---
# SPDX-FileCopyrightText: Copyright (c) 2026 NVIDIA CORPORATION & AFFILIATES. All rights reserved.
# SPDX-License-Identifier: Apache-2.0
title: "High Availability"
sidebar-title: "High Availability"
description: "Run multiple OpenShell gateway replicas on Kubernetes with shared PostgreSQL, authenticated peer routing, capacity metrics, and optional autoscaling."
keywords: "Generative AI, Cybersecurity, Kubernetes, High Availability, HA, Gateway, PostgreSQL, Replicas, Failover, Autoscaling, HPA, Metrics"
position: 3
---

Run two or more gateway replicas when the OpenShell control plane must remain
available during a gateway pod failure or rolling update. Every replica can
serve API requests. The replicas share persistent state through PostgreSQL and
relay session-bound requests to the replica connected to each sandbox
supervisor.

<Warning>
Gateway replicas do not make PostgreSQL highly available. Use a managed
PostgreSQL service or a separately operated PostgreSQL cluster with its own
backup and failover plan.
</Warning>

## Requirements

An HA gateway deployment requires:

- Two or more schedulable Kubernetes nodes or failure domains.
- PostgreSQL reachable from every gateway pod.
- A Kubernetes Secret in the OpenShell namespace with the PostgreSQL connection
  URI in a key named `uri`.
- `workload.kind: deployment`. The default StatefulSet and per-pod SQLite
  database are intended for a single gateway replica.
- An ingress or load balancer that routes clients to the gateway Service. Refer
  to [Ingress](/kubernetes/ingress) for a Gateway API configuration.
- PostgreSQL connection capacity for every replica, including pods that are
  starting or terminating during a rollout. Refer to
  [Size PostgreSQL Connections](#size-postgresql-connections).

The Helm chart rejects `replicaCount` values above `1` unless
`server.externalDbSecret` is set. It also rejects a multi-replica StatefulSet
unless `workload.allowMultiReplicaStatefulSet` is explicitly enabled. Use a
Deployment for the standard HA configuration.

## Create the PostgreSQL Secret

Provision PostgreSQL outside the OpenShell chart, then create the connection
Secret. The chart does not install PostgreSQL.

```shell
kubectl create namespace openshell

kubectl -n openshell create secret generic openshell-postgres \
  --from-literal=uri='postgresql://openshell:<password>@<postgres-host>:5432/openshell'
```

Use your PostgreSQL provider's required TLS parameters in the connection URI.
Keep the Secret in the same namespace as the gateway release.

## Configure Gateway Replicas

Create `values-ha.yaml`:

```yaml
replicaCount: 2

workload:
  kind: deployment

server:
  externalDbSecret: openshell-postgres

affinity:
  podAntiAffinity:
    requiredDuringSchedulingIgnoredDuringExecution:
      - labelSelector:
          matchLabels:
            app.kubernetes.io/name: openshell
            app.kubernetes.io/instance: openshell
        topologyKey: kubernetes.io/hostname
```

The anti-affinity rule places the two replicas on different nodes. The
`app.kubernetes.io/instance` value must match the Helm release name. Change the
topology key to a zone label when replicas must span availability zones. A
required rule leaves a replica Pending when the cluster does not have enough
matching failure domains; use preferred anti-affinity when scheduling the
replica is more important than strict separation.

Install or upgrade OpenShell:

```shell
helm upgrade --install openshell \
  oci://ghcr.io/nvidia/openshell/helm-chart \
  --version <version> \
  --namespace openshell \
  --values values-ha.yaml \
  --wait
```

The chart shares its retained sandbox JWT signing material, TLS material, and
default credential-storage encryption key across the gateway pods. Do not
create different copies of those Secrets for individual replicas.

## Verify the Deployment

Wait for all gateway replicas to become ready:

```shell
kubectl -n openshell rollout status deployment/openshell
kubectl -n openshell get pods \
  -l app.kubernetes.io/name=openshell,app.kubernetes.io/instance=openshell \
  -o wide
```

Confirm that the client-facing Service and headless peer Service have ready
endpoints:

```shell
kubectl -n openshell get service openshell openshell-peer
kubectl -n openshell get endpointslice \
  -l app.kubernetes.io/service-name=openshell
kubectl -n openshell get endpointslice \
  -l app.kubernetes.io/service-name=openshell-peer
```

If you changed the chart's generated names with `nameOverride` or
`fullnameOverride`, use the rendered Service names instead.

