CloudNativePG

CloudNativePG is a Kubernetes operator that manages the full lifecycle of highly available PostgreSQL clusters. It provides native Kubernetes integration for PostgreSQL via a Cluster custom resource, including automated failover, backup/restore, and rolling updates.

This showcase deploys a CloudNativePG operator, a sample PostgreSQL cluster, and pgAdmin 4 as a web-based database management UI — pre-configured to connect to the sample cluster.

Precondition

A running k3d cluster. The httpbin sample is not required for this showcase.

Installation

cd examples/cloudnative-pg
bash setup.sh

pgAdmin is exposed via Kong Gateway — the sole ingress controller in this cluster.

The following components are installed by setup.sh:

• CloudNativePG operator — Helm Chart (namespace: cnpg-system)
• PostgreSQL cluster — Cluster CR sample-pg (namespace: cloudnative-pg)
  • 1 instance (suitable for local demo)
  • Database sampledb, owner appuser
  • Exposes sample-pg-rw (read-write) and sample-pg-ro (read-only) services
• pgAdmin 4 — Helm Chart (namespace: pgadmin)
  • Pre-configured server connection to sample-pg
  • Exposed via a Kong Gateway HTTPRoute

Access pgAdmin UI

Open pgAdmin in your browser via http://pgadmin.127-0-0-1.nip.io:8080.

Login credentials:

Field	Value
Email	admin@example.com
Password	admin

The server sample-pg (primary) is pre-registered under the group CloudNativePG. Use the password apppassword when prompted for the database connection.

Connect to PostgreSQL directly

Retrieve the superuser credentials created by CloudNativePG:

kubectl get secret sample-pg-superuser -n cloudnative-pg \
  -o jsonpath='{.data.username}' | base64 -d

kubectl get secret sample-pg-superuser -n cloudnative-pg \
  -o jsonpath='{.data.password}' | base64 -d

Connect via psql from inside the cluster:

kubectl run psql --rm -it --image=postgres:16 --restart=Never -- \
  psql -h sample-pg-rw.cloudnative-pg.svc -U appuser -d sampledb

Cleanup

kubectl delete cluster sample-pg -n cloudnative-pg
helm uninstall pgadmin4 -n pgadmin
helm uninstall cnpg -n cnpg-system
kubectl delete namespace cloudnative-pg pgadmin cnpg-system