nanocluster

The NanoPI Neo3 cluster documentation project

NanoPI Neo3 Cluster

This project is a documentation project for the NanoPI Neo3 cluster. The NanoPI Neo3 is a small single board computer with a quad core ARM processor and 1GB of RAM. The NanoPI Neo3 is a low cost single board computer that is ideal for building a small cluster. The NanoPI Neo3 is available from FriendlyElec.

Cluster Hardware

The NanoPI Neo3 cluster is built using the following hardware:

• 6 x NanoPI Neo3 single board computers
• Netgear GS308 8 port gigabit switch
• Anker 60W 6 port USB charger

Cluster Software

Install and configure nodes

The nodes uses a dietpi image for the NanoPi NEO3. Please, extract the image from the archive (.img.gz) with a file manager before restoring it with Gnome Disks to the SD cards. After that, mount the DIETPISETUP partition manually to make sure to have write access to the volume.

sudo mount /dev/sda2 /mnt
ls -lha /mnt

The resolt should be:

total 46K
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root  16K Jan  1  1970 .
drwxr-xr-x 18 root root 4.0K Feb 12 14:21 ..
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root root  336 Feb 20 01:27 dietpiEnv.txt
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root root  18K Feb 20 01:27 dietpi.txt
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root root 3.9K Feb 20 01:27 dietpi-wifi.txt
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root root  440 Feb 20 01:27 Readme-DietPi-Config.txt

Then use the script to replace the default values. In this case the Micro SD card is used for the firts node:

sudo ./dietpi 1

The script changed the hostname of the nodes to neo with a host nuber from the first argument of the script. So ./dietpi 1 changes it to neo1. It also sets a static ip address for the 192.168.1.0/24 network. In this case it became 192.168.1.101. More information is in the network configuration folder: /mnt/etc/network.

Tip

Generate a ssh key pair bevore using the script. It will copy the ed25519 public key from the users home dirictory.

Umount /mnt and repeat for the other nodes:

sudo umount /mnt

Tip

Validate with ssh [email protected].

Install Kubernetes

Make sure the /etc/ansible/playbooks folders exists:

sudo mkdir -p /etc/ansible/playbooks

Install ansible-core on the workstation and configure it.

/etc/ansible/ansible.cfg
---
[defaults]
host_key_checking = False
playbooks = /etc/ansible/playbooks

Add the managed hosts

/etc/ansible/hosts
---
[controllers]
192.168.107.101

[nodes]
192.168.107.101
192.168.107.102
192.168.107.103
192.168.107.104
192.168.107.105
192.168.107.106

use this playbook for installing Kubernetes. Ansible requires python so use this script to install it before running:

ansible-playbook -i /etc/ansible/hosts /etc/ansible/playbooks/nodes.yaml

Kubernetes config

Copy the Kubernetes config to the workstation to use kubectl.

mkdir ~/.kube && ssh [email protected] "/snap/bin/microk8s config" > ~/.kube/config

Cluster filesystem

sudo /snap/bin/microceph cluster bootstrap

Kubernetes dashboard

Access the Kubernetes dashboard.

1. Login

ssh [email protected]

2. Create a token

microk8s kubectl create token default

3. Run the dashboard in the background

sudo /snap/bin/microk8s kubectl port-forward -n kube-system service/kubernetes-dashboard 10443:443 --address 0.0.0.0 &

Redis postgres secrets

echo -n 'redis' | base64