After registering the gateway with the CLI, verify that requests succeed:

```shell
openshell status
openshell sandbox list
```

## Protect Voluntary Disruptions

Add a PodDisruptionBudget so a voluntary disruption, such as node maintenance,
does not evict every ready gateway pod at once:

```yaml
apiVersion: policy/v1
kind: PodDisruptionBudget
metadata:
  name: openshell
  namespace: openshell
spec:
  minAvailable: 1
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app.kubernetes.io/name: openshell
      app.kubernetes.io/instance: openshell
```

Apply the manifest separately from the OpenShell chart. Match the namespace and
release labels to your installation. A PodDisruptionBudget controls voluntary
evictions; it does not protect against an unavailable node or failure domain.

## How Peer Routing Works

A sandbox supervisor keeps one active control stream to one gateway replica.
That replica records ownership in PostgreSQL. When Kubernetes sends a client
request to another replica, the receiving gateway relays exec, forwarding,
file-sync, service, and status traffic to the owner through the headless peer
Service.

Peer RPCs use a projected, pod-bound ServiceAccount token with the
`openshell-gateway-peer` audience. The receiving gateway validates the token
with the Kubernetes TokenReview API, verifies the live pod identity and release
labels, and authorizes only peer methods. When gateway TLS is enabled, peer
connections also use the chart's TLS materials.

You do not need session affinity at the ingress or client-facing Service.

## Failure and Rollout Behavior

When a non-owner gateway pod stops, Kubernetes removes it from ready Service
endpoints and new requests go to another replica. Existing requests through the
stopped pod disconnect and must be retried.

When an owner gateway pod stops gracefully, it re-reads gateway membership and
redirects its connected supervisors to the replicas that now own them,
including replicas that started moments earlier. After a crash, supervisors
reconnect through the gateway Service. Either way, they publish new ownership. Other replicas re-read ownership
while waiting to relay a request. A request fails if no fresh, reachable owner
appears before its normal deadline.

A stopping owner waits up to five seconds for a redirected supervisor to
publish its new session before it marks the sandbox not ready, so a sandbox
stays `Ready` through a graceful handoff. Supervisors reconnect with
exponential backoff that restarts after each accepted session, so repeated
gateway restarts do not lengthen later reconnects.

Established streams do not move between gateway replicas. An interrupted exec,
forwarding, or service stream must reconnect. File sync retries with a new SSH
session instead of resuming the interrupted byte stream. Rolling updates can
temporarily concentrate supervisor sessions on the replicas that stayed up;
client requests remain routable through peer relay.

## Monitor Capacity

Each gateway replica exposes Prometheus metrics on port `9090`
(`service.metricsPort`). Scrape every gateway pod, not the Service, because
these signals describe one replica. Refer to
[Gateway Metrics](/observability/gateway-metrics) for the full catalog, scrape
configuration, and access control.

| Signal | Metrics | Use |
|---|---|---|
| Sessions per replica | `openshell_server_supervisor_sessions` | Placement and skew. Do not scale on it. |
| Relay utilization | `openshell_server_relay_pending`, `openshell_server_relay_pending_capacity` | Graph it. It is transient and usually near 0, so alert on rejections instead. |
| Relay rejections | `openshell_server_relay_rejected_total` | Alert on any increase. |
| Relay claims | `openshell_server_relay_claim_duration_seconds`, `openshell_server_relay_expired_total` | Supervisor connect-back time for exec, SSH, forwarding, and service traffic, including relays requested through peers. A high 99th percentile while rejections stay flat points at the supervisor or its node, not at relay capacity. Relays not claimed within 10 seconds are missing from the histogram and count as expired, so alert on any increase. |
| Routed requests | `openshell_server_routed_request_attempts_total`, `openshell_server_peer_request_duration_seconds` | Local/peer relay setup mix and outbound peer rate, failures, and latency. Counts completed or cancelled attempts, including retries. Spikes of `grpc_code="unavailable"` during rollouts are expected. Do not use as an HPA target. |

