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jakman85andClaude Opus 5 254985baa6 docs(decisions): record that PiHole HA is verified live, failover drill included
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No manifests change. The three entries merged earlier today each say, correctly
at the time, that nothing had been reconciled -- which is now stale in exactly
the way CLAUDE.md section 2b warns about: a reader would conclude the work is
unproven. This entry is the current state and does not edit the earlier files.

Measured on live prod after dce20b7: apps-wave-0 reconciled in ~90s (inside the
5m timeout the multi-replica entry flagged as a risk); pihole-0 on k3s-prod-3
and pihole-1 on k3s-prod-2, so the required anti-affinity was satisfied; both
per-replica claims Bound; the old Deployment and the old unused PVC both pruned;
PDB healthy with one disruption allowed.

The mountPath fix is confirmed: /etc/pihole is now on /dev/longhorn with 6.9M
used on both pods, where it was previously on the overlay.

Phase 1's declarations reproduce onto a FRESH volume, which was the whole reason
for sequencing it first: 72,234 gravity domains rebuilt on each replica from the
declared adlist, and the declared SOPS secret authenticates on BOTH pods
("valid":true via each container's own env, value never printed).

FAILOVER DRILL, observed by the operator: a replica was deleted, recreated in
~30 seconds, and DNS never dropped a request. First direct evidence the replica
count delivers what it was added for.

Re-deriving the SLI from the rendered workload kind mattered concretely: the
StatefulSet series returns 2 while the old Deployment series now returns ZERO
series, so a stale Deployment-shaped rule would have matched its own absent()
branch and fired permanently -- a standing false page.

