spotfire-webplayer

A Helm chart for Spotfire Web Player.

Homepage: https://github.com/spotfiresoftware/spotfire-cloud-deployment-kit ⧉

Requirements

Kubernetes: >=1.24.0-0

Repository	Name	Version
file://../spotfire-common	spotfire-common	5.0.0

Overview

This chart deploys the Spotfire® Web Player ⧉ service on a Kubernetes ⧉ cluster using the Helm ⧉ package manager.

The Spotfire Web Player pod includes:

• A Fluent Bit ⧉ sidecar container for log forwarding.
• Service annotations for Prometheus ⧉ scrapers. The Prometheus server discovers the service endpoint using these specifications and scrapes metrics from the exporter.
• Predefined configuration for horizontal pod autoscaling with KEDA ⧉ and Prometheus.

This chart is tested to work with Elasticsearch ⧉, Prometheus ⧉ and KEDA ⧉.

Prerequisites

• A deployed Spotfire Server release using the Spotfire Server ⧉ chart.
• A Spotfire distribution file (Spotfire.Dxp.sdn) with client packages deployed to a deployment area (so that the required licenses are in place for the Spotfire Web Player to start).

Usage

Replace all placeholders (shown in angle brackets like <NAMESPACE>) with your actual values before running the commands.

Step 1: Create namespace

kubectl create namespace "<NAMESPACE>"

Step 2: Prepare Spotfire Server service addresses

The Web Player service needs the Spotfire Server backend service name, and optionally the log-forwarder service name if you want application logs sent to the Spotfire log-forwarder.

If the Spotfire Server chart was installed in the same namespace with the release name <SPOTFIRE_SERVER_RELEASE>, typical values are:

• nodemanagerConfig.serverBackendAddress="<SPOTFIRE_SERVER_RELEASE>-spotfire-server"
• logging.logForwarderAddress="<SPOTFIRE_SERVER_RELEASE>-log-forwarder" when the Spotfire Server chart log-forwarder is enabled

Step 3: Deploy the Spotfire Service for Web Player chart

Create a values.yaml file (for example, spotfire-webplayer-values.yaml). See the Values table for details of the values.

# spotfire-webplayer-values.yaml
acceptEUA: true

global:
  spotfire:
    image:
      registry: "<REGISTRY>"
      pullPolicy: Always

nodemanagerConfig:
  serverBackendAddress: "<SPOTFIRE_SERVER_SERVICE>"

logging:
  logForwarderAddress: "<LOG_FORWARDER_SERVICE>"

Install the chart:

helm install "<SPOTFIRE_WEBPLAYER_RELEASE>" . \
  --namespace="<NAMESPACE>" \
  --create-namespace \
  --values spotfire-webplayer-values.yaml

Note:

• Setting acceptEUA: true means you agree that your use of the Spotfire software is governed by the terms of the Cloud Software Group, Inc. End User Agreement ⧉.
• Replace <REGISTRY> with your private registry address where the Spotfire container images are stored.
• Replace <SPOTFIRE_SERVER_SERVICE> with the Spotfire Server service name that the Web Player service should connect to.
• Replace <LOG_FORWARDER_SERVICE> with the log-forwarder service name if you want to forward logs to the Spotfire log-forwarder. If you do not want to use a log-forwarder service, omit logging.logForwarderAddress.

Check pod status:

kubectl get pods --namespace "<NAMESPACE>" \
  -l "app.kubernetes.io/name=spotfire-webplayer,app.kubernetes.io/instance=<SPOTFIRE_WEBPLAYER_RELEASE>"

Configuration

Configuring

You can override the default configuration settings by providing a custom configuration file.

The following example configuration keys are available in the chart:

• config."Spotfire.Dxp.Worker.Core.config"
• config."Spotfire.Dxp.Worker.Web.config"
• config."Spotfire.Dxp.Worker.Host.dll.config"
• config."log4net.config"

Note: If a configuration file key is non-empty, it overrides the default service configuration file built in the container image.

See Service configuration files ⧉ and Service logs configuration ⧉.

Example: Use my-Spotfire.Dxp.Worker.Web.config instead of the default Spotfire.Dxp.Worker.Web.config:

helm install "<SPOTFIRE_WEBPLAYER_RELEASE>" . \
    --set acceptEUA=true \
  --set nodemanagerConfig.serverBackendAddress="<SPOTFIRE_SERVER_SERVICE>" \
  --set logging.logForwarderAddress="<LOG_FORWARDER_SERVICE>" \
    --set-file config.'Spotfire\.Dxp\.Worker\.Web\.config'=my-Spotfire.Dxp.Worker.Web.config

Note: The keys are quoted because they contain periods. When you set them from the command line, you must escape the periods with a backslash as shown in the example.

