GKE on Google Cloud Platform Deployment

OpenMetadata supports the Installation and Running of Application on Google Kubernetes Engine through Helm Charts. However, there are some additional configurations which needs to be done as prerequisites for the same.

Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) Auto Pilot Mode is not compatible with one of OpenMetadata Dependencies - ElasticSearch. The reason being that ElasticSearch Pods require Elevated permissions to run initContainers for changing configurations which is not allowed by GKE AutoPilot PodSecurityPolicy.

All the code snippets in this section assume the default namespace for kubernetes.

Prerequisites

Cloud Database with CloudSQL and ElasticCloud for GCP as Search Engine

It is recommended to use GCP Cloud SQL services for Database and Elastic Cloud GCP for Search Engine for Production. We support -

Cloud SQL (MySQL) engine version 8 or higher
Cloud SQL (postgreSQL) engine version 15 or higher
ElasticSearch version 9.x (minimum 9.0.0, recommended 9.3.0)

We recommend -

CloudSQL to be Multi Zone Available
Elastic Cloud Environment with multiple zones and minimum 2 nodes

Make sure to increase sort_buffer_size (for MySQL) or work_mem (for PostgreSQL) to the recommended value of 20MB or more using flags. This is especially important when running migrations to prevent Out of Sort Memory Error. You can revert the setting once the migrations are complete.

Kubernetes Orchestrator Configuration (Recommended)

Starting with OpenMetadata 1.12, we recommend using the Kubernetes native orchestrator for running ingestion pipelines. This eliminates the need for Apache Airflow and simplifies your deployment.

The Kubernetes orchestrator runs ingestion pipelines as native K8s Jobs and CronJobs. For full documentation on features, configuration options, and troubleshooting, see the Kubernetes Orchestrator Guide.

The recommended OMJob Operator approach requires installing Custom Resource Definitions (CRDs), which needs elevated cluster permissions. If your cluster policies don’t allow CRDs, you can disable the operator by setting useOMJobOperator: false and omjobOperator.enabled: false in your values file to use native K8s Jobs instead.

OpenMetadata Values Configuration

Create your openmetadata-values.yaml with the following configuration:

# openmetadata-values.yaml
openmetadata:
  config:
    # Database configuration
    elasticsearch:
      host: <ELASTIC_CLOUD_SERVICE_ENDPOINT_WITHOUT_HTTPS>
      searchType: elasticsearch
      port: 443
      scheme: https
      connectionTimeoutSecs: 5
      socketTimeoutSecs: 60
      keepAliveTimeoutSecs: 600
      batchSize: 10
      auth:
        enabled: true
        username: <ELASTIC_CLOUD_USERNAME>
        password:
          secretRef: elasticsearch-secrets
          secretKey: openmetadata-elasticsearch-password
    database:
      host: <GCP_CLOUD_SQL_ENDPOINT_IP>
      port: 3306
      driverClass: com.mysql.cj.jdbc.Driver
      dbScheme: mysql
      dbUseSSL: true
      databaseName: <GCP_CLOUD_SQL_DATABASE_NAME>
      auth:
        username: <GCP_CLOUD_SQL_DATABASE_USERNAME>
        password:
          secretRef: mysql-secrets
          secretKey: openmetadata-mysql-password

    # Kubernetes Orchestrator configuration
    pipelineServiceClientConfig:
      enabled: true
      type: "k8s"
      metadataApiEndpoint: http://openmetadata:8585/api

      k8s:
        useOMJobOperator: true

# Enable the OMJob Operator (recommended for production)
omjobOperator:
  enabled: true

For advanced configuration options such as resource limits, job lifecycle settings, failure diagnostics, RBAC, and security contexts, see the Kubernetes Orchestrator Guide.

For Database as PostgreSQL, use the below config for database values:

database:
  host: <GCP_CLOUD_SQL_ENDPOINT_IP>
  port: 5432
  driverClass: org.postgresql.Driver
  dbScheme: postgresql
  dbUseSSL: true
  databaseName: <GCP_CLOUD_SQL_DATABASE_NAME>
  auth:
    username: <GCP_CLOUD_SQL_DATABASE_USERNAME>
    password:
      secretRef: sql-secrets
      secretKey: openmetadata-sql-password

Create Kubernetes Secrets

Create the required secrets for CloudSQL and ElasticSearch:

# Database secret
kubectl create secret generic mysql-secrets \
  --from-literal=openmetadata-mysql-password=<YOUR_CLOUDSQL_PASSWORD>

# ElasticSearch secret
kubectl create secret generic elasticsearch-secrets \
  --from-literal=openmetadata-elasticsearch-password=<YOUR_ELASTIC_CLOUD_PASSWORD>

Deploy OpenMetadata

# Add the OpenMetadata Helm repository
helm repo add open-metadata https://helm.open-metadata.org/
helm repo update

# Install OpenMetadata (no dependencies chart needed with K8s orchestrator)
helm install openmetadata open-metadata/openmetadata \
  --values openmetadata-values.yaml

With the Kubernetes orchestrator, you don’t need to deploy the openmetadata-dependencies chart that includes Airflow. This significantly simplifies your deployment.

Verify the Deployment

# Check pods are running
kubectl get pods

# Check the K8s orchestrator health in OpenMetadata UI
# Navigate to Settings → Preferences → Health

For deployments using Apache Airflow as the orchestrator, see the GKE Airflow Orchestrator guide.

​GKE on Google Cloud Platform Deployment

​Prerequisites

​Cloud Database with CloudSQL and ElasticCloud for GCP as Search Engine

​Kubernetes Orchestrator Configuration (Recommended)

​OpenMetadata Values Configuration

​Create Kubernetes Secrets

​Deploy OpenMetadata

​Verify the Deployment

GKE on Google Cloud Platform Deployment

Prerequisites

Cloud Database with CloudSQL and ElasticCloud for GCP as Search Engine

Kubernetes Orchestrator Configuration (Recommended)

OpenMetadata Values Configuration

Create Kubernetes Secrets

Deploy OpenMetadata

Verify the Deployment