These queries assume that Prometheus labels each series with `namespace` and
`pod`:

```promql
# Relay capacity used on each replica. Usually near 0; graph it and alert
# on rejections instead.
max by (namespace, pod) (openshell_server_relay_pending / openshell_server_relay_pending_capacity)

# Relays rejected for capacity. Alert on any increase.
sum by (namespace, pod, reason) (increase(openshell_server_relay_rejected_total[5m]))

# 99th percentile time for supervisors to claim a relay on each replica.
histogram_quantile(0.99, sum by (namespace, pod, le) (rate(openshell_server_relay_claim_duration_seconds_bucket[5m])))

# Completed or cancelled relay setup attempts, by replica, relay kind, and route.
sum by (namespace, pod, relay_kind, route) (rate(openshell_server_routed_request_attempts_total{operation="relay"}[5m]))

# Session skew across replicas. 1 means balanced. Starting and stopping pods
# raise it during rollouts.
max(openshell_server_supervisor_sessions)
  / clamp_min(avg(openshell_server_supervisor_sessions), 1)

# Failed peer requests as a share of attempts, by operation.
sum by (operation) (rate(openshell_server_routed_request_attempts_total{route="peer",outcome!="success"}[5m]))
  / sum by (operation) (rate(openshell_server_routed_request_attempts_total{route="peer"}[5m]))

# 99th percentile peer request latency across the fleet.
histogram_quantile(0.99, sum by (le, operation) (rate(openshell_server_peer_request_duration_seconds_bucket{outcome="success"}[5m])))
```

Relay capacity is used on the replica that owns the sandbox's supervisor
session, including relays that other replicas request through peers, so
adding replicas does not relieve a busy owner. A relay whose client gave up
stays counted for up to about 40 seconds, the 10-second claim timeout plus the
30-second cleanup interval. Routed request counts include retries during
rollouts.

## Scale the Gateway

Scale the gateway by changing a fixed replica count or by letting a
HorizontalPodAutoscaler choose one. In both cases, keep at least two ready
replicas when availability must survive one gateway pod failure, and size
PostgreSQL and the cluster nodes for the largest replica count.

### Scale Manually

Change `replicaCount` in `values-ha.yaml`, then apply the release again:

```shell
helm upgrade openshell \
  oci://ghcr.io/nvidia/openshell/helm-chart \
  --version <version> \
  --namespace openshell \
  --values values-ha.yaml \
  --wait
```

### Autoscale with a HorizontalPodAutoscaler

Set `autoscaling.enabled` to render an `autoscaling/v2`
HorizontalPodAutoscaler for the gateway Deployment, or for a StatefulSet with
`workload.allowMultiReplicaStatefulSet`. Add these values to
`values-ha.yaml`:

```yaml
resources:
  requests:
    cpu: 500m
    memory: 512Mi

autoscaling:
  enabled: true
  minReplicas: 2
  maxReplicas: 6
  targetCPUUtilizationPercentage: 70
```

With autoscaling enabled, the chart stops setting `spec.replicas` and ignores
`replicaCount`. Kubernetes computes CPU and memory utilization against the
container request, so those targets need a matching `resources.requests`
entry. A `resources.limits` entry also works, because Kubernetes copies a
limit into an unset request. The chart rejects an `autoscaling.maxReplicas`
above `1` without `server.externalDbSecret`. Each scale-down hands the removed
replica's supervisor sessions to the remaining replicas, so the default behavior removes at most one pod every two minutes
after a five-minute stabilization window. Override it with
`autoscaling.behavior`, or set `autoscaling.behavior.scaleDown` to `null` to
drop the default. New replicas do not take existing sessions.

<Note>
A scale-down moves every supervisor session on the removed pod at once, and
requests through that pod must be retried. To choose when that happens,
set `autoscaling.behavior.scaleDown.selectPolicy` to `Disabled` so the
autoscaler only adds replicas, and remove replicas yourself with
`kubectl scale` at a quiet time.
</Note>

Check the autoscaler after you apply the release:

```shell
kubectl -n openshell get hpa openshell
kubectl -n openshell describe hpa openshell
```

<Warning>
Enabling autoscaling on an existing release removes `spec.replicas` from the
workload in that upgrade. Kubernetes can reset the workload to one replica
until the HPA scales it back to at least `autoscaling.minReplicas`, which moves
supervisor sessions from the other gateway pods to the remaining replica. Enable autoscaling
when you install the chart, or during a maintenance window. On an existing
release, upgrade with `--reset-then-reuse-values`, which needs Helm 3.14 or
later. With an older Helm, save the values with
`helm get values <release> -o yaml > values.yaml` and upgrade with
`--reset-values -f values.yaml`. `--reuse-values` keeps the
previous chart version's defaults, which lack the autoscaling values,
including the scale-down `behavior`, when that release predates them. For background, refer to
[Migrating Deployments and StatefulSets to horizontal autoscaling](https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/run-application/horizontal-pod-autoscale/#migrating-deployments-and-statefulsets-to-horizontal-autoscaling).
Disabling autoscaling renders `spec.replicas` from `replicaCount` again,
which defaults to 1, so set `replicaCount` to the replica count you want in
that upgrade.
</Warning>