Getting the container default configuration files

You can copy the default configuration files from the container image to use them as templates for your custom configuration.

Note: The configuration file content can vary by version.

Example: Use the following command to get a copy of the original configuration file Spotfire.Dxp.Worker.Web.config. You can replace the filename to get a copy any of the other container configuration files.

docker run --rm spotfire/spotfire-webplayer:<imagetag> cat /opt/spotfire/nodemanager/nm/services/WEB_PLAYER/Spotfire.Dxp.Worker.Web.config > Spotfire.Dxp.Worker.Web.config

Adding a credentials profile for connectors to services as a file

A credentials profile is a method for storing data source credentials to log in automatically when you use data connections in web clients, Automation Services, and scheduled updates.

1. Get a copy of the service configuration Spotfire.Dxp.Worker.Host.dll.config. (See how in the previous example.
2. Update the connector's authentication mode to WebConfig.
3. Create a credentials profile in the following format, renaming the file with credentials_profile_name without extension.

   <entry profile="credentials_profile_name">
     <allowed-usages>
         <entry server-regex="database\.example\.com" />
         <entry connector-id="Spotfire.GoogleAnalyticsAdapter" />
     </allowed-usages>
     <username>my_username</username>
     <password>my_password</password>
   </entry>
   

4. Using extraVolumeMounts, mount the file to the location /secrets/credentials (overriding using the service configuration).
5. See the configuration section to upgrade the deployment.

For more information, see Credentials profiles for connectors ⧉.

Custom modules

The image uses the modules that are built into the image and does not download images from or use a Spotfire deployment area ⧉. To use your own custom deployment files (or modules) you can use the argument volumes.customModules to set a Volume that will be used for loading extra custom modules. See user-guide/examples/webplayer-custom-modules/README.md in the Spotfire Cloud Deployment Kit repository for an example of how to use this feature.

Adding additional ODBC drivers for Spotfire Connectors

If you want to use certain Spotfire connectors that are not available in the default image, you will need to install the required ODBC driver for the connector in the image. Please refer to the README.md file for the spotfire-webplayer container image for detailed instructions on how to extend the image and add additional ODBC drivers.

Once you have extended the image and included the necessary ODBC drivers, you must push the modified image to a registry that can be accessed by the Kubernetes cluster. Finally, update the spotfire.image.* values in your configuration to point to the new image.

Scaling

To change the number of replicas managed by Helm, update replicaCount in your values file and run helm upgrade.

Example:

replicaCount: 3

helm upgrade "<SPOTFIRE_WEBPLAYER_RELEASE>" . \
  --namespace="<NAMESPACE>" \
  --values spotfire-webplayer-values.yaml

Autoscaling with KEDA

To use KEDA ⧉ for autoscaling, first install KEDA in the Kubernetes cluster. You must also install a Prometheus instance that scrapes metrics from the Spotfire pods.

Example: A values.yaml snippet configuration for enabling autoscaling with KEDA:

kedaAutoscaling:
  enabled: true
  spotfireConfig:
    prometheusServerAddress: http://prometheus-server.monitor.svc.cluster.local
  threshold: 4
  minReplicas: 1
  maxReplicas: 3

The spotfire-webplayer has the following autoscaling defaults:

• metric name: spotfire_Spotfire_Webplayer_Web_Player_health_status (Health status Web Player service performance counter).
• query: the sum of spotfire_Spotfire_Webplayer_Web_Player_health_status counters of the Web Player instances for the release name.

For any Web Player instance, Health status can present one of the following values:

• 0: OK. Indicates that the instance is under no pressure.
• 5: Strained. Indicates that the instance is under pressure but is not a problem.
• 8: Exhausted. Indicates that the instance is under a higher load, so avoid routing new users to this instance, but current users can keep working in this instance.

Health status is a composite metric consisting of a few things. For most common scenarios, it is mainly affected by CPU and memory consumption.

With these default settings (threshold 4), if one Web Player instance is strained or exhausted, then another instance is started to scale out the service. If most of them are OK, then the service scales in.

For more information, see Web Player service performance counters ⧉.

Note: You can tune nodemanagerConfig.preStopDrainingTimeoutSeconds to allow time for draining sessions when scaling in.

