I'm working on a project to run a Kubernetes cluster on GCE. My goal is to run a cluster containing a WordPress site in multiple zones. I've been reading a lot of documentation, but I can't seem to find anything that is direct and to the point on persistent volumes and statefulsets in a multiple zone scenario. Is this not a supported configuration? I can get the cluster up and the statefulsets deployed, but I'm not getting the state replicated throughout the cluster. Any suggestions?
Thanks, Darryl
Reading the docs, I see that the recommended configuration would be to create a MySQL cluster with replication: https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/run-application/run-replicated-stateful-application/. This way, you would have the data properly replicated between the instances of your cluster (if you are in a multi-zone deployment you may have to create an external endpoint).
Regarding the Wordpress data, my advice would be to go for an immutable deployment: https://engineering.bitnami.com/articles/why-your-next-web-service-should-be-immutable.html . This way, if you need to add a plugin or perform upgrades, you would create a new container image and re-deploy it. Regarding the media library assets and immutability, I think the best option would be to use an external storage service like S3 https://wordpress.org/plugins/amazon-s3-and-cloudfront/
So, to answer the original question: I think that statefulset synchronization is not available in K8s (at the moment). Maybe using a volume provider that allows ReadWriteMany access mode could fit your needs (https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/storage/persistent-volumes/#access-modes), though I am quite unsure about the stability of it.