State & Data persistence

Axual Platform data is stored in a few locations, use these links for the component details: Apache Kafka, Vault and MySQL.

Most components of the Axual Platform are stateless microservices that allow for easy horizontal scaling. The Rest Proxy is an exception.

Kafka

Kafka is the primary storage of business data of the Axual Platform and should be considered critical.Apache Kafka has built-in mechanisms to ensure data is always available, primarily Replication and In-Sync Replicas (ISR).What this boils down to is that there is no need to replicate the underlying storage used by Kafka.
Even the concept of making snapshots of storage and restoring these clashes with the real-time nature of data on Kafka.

Kafka benefits hugely from fast disk I/O, the best storage provides the best Kafka experience.

Vault

Hashicorp Vault is used to store the following:

  • Cluster credentials for self-service, for example the superuser certificate and key

  • Connector credentials

  • SASL credentials

Although Vault can be deployed as part of the Axual Governance Helm charts in a clustered setup, it is preferred to use an Enterprise level Vault.

SQL

MySQL or MariaDB contain all configurations of the Self Service and Keycloak.Although MySQL can be deployed as part of the Axual Governance Helm charts, it is preferred to use an Enterprise level database. Database details are in Kubernetes requirements.