Still unverified and stated as such: node failure (the drill deleted a pod, so
the 300s toleration path is untouched), DNS during the cutover itself, two-node
loss, and the cluster-wide dependency that replicas cannot address.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
2026-10-04 02:03:42 -05:00
jakman85 dce20b7be6 Merge pull request 'feat(pihole): two replicas on different nodes, and fix a PVC mounted where pihole never writes' (#45) from feat/pihole-multi-replica into main
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Reviewed-on: #45
2026-10-04 06:50:56 +00:00
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---
date: 2026-10-04
branch: docs/pihole-ha-verified
title: PiHole HA is VERIFIED on live prod — including a failover drill with zero dropped DNS queries
---
## What changed
**No manifests changed. This entry exists to correct the log.** The three PiHole/Plex entries merged
earlier today each say, correctly at the time, that nothing had been reconciled and that the outcome
was unverified:
- `decisions/2026-10-04-pihole-declare-state.md` — "Nothing here has been reconciled."
- `decisions/2026-10-04-pihole-multi-replica.md` — "Nothing has been reconciled. No StatefulSet
exists, no second replica has ever run, the anti-affinity has never been evaluated..."
All three are now **merged, reconciled and measured**, so those sentences are stale in exactly the way
§2b of CLAUDE.md warns about — a reader who found them would conclude the work is unproven. This entry
is the current state; it does not edit the earlier files (separate files, nothing to merge).
Delivered and live as of 2026-10-04, from PRs #43 (plex tcp/32400), #44 (declare PiHole state) and
#45 (PiHole 2 replicas + the mountPath bug):
- PiHole is a **2-replica StatefulSet**, one pod per node, with per-replica Longhorn volumes, a
PodDisruptionBudget, and an `up` SLI that follows the rendered workload kind.
- PiHole's admin password and adlists are **declared in git** and reproduce onto a fresh volume.
- PiHole's config PVC is mounted where PiHole actually writes (`/etc/pihole`), which it was not before.
## What I verified
All measured against live prod on 2026-10-04, after the merge of #45 (`dce20b7`).
**Reconcile.** `GitRepository` artifact `main@sha1:dce20b7`; `apps-wave-0`
`lastAppliedRevision=main@sha1:dce20b7`, `Ready=True/ReconciliationSucceeded`. It completed in roughly
**90 seconds**, well inside the Kustomization's `timeout: 5m` — the risk flagged in the multi-replica
entry ("whether `pihole -g` finishes inside the 5 m timeout") did **not** materialise. A transient
`Ready=False/DependencyNotReady: platform-config` seen mid-flight was the dependency cascade, not a
failure; `platform-config` was already `Ready=True` at the new revision moments later.
**Topology and objects.**
| Measured | Value |
|---|---|
| pods / nodes | `pihole-0` → **k3s-prod-3**, `pihole-1` → **k3s-prod-2** (2/2 Running each) — the required anti-affinity was satisfied |
| per-replica claims | `config-pihole-0`, `config-pihole-1` — both `Bound`, 2Gi |
| old `pihole-config` PVC | **pruned** (it held only `lost+found`, so nothing was lost) |
| old `pihole` Deployment | **pruned** — `No resources found in pihole namespace` |
| PodDisruptionBudget | `minAvailable 1`, `disruptionsAllowed 1`, `currentHealthy 2` |
**The mountPath bug is fixed.** `df` inside both pods reports `/etc/pihole` on
`/dev/longhorn/pvc-...` with **6.9 M used** — previously it was on `overlay` while the Longhorn volume
sat unused at `/data/config`. `backup.policy: daily-offcluster` now has real content to back up
instead of reporting success over an empty volume.
**Phase 1's declarations reproduce onto a FRESH volume — the point of doing it first.** Both replicas
booted with an empty `/etc/pihole`:
- **72,234 gravity domains** on each, rebuilt from the adlist declared in `catalog/pihole.yaml`.
- **The declared SOPS secret authenticates on both pods.** `POST /api/auth` using the container's own
`FTLCONF_webserver_api_password` returned `"valid":true` on `pihole-0` **and** `pihole-1` — so
Secret → env → FTL's own hashing → working login, identically on both. (The secret's value was never
printed; an earlier reading of `pwhash` as "unset" was a quoting bug in the check, disproven by an
empty password being rejected with `password incorrect` and then by this positive test.)
**User-facing behaviour through the VIP (192.168.2.23), from a LAN host.**
plex.home.keithjackson.dev -> 192.168.2.20 split-horizon intact
home.keithjackson.dev -> 192.168.2.20
unifi.home.keithjackson.dev -> 192.168.2.21
google.com -> 142.250.115.102 recursion to 8.8.8.8 works
doubleclick.net -> 0.0.0.0 blocking LIVE in FTL, not just in the DB
googleadservices.com -> 0.0.0.0
12 consecutive queries -> 12/12 answered
**THE FAILOVER DRILL — observed by the operator, 2026-10-04.** A single StatefulSet replica was
deleted. It was recreated in **~30 seconds**, and **DNS never dropped a request** throughout. This is
the first direct evidence that the replica count delivers what it was added for, rather than merely
rendering correctly.
**The SLI is not inert, and re-deriving it mattered.** Measured in Prometheus:
`kube_statefulset_status_replicas_ready{namespace="pihole", statefulset="pihole"}` returns **1 series,
value 2**; `kube_deployment_status_replicas_available{namespace="pihole"}` now returns **0 series**;
and Prometheus has `pihole-down` loaded as `state=inactive health=ok` with the StatefulSet expression.
Had the rule stayed Deployment-shaped, its `or absent(...)` branch would have matched the now-absent
series and **fired permanently** — a standing false page rather than silence. That is the concrete
payoff of defaulting `livenessWorkload.kind` from the rendered kind.
## What I did NOT verify
- **NODE failure, as opposed to pod failure.** The drill deleted a pod, which does not exercise the
`tolerationSeconds: 300` path at all — that timer only applies when a node goes NotReady. The
mechanism protecting DNS is the same one just proven (the surviving replica plus
`externalTrafficPolicy: Cluster` on the DNS LoadBalancers), so user-visible impact should likewise be
nil; what the 300 s still delays is the *replacement* replica, and during that window there is no
redundancy left. Untested. Pulling power from a node is the only real test.
- **DNS during the cutover itself.** I was not sampling resolution while #45 reconciled, so whether
there was a brief gap between the Deployment being pruned and the StatefulSet becoming Ready is
**unmeasured**. The drill above covers the steady-state failover case, not that one-off transition.
- **Two-node loss.** The hard anti-affinity means `replicas: 2` needs two schedulable nodes; losing
two would leave a replica `Pending` and, with `wait: true`, stall the app tier. Reasoned, not
exercised — and it coincides with etcd quorum loss on a 3-node control plane.
- **Longhorn capacity headroom.** Two 2Gi claims at 3 replicas each is ~12Gi where there was ~6Gi.
Both claims are `Bound` and healthy; free space was not checked.
- **Query history is now split per replica** and the admin UI shows only whichever pod answered.
Adlists and password are identical, so blocking and auth are consistent; the *reporting* is not, and
whether that is acceptable long-term is the operator's call.
- **The residual risk is unchanged, and it is the larger one.** Replicas address node failure. LAN DNS
still depends on the cluster — etcd quorum, Cilium, Longhorn, a bad reconcile — and only a resolver
outside the cluster carrying the same `address=` lines removes that dependency. Considered and not
chosen (operator decision, 2026-10-04).
- **Plex remote access (#43) is NOT covered by this entry.** Its two manual steps (the WAN tcp/32400
forward and Plex's "manually specify public port") and the outside-in path remain as
`decisions/2026-10-03-plex-remote-access-l4.md` describes them. The operator reported it working;
I have not measured it from off-LAN.
- **`--emit-waves` drift is still open.** Re-running it still wants to onboard `vm-demo.yaml` and
`keycloak.yaml`, both listed as intentionally not onboarded in `ci/render-golden.sh`. Unfixed; see
`decisions/2026-10-03-plex-remote-access-l4.md`.