cluster by the operator. Choose one of the following options:

• Delete the CRDs and APIServices

  To delete all the CRD instances deployed to cluster by the operator, run the following commands, where is the namespace of the cluster object:

  kubectl delete oraclerestdataservice.database.oracle.com --all -n <namespace>
  kubectl delete singleinstancedatabase.database.oracle.com --all -n <namespace>
  kubectl delete shardingdatabase.database.oracle.com --all -n <namespace>
  kubectl delete dbcssystem.database.oracle.com --all -n <namespace>
  kubectl delete autonomousdatabase.database.oracle.com --all -n <namespace>
  kubectl delete autonomousdatabasebackup.database.oracle.com --all -n <namespace>
  kubectl delete autonomousdatabaserestore.database.oracle.com --all -n <namespace>
  kubectl delete autonomouscontainerdatabase.database.oracle.com --all -n <namespace>
  kubectl delete cdb.database.oracle.com --all -n <namespace>
  kubectl delete pdb.database.oracle.com --all -n <namespace>
  kubectl delete dataguardbrokers.database.oracle.com --all -n <namespace>
  kubectl delete databaseobserver.observability.oracle.com --all -n <namespace>

• Delete the RBACs

  cat rbac/* | kubectl delete -f -

• Delete the Deployment

  After all CRD instances are deleted, it is safe to remove the CRDs, APIServices and operator deployment. To remove these files, use the following command:

  kubectl delete -f oracle-database-operator.yaml --ignore-not-found=true

  Note: If the CRD instances are not deleted, and the operator is deleted by using the preceding command, then operator deployment and instance objects (pods, services, PVCs, and so on) are deleted. However, if that happens, then the CRD deletion stops responding. This is because the CRD instances have properties that prevent their deletion, and that can only be removed by the operator pod, which is deleted when the APIServices are deleted.

Documentation for the supported Oracle Database configurations

• Oracle Autonomous Database
• Components of Dedicated Autonomous Database
• Oracle Database Single Instance
• Oracle Globally Distributed Database
• Oracle Database Cloud Service

Contributing

This project welcomes contributions from the community. Before submitting a pull request, please review our contribution guide

Help

You can submit a GitHub issue, or submit an issue and then file an Oracle Support service request. To file an issue or a service request, use the following product ID: 14430.

Security

Please consult the security guide for our responsible security vulnerability disclosure process

Managing Sensitive Data

Kubernetes secrets are the usual means for storing credentials or passwords input for access. The operator reads the Secrets programmatically, which limits exposure of sensitive data. However, to protect your sensitive data, Oracle strongly recommends that you set and get sensitive data from Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Vault, or from third-party Vaults.

The following is an example of a YAML file fragment for specifying Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Vault as the repository for the admin password.

 adminPassword:
      ociSecretOCID: ocid1.vaultsecret.oc1...

Examples in this repository where passwords are entered on the command line are for demonstration purposes only.

License

Copyright (c) 2022, 2025 Oracle and/or its affiliates. Released under the Universal Permissive License v1.0 as shown at https://oss.oracle.com/licenses/upl/