To mitigate toggling scenarios, you can control the KEDA scale down policy. For example, to scale down only one pod per hour:

kedaAutoscaling:
  advanced:
    horizontalPodAutoscalerConfig:
      behavior:
        scaleDown:
          policies:

          - type: Pods
            value: 1
            periodSeconds: 3600

For more advanced scenarios, see kedaAutoscaling.advanced ⧉ and kedaAutoscaling.fallback ⧉.

Additionally, you can define your own custom scaling triggers ⧉. Helm template functionality is available:

kedaAutoscaling:
  triggers: {} # list of triggers to activate scaling of the target resource

Note: For more details on the autoscaling defaults, see templates/keda-autoscaling.yaml in the chart.

Update the Pod Deletion Cost annotation automatically

The controller.kubernetes.io/pod-deletion-cost ⧉ pod annotation influences in which order Kubernetes selects the pod to delete, for example, during scale-in.

Note that pod annotations should not be updated 'too' often (minutes rather than seconds), depending on the size of the cluster. The reason for this is that the Kubernetes API server is highly optimized for reads. sleepIntervalSeconds controls how often the updater should run, thresholdPercent and minAbsDelta controls how large the change must be for the annotation to be updated, that is, it specifies the size of a meaningful change.

podDeletionCost:
  enabled: true

The spotfire-webplayer has the following defaults:

• cost formula: -100000*spotfire_Spotfire_WorkerHost_MayBeRecycled + spotfire_Spotfire_Webplayer_open_documents + 2*spotfire_Spotfire_Webplayer_cached_documents + 5*spotfire_Spotfire_Webplayer_analyses_under_scheduled_updates_control.
• sleepIntervalSeconds: 120.
• thresholdPercent: 10
• minAbsDelta: 5

Performance and Storage

Improved performance and concurrency for temporary folder

To optimize data reuse, the Spotfire Web Player uses its temporary folder (default: /opt/spotfire/nodemanager/nm/services/WEB_PLAYER/Temp) to store temporary files and intermediate data. In scenarios where large analysis files are opened concurrently, the default temporary folder might become a bottleneck, impacting performance and throughput. It is recommended to use a more performant and larger Kubernetes volume.

Example: A values.yaml snippet for optimizing the Spotfire Web Player temp disk performance.

extraVolumeMounts:

  - mountPath: /opt/spotfire/nodemanager/nm/services/WEB_PLAYER/Temp
    name: webplayer-temp-dir-volume
extraVolumes:
  - name: webplayer-temp-dir-volume
    ephemeral: # See Kubernetes documentation for ephemeral volumes: https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/storage/ephemeral-volumes/
      volumeClaimTemplate:
        metadata:
          labels:
            type: webplayer-ephemeral-volume
        spec:
          accessModes: ["ReadWriteOnce"]
          storageClassName: <STORAGE_CLASS_NAME> # Replace with your storage class name.
          resources:
            requests:
              storage: 10Gi # Specify the desired storage size.

Note: For Azure AKS clusters, see also: Use Azure Container Storage with local NVMe ⧉.

Uninstalling

To uninstall the <SPOTFIRE_WEBPLAYER_RELEASE> release:

helm --namespace "<NAMESPACE>" uninstall "<SPOTFIRE_WEBPLAYER_RELEASE>"

Upgrading

See helm upgrade ⧉ for command documentation.

Upgrading Spotfire Server and Spotfire services

When you upgrade to a newer Spotfire Server version and newer Spotfire services versions, upgrade the Spotfire Server first, and then upgrade the Spotfire services.

Upgrading helm chart version

Please review the release notes ⧉ for any changed, moved, or renamed parameters before upgrading the release.

