The goal of this idea collection is to give a solution on how to run a Minecraft Network in Kubernetes. Administrators should be able to easily scale and manage big Clusters regardless of their size and still be flexible enough to implement own business logic.
Since Kubernetes is awesome and allows you to deploy any kind of Apps, you could just go ahead and make your own Minecraft Cluster architectures. So this is one opinionated solution! ;D
All components are coupled using labels and are together making up a Cluster.
A Cluster combines the Server and Proxy components and is considered the highest-level-resource.
Give all resources ProxyNet/Proxy/Server these labels:
- label
minekube-resourceexists - and label
minekube-clusterNameset to the desired Cluster name
Note: A Cluster is a concept and exists in form of the minekube-clusterName label on each Pod.
A ProxyNet is a network of interconnected Proxies to balance hundreds and thousands of players concurrently. One ProxyNet (so the Proxies in it) is meant to be deployed at one geographical area where your target players are for minimal network latency. With that being said, there are also Servers in a ProxyNet also to provide little network latency.
Give all Proxy Pods these labels:
- label
minekube-resource=proxy - and label
minekube-proxyNetNameset to the desired ProxyNet name
Note: A ProxyNet is a concept and exists in form of minekube-proxyNetName labels on each Proxy Pod.
A Proxy presents a Minecraft-Proxy. Proxies join one ProxyNet.
How to create Proxies and let them join a ProxyNet?
You decide how Proxy Pods are being created.
Reasonably use Deployments for stateless and StatefulSets for stateful Proxies. Make awesome benefit of Kubernetes features like CPU usage based Horizontal Pod Autoscaler or Rolling Updates!
Finally as described in the ProxyNet section to let Proxies join a ProxyNet
give the Pod the label minekube-resource=proxy and set minekube-proxyNetName
to the desired ProxyNet name.
Note: A Proxy is a concept and exists in form of the minekube-resource=proxy label on each Proxy Pod.
A Server resource presents one Minecraft Server.
How to create Servers and let them join a ProxyNet?
You decide how Server Pods are being created.
For instance you could use a Job, Deployment (replica=1) or StatefulSet (replica=1) for each new Server.
Note: A Server is a concept and exists in form of the minekube-resource=server label on each Server Pod.
I thought about plenty solutions and they got pretty complex and hard to implement as I was writing different concepts. I think this is the best resolution between simplicity, flexibility and extendability.
P.S. Rob Pike is right by saying Simplicity is Complicated :D