First steps

Once you have followed the steps in Installation for the Operator and its dependencies, you will now go through the steps to set up and connect to a Superset instance.

Database for the Superset metadata

Superset metadata (slices, connections, tables, dashboards etc.) is stored in an SQL database.

For testing, you can set up a PostgreSQL database with these commands:

helm repo add bitnami https://charts.bitnami.com/bitnami

helm install --wait superset bitnami/postgresql \
    --set auth.username=superset \
    --set auth.password=superset \
    --set auth.database=superset

This setup is not suitable for use in production. Refer to the supported databases for production-ready database setup instructions.

Secret with Superset credentials

You need to create a secret with the required credentials (database connection credentials and an admin account for Superset). Create a file called superset-credentials.yaml:

---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
  name: simple-superset-credentials
type: Opaque
stringData:
  adminUser.username: admin
  adminUser.firstname: Superset
  adminUser.lastname: Admin
  adminUser.email: admin@superset.com
  adminUser.password: admin
  connections.secretKey: thisISaSECRET_1234
  connections.sqlalchemyDatabaseUri: postgresql://superset:superset@superset-postgresql.default.svc.cluster.local/superset

Apply the Secret:

kubectl apply -f superset-credentials.yaml

The connections.secretKey will be used for securely signing the session cookies and can be used by the extensions for any other security-related needs. It should be a long, random string.

connections.sqlalchemyDatabaseUri must contain the connection string to the SQL database storing the Superset metadata.

The adminUser fields are used to create an admin user. If using non-default authentication (e.g., LDAP), the admin user is disabled.

Creation of a Superset node

A Superset node must be created as a custom resource, create a file called superset.yaml:

---
apiVersion: superset.stackable.tech/v1alpha1
kind: SupersetCluster
metadata:
  name: simple-superset
spec:
  image:
    productVersion: 4.0.2
  clusterConfig:
    credentialsSecret: simple-superset-credentials
    listenerClass: external-unstable
  nodes:
    roleGroups:
      default:
        config:
          rowLimit: 10000
          webserverTimeout: 300

And apply it:

kubectl apply -f superset.yaml

metadata.name contains the name of the Superset cluster.

The previously created secret must be referenced in spec.clusterConfig.credentialsSecret.

The rowLimit configuration option defines the row limit when requesting chart data.

The webserverTimeout configuration option defines the maximum number of seconds a Superset request can take before timing out. These settings affect the maximum duration a query to an underlying datasource can take. If you get timeout errors before your query returns the result you may need to increase this timeout.

You need to wait for the Superset node to finish deploying. You can do so with this command:

kubectl rollout status --watch statefulset/simple-superset-node-default --timeout 300s

Connecting to the web interface

Once the Superset node is created and the database is initialized, you can open Superset in your browser.

To forward the Superset port (8088) to localhost, run:

kubectl port-forward service/simple-superset-external 8088 > /dev/null 2>&1 &

Then, open http://localhost:8088 in your browser and log in with the admin credentials from the Kubernetes secret.

Superset is now ready for use. If you want to load sample data and dashboards and explore Superset’s functionality, proceed to the next step.

Loading examples and accessing example dashboards

To have some data to play with and some dashboards to explore, Superset comes with some example data that you can load. To do so, create a file superset-load-examples-job.yaml with this content:

---
apiVersion: batch/v1
kind: Job
metadata:
  name: superset-load-examples
spec:
  template:
    spec:
      volumes:
      - configMap:
          defaultMode: 420
          name: simple-superset-node-default
        name: config
      containers:
      - name: superset
        image: docker.stackable.tech/stackable/superset:4.0.2-stackable24.11.0
        command: [
          "/bin/sh",
          "-c",
          "mkdir --parents /stackable/app/pythonpath && \
          cp /stackable/config/* /stackable/app/pythonpath && \
          echo 'SQLALCHEMY_EXAMPLES_URI = os.environ.get(\"SQLALCHEMY_DATABASE_URI\")' >> /stackable/app/pythonpath/superset_config.py && \
          superset load_examples"
        ]
        env:
        - name: SECRET_KEY
          valueFrom:
            secretKeyRef:
              key: connections.secretKey
              name: simple-superset-credentials
        - name: SQLALCHEMY_DATABASE_URI
          valueFrom:
            secretKeyRef:
              key: connections.sqlalchemyDatabaseUri
              name: simple-superset-credentials
        volumeMounts:
        - mountPath: /stackable/config
          name: config
        resources:
          limits:
            cpu: 1200m
            memory: 1000Mi
          requests:
            cpu: 300m
            memory: 1000Mi
      restartPolicy: Never
  backoffLimit: 4

This Kubernetes Job uses the same connection information and credentials as the Superset instance to load the example data. Run the Job and wait for it to finish with the following command:

kubectl apply -f superset-load-examples-job.yaml
sleep 5
kubectl wait --for=condition=complete --timeout=300s job/superset-load-examples

The Job will take a few minutes to terminate. Afterwards, check back again on the web interface. New dashboards should be available:

Great! Now you can explore this sample data, run queries on it or create your own dashboards.

What’s next

Check the Usage guide to find out more about configuring your Superset instance or have a look at the Superset documentation to create your first dashboard.