Values

Key	Type	Default	Description
global.spotfire.acceptEUA	bool	nil	Accept the Cloud Software Group, Inc. End User Agreement ⧉ by setting the value to true.
global.spotfire.image.pullPolicy	string	"IfNotPresent"	The global container image pull policy.
global.spotfire.image.pullSecrets	list	[]	The global container image pull secrets.
global.spotfire.image.registry	string	nil	The global container image registry. Used for spotfire/ container images, unless it is overridden.
acceptEUA	bool	nil	Accept the Cloud Software Group, Inc. End User Agreement ⧉ by setting the value to true.
affinity	object	{}
config."Spotfire.Dxp.Worker.Core.config"	string	""	A custom Spotfire.Dxp.Worker.Core.config ⧉.
config."Spotfire.Dxp.Worker.Host.dll.config"	string	""	A custom Spotfire.Dxp.Worker.Host.dll.config. See Spotfire.Dxp.Worker.Host.exe.config ⧉.
config."Spotfire.Dxp.Worker.Web.config"	string	""	A custom Spotfire.Dxp.Worker.Web.config ⧉.
extraContainers	list	[]	Additional sidecar containers to add to the service pod.
extraEnvVars	list	[]	Additional environment variables.
extraEnvVarsCM	string	""	The name of the ConfigMap containing additional environment variables.
extraEnvVarsSecret	string	""	The name of the Secret containing extra additional environment variables.
extraInitContainers	list	[]	Additional init containers to add to the service pod.
extraVolumeMounts	list	[]	Extra volumeMounts for the service container. More info: kubectl explain deployment.spec.template.spec.containers.volumeMounts.
extraVolumes	list	[]	Extra volumes for the service container. More info: kubectl explain deployment.spec.template.spec.volumes.
fluentBitSidecar.image.pullPolicy	string	"IfNotPresent"	The image pull policy for the fluent-bit logging sidecar image.
fluentBitSidecar.image.repository	string	"fluent/fluent-bit"	The image repository for fluent-bit logging sidecar.
fluentBitSidecar.image.tag	string	"4.2.3"	The image tag to use for fluent-bit logging sidecar.
fluentBitSidecar.resources	object	{}	The resources setting for fluent-bit sidecar container.
fluentBitSidecar.securityContext	object	{}	The securityContext setting for fluent-bit sidecar container. Overrides any securityContext setting on the Pod level.
fullnameOverride	string	""
image.pullPolicy	string	nil	The spotfire-server image pull policy. Overrides global.spotfire.image.pullPolicy.
image.pullSecrets	list	[]	Image pull secrets.
image.registry	string	nil	The image registry for spotfire-server. Overrides global.spotfire.image.registry value.
image.repository	string	"spotfire/spotfire-webplayer"	The spotfire-server image repository.
image.tag	string	"15.0.0-v7.0.0"	The container image tag to use.
kedaAutoscaling	object	Default values for KEDA autoscaling, see values.yaml.	KEDA autoscaling configuration. See https://keda.sh/docs/latest/concepts/scaling-deployments for more details.
kedaAutoscaling.cooldownPeriod	int	300	The period to wait after the last trigger reported active before scaling the resource back to 0.
kedaAutoscaling.maxReplicas	int	4	This setting is passed to the HPA definition that KEDA creates for a given resource and holds the maximum number of replicas of the target resource.
kedaAutoscaling.minReplicas	int	1	The minimum number of replicas KEDA scales the resource down to.
kedaAutoscaling.pollingInterval	int	30	The interval to check each trigger on.
kedaAutoscaling.spotfireConfig	object	{"prometheusServerAddress":"http://prometheus-server.monitor.svc.cluster.local"}	Spotfire specific settings.
kedaAutoscaling.spotfireConfig.prometheusServerAddress	string	"http://prometheus-server.monitor.svc.cluster.local"	REQUIRED. The URL for the Prometheus server from where metrics are fetched.
livenessProbe.enabled	bool	true
livenessProbe.failureThreshold	int	10
livenessProbe.httpGet.path	string	"/spotfire/liveness"
livenessProbe.httpGet.port	string	"registration"
livenessProbe.initialDelaySeconds	int	60
livenessProbe.periodSeconds	int	3
logging.logForwarderAddress	string	""	The spotfire-server log-forwarder name. Template.
logging.logLevel	string	"debug"	Set to debug, trace, minimal, or leave empty for info. This applies to node manager and not the service.
logging.workerhost.logConfiguration	string	"standard"	Log configuration for the service. Currently available configs are: standard, minimum, info, debug, monitoring, fullmonitoring, trace.
nameOverride	string	""
nodeSelector	object	{}
nodemanagerConfig.preStopDrainingTimeoutSeconds	int	610	The draining timeout after which the service is forcefully shut down.
nodemanagerConfig.serverBackendAddress	string	""	The spotfire-server service name. This value is evaluated as a helm template.
podAnnotations."prometheus.io/path"	string	"/spotfire/metrics"
