Switch Kafka exporter and related images from Bitnami to Lucidworks in Fusion 5.9.x – Lucidworks

Goal

Replace deprecated Bitnami container images with Lucidworks-hosted images for Kafka, Kafka exporter, JMX exporter, and Solr init containers in Fusion 5.9.x deployments on Kubernetes. This ensures future compatibility and prevents image pull failures.

Environment

Fusion 5.9.4 through 5.9.12
Self-hosted, Kubernetes-based deployments (for example, Amazon EKS, GKE, or AKS)
Helm-managed Fusion deployments

Note: Starting in Fusion 5.9.13, Lucidworks-hosted images are included by default.

Guide

Background

Bitnami images used in Fusion 5.9.0–5.9.12 are deprecated and may fail to pull. For example, bitnami/kafka-exporter and bitnami/kubectl are no longer supported. These should be replaced with Lucidworks-hosted images to maintain stability.

Kafka exporter is the service that exposes Kafka metrics in Prometheus format, enabling monitoring of broker health, consumer group lag, and topic/partition metrics.

Update Kafka exporter and JMX exporter

In values.yaml, overrides for exporters must be set under the kafka.metrics block. A common mistake is to place them at the top level, which Helm ignores.

Example configuration:

kafka:
  metrics:
    kafka:
      enabled: true
      image:
        registry: docker.io
        repository: lucidworks/kafka-exporter
        tag: 1.7.0-debian-12-r20
    jmx:
      image:
        registry: docker.io
        repository: lucidworks/jmx-exporter
        tag: 0.20.0-debian-12-r11

Update Solr init container

Solr init containers often use Bitnami kubectl images. Replace these with Lucidworks kubectl images. The correct tag depends on your Kubernetes cluster version, not the Fusion version.

Example configuration for EKS 1.29:

solr:
  initContainer:
    image:
      solrzoneImageName: lucidworks/kubectl:1.29-debian-11

Run Helm upgrade

After updating values.yaml, apply the changes:

helm upgrade release-name lucidworks/fusion -n ns-name -f values.yaml

Verify image references

Render the chart and check that no Bitnami images remain:

helm template release-name lucidworks/fusion -n ns-name -f values.yaml | grep -i bitnami

If output is empty, all Bitnami references have been removed.

Version-specific image mapping

Fusion 5.9.4 / 5.9.7
- Kafka: lucidworks/kafka:3.1.0-debian-10-r68
- Kafka exporter: lucidworks/kafka-exporter:1.4.2-debian-10-r196
- JMX exporter: lucidworks/jmx-exporter:0.16.1-debian-10-r259
Fusion 5.9.12
- Kafka: lucidworks/kafka:3.7.0-debian-12-r0
- Kafka exporter: lucidworks/kafka-exporter:1.7.0-debian-12-r20
- JMX exporter: lucidworks/jmx-exporter:0.20.0-debian-12-r11

For all versions, use the lucidworks/kubectl image that matches your Kubernetes or EKS minor version (for example, 1.29-debian-11).