How to deploy a new Spotfire Server in Kubernetes using an existing on-premise database

Product:TIBCO Spotfire Server
Versions:12.4.0 and higher

Summary:
Outlines the steps needed to deploy a new Spotfire Server in Kubernetes that uses an existing on-premesis database. This article uses PostgreSQL as the example database provider.

Details:
When using the Cloud Deployment Kit for Spotfire to deploy Spotfire using containers and Helm charts on a Kubernetes cluster, the default helm charts will create a new database by default. Follow the steps shown below to deploy a new Spotfire Server in a Kubernetes cluster using an existing on-premise database instead.

In this example, the existing on-premise database was initialized on a Windows machine using the 'create_databases.bat' script, which is provided with the Spotfire Server installation kit.
 

Resolution:
1. On the machine where the PostgreSQL server is installed, extract the contents of your Spotfire Server Windows installation kit ('TIB_sfire_server_12.x.y_win.zip') to a temporary directory. Then run the 'create_databases.bat' script under scripts\postgres_install\. This will populate a new PostgreSQL database with the values you provide to the script. For example:

PGHOST:                       dbhost.company.com
PGPORT:                       5432
DBSERVER_ADMIN_USERNAME:      postgres
DBSERVER_ADMIN_PASSWORD:      ********
SPOTFIREDB_DBNAME:            kubtss
SPOTFIREDB_USERNAME:          kubsfdbuser
SPOTFIREDB_PASSWORD:          *******
PSQL_PATH:                    C:\postgres\15\bin

Here, we have instructed the script to initialize the database using the tools provided by the PostgreSQL installation (by setting the PSQL_PATH). We set the database name to 'kubtss', and the Spotfire Server database username to 'kubsfdbuser'.

2. Go to a command prompt that can interact with your Kubernetes cluster, and deploy the new Spotfire Server. Here is an example from a Linux machine's command prompt:

$ export SF_DB_URL=jdbc:postgresql://dbhost.company.com:5432/kubtss
$ export SF_DB_USER=kubsfdbuser
$ export SF_DB_PASSWORD=*********
$ helm install tss1240existingdb . \
    --set acceptEUA=true \
    --set global.spotfire.image.registry="localhost:5000" \
    --set global.spotfire.image.pullPolicy="Always" \
    --set database.bootstrap.databaseUrl="$SF_DB_URL" \
    --set database.bootstrap.username="$SF_DB_USER" \
    --set database.bootstrap.password="$SF_DB_PASSWORD" \
    --set database.create-db.enabled=false \
    --set configuration.site.publicAddress="http://localhost"

Here, we have provided a descriptive release name to helm, "tss1240existingdb". This denotes the Spotfire server version being used (12.4.0). We are also directing helm to NOT attempt to create a new database by setting 'database.create-db.enabled=false', and instead use the credentials (database.bootstrap.username and database.bootstrap.password) and database (database.bootstrap.databaseUrl) that we already configured in the previous step.