podAnnotations."prometheus.io/port"	string	"9080"
podAnnotations."prometheus.io/scrape"	string	"true"
podDeletionCost	object	Default values for Pod Deletion Cost, see values.yaml.	Pod Deletion Cost update configuration. See https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/workloads/controllers/replicaset/#pod-deletion-cost for more details.
podDeletionCost.costFormula	string	"-100000*spotfire_Spotfire_WorkerHost_MayBeRecycled + spotfire_Spotfire_Webplayer_open_documents + 2*spotfire_Spotfire_Webplayer_cached_documents + 5*spotfire_Spotfire_Webplayer_analyses_under_scheduled_updates_control"	An awk formula using the Prometheus metric names to calculate deletion cost. Missing or not found metrics default to 0.
podDeletionCost.enabled	bool	false	Enable updating of pod deletion cost annotation.
podDeletionCost.image.pullPolicy	string	"IfNotPresent"	Image pull policy for the podDeletionCost.
podDeletionCost.image.pullSecrets	list	[]	Image pull secrets for the podDeletionCost.
podDeletionCost.image.registry	string	nil	Image registry for the podDeletionCost.
podDeletionCost.image.repository	string	"spotfire/spotfire-config"	Image repository for the podDeletionCost.
podDeletionCost.image.tag	string	"15.0.0-v7.0.0"	Image tag for the podDeletionCost.
podDeletionCost.minAbsDelta	string	"5"	Minimum numeric change to trigger a patch.
podDeletionCost.replicaCount	int	1	Number of replicas.
podDeletionCost.resources	object	{}	Specifies the standard Kubernetes resource requests and/or limits
podDeletionCost.sleepIntervalSeconds	string	"120"	How long to wait between checks (seconds).
podDeletionCost.thresholdPercent	string	"10"	Minimum % change to trigger a patch.
podSecurityContext	object	{}	The Pod securityContext setting applies to all of the containers inside the Pod.
readinessProbe.enabled	bool	false
readinessProbe.failureThreshold	int	10
readinessProbe.httpGet.path	string	"/spotfire/readiness"
readinessProbe.httpGet.port	string	"registration"
readinessProbe.initialDelaySeconds	int	60
readinessProbe.periodSeconds	int	3
replicaCount	int	1
resources	object	{}	Specifies the standard Kubernetes resource requests and/or limits
securityContext	object	{}	The securityContext setting for the service container. Overrides any securityContext setting on the Pod level.
service.port	int	9501
service.type	string	"ClusterIP"
serviceAccount.annotations	object	{}
serviceAccount.create	bool	false
serviceAccount.name	string	""
startupProbe.enabled	bool	true
startupProbe.failureThreshold	int	20
startupProbe.httpGet.path	string	"/spotfire/started"
startupProbe.httpGet.port	string	"registration"
startupProbe.initialDelaySeconds	int	60
startupProbe.periodSeconds	int	3
tolerations	list	[]
topologySpreadConstraints	list	[]
volumes.certificates.existingClaim	string	""	Defines an already-existing persistent volume claim.
volumes.certificates.subPath	string	""	The subPath of the volume to be used for the volume mount
volumes.customModules.existingClaim	string	""	When 'persistentVolumeClaim.create' is 'false', then use this value to define an already existing persistent volume claim.
volumes.customModules.persistentVolumeClaim.create	bool	false	If 'true', then a 'PersistentVolumeClaim' is created.
volumes.customModules.persistentVolumeClaim.resources	object	{"requests":{"storage":"2Gi"}}	Specifies the standard Kubernetes resource requests and/or limits for the volumes.customModules claims.
volumes.customModules.persistentVolumeClaim.storageClassName	string	""	Specifies the name of the 'StorageClass' to use for the volumes.customModules-claim.
volumes.customModules.persistentVolumeClaim.volumeName	string	nil	Specifies the name of the persistent volume to use for the volumes.customModules-claim.
volumes.customModules.subPath	string	""	The subPath of the volume to be used for the volume mount
volumes.troubleshooting.existingClaim	string	""	When 'persistentVolumeClaim.create' is 'false', then use this value to define an already existing persistent volume claim.
volumes.troubleshooting.persistentVolumeClaim.create	bool	false	If 'true', then a 'PersistentVolumeClaim' will be created.
volumes.troubleshooting.persistentVolumeClaim.resources	object	{"requests":{"storage":"2Gi"}}	Specifies the standard Kubernetes resource requests and/or limits for the volumes.troubleshooting claims.
volumes.troubleshooting.persistentVolumeClaim.storageClassName	string	""	Specifies the name of the 'StorageClass' to use for the volumes.troubleshooting-claim.
volumes.troubleshooting.persistentVolumeClaim.volumeName	string	nil	Specifies the name of the persistent volume to use for the volumes.troubleshooting-claim.
webplayerConfig.resourcePool	string	""	The web player resource pool.