### Autoscale on Custom Metrics

The HPA can also scale on a per-pod metric that a metrics adapter publishes.
The chart passes `autoscaling.metrics` to the HPA unchanged and does not
install Prometheus or an adapter. A custom metric needs these pieces:

- Prometheus scrapes every gateway pod and labels each series with
  `namespace` and `pod`.
- A metrics adapter, such as prometheus-adapter, maps those labels to
  Kubernetes resources and publishes a per-pod metric through the
  `custom.metrics.k8s.io` API.
- `autoscaling.metrics` references that metric as a `Pods` metric with an
  `AverageValue` target.

Scale on signals that fall when you add replicas, such as CPU utilization. Do
not scale on supervisor sessions, relay utilization, relay claim latency, or
peer request rate. New replicas do not take existing sessions, relay load stays
on the replica that owns each session, and peer traffic grows with the replica
count. Alert on those signals instead.

```yaml
autoscaling:
  enabled: true
  minReplicas: 2
  maxReplicas: 6
  targetCPUUtilizationPercentage: 70
  metrics:
    - type: Pods
      pods:
        metric:
          name: <metric-name>
        target:
          type: AverageValue
          averageValue: "100"
```

Replace `<metric-name>` with the name your adapter publishes, and set
`averageValue` to the per-pod value at which you want another replica. Check
that the adapter serves the metric for the gateway pods:

```shell
kubectl get --raw "/apis/custom.metrics.k8s.io/v1beta1/namespaces/openshell/pods/*/<metric-name>"
```

### Size PostgreSQL Connections

Each gateway pod opens up to 10 PostgreSQL connections on demand. The chart
uses the Kubernetes default rolling update strategy for each workload kind, so
the number of pods that run during a rollout depends on the kind.

A Deployment rollout adds up to 25 percent of the replica count, rounded up,
as surge pods. Kubernetes does not count terminating pods against that surge,
and each replaced pod can keep its connections throughout its termination
grace period. A rollout can therefore run up to twice the replica count at
once, and an eviction or an autoscaler scale-down during the rollout adds more
terminating pods. Set PostgreSQL `max_connections` to at least
`(2 × replicas + surge) × 10`, which leaves one surge of margin for those
pods, plus headroom for your other clients and administration. Use
`autoscaling.maxReplicas` as the replica count when autoscaling is enabled.

| Replicas | Surge | Minimum `max_connections` |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | 1 | `(4 + 1) × 10 = 50` |
| 3 | 1 | `(6 + 1) × 10 = 70` |
| 4 | 1 | `(8 + 1) × 10 = 90` |
| 6 | 2 | `(12 + 2) × 10 = 140` |

With a Deployment, five or more replicas exceed what the PostgreSQL default of
100 leaves for the gateway, because PostgreSQL reserves 3 connections for
superusers. Raise `max_connections` or use a larger managed instance. Let one
rollout finish before you start another, because each overlapping rollout adds
its own terminating pods.

If you run several replicas as a StatefulSet with
`workload.allowMultiReplicaStatefulSet`, a rollout adds no surge pods. It
replaces one pod at a time and creates each replacement only after the old pod
exits. Set `max_connections` to at least `replicas × 10`, using
`autoscaling.maxReplicas` when autoscaling is enabled, plus headroom for your
other clients and administration.

If a connection pooler sits between the gateway and PostgreSQL, use session
pooling. The gateway holds session-level advisory locks, which transaction
pooling breaks.

## Next Steps

- To expose the gateway through a highly available data path, refer to
  [Ingress](/kubernetes/ingress).
- To configure automatic certificate renewal, refer to
  [Managing Certificates](/kubernetes/managing-certificates).
- To configure user authentication and authorization, refer to
  [Access Control](/kubernetes/access-control).
- To scrape and alert on gateway metrics, refer to
  [Gateway Metrics](/observability/gateway-metrics).