pgAdmin 4

pgAdmin 4 is a popular graphical user interface that makes it easy to work with PostgreSQL databases from both a desktop or web-based client. With its ability to manage and orchestrate changes for PostgreSQL users, the PostgreSQL Operator is a natural partner to keep a pgAdmin 4 environment synchronized with a PostgreSQL environment.

The PostgreSQL Operator lets you deploy a pgAdmin 4 environment alongside a PostgreSQL cluster and keeps users’ database credentials synchronized. You can simply log into pgAdmin 4 with your PostgreSQL username and password and immediately have access to your databases.

Deploying pgAdmin 4

For example, let’s use a PostgreSQL cluster called hippo hippo that has a user named hippo with password datalake:

pgo create cluster hippo --username=hippo --password=datalake

After the PostgreSQL cluster becomes ready, you can create a pgAdmin 4 deployment with the pgo create pgadmin command:

pgo create pgadmin hippo

This will use the configured storage configuration and default PVC size. If desired, you can set a custom storage configuration (in this case gce) and PVC size using:

pgo create pgadmin hippo --storage-config=gce --pvc-size=1G

This creates a pgAdmin 4 deployment unique to this PostgreSQL cluster and synchronizes the PostgreSQL user information into it. To access pgAdmin 4, you can set up a port-forward to the Service, which follows the pattern <clusterName>-pgadmin, to port 5050:

kubectl port-forward svc/hippo-pgadmin 5050:5050

Point your browser at http://localhost:5050 and use your database username (e.g. hippo) and password (e.g. datalake) to log in. Though the prompt says “email address”, using your PostgreSQL username will work.

(Note: if your password does not appear to work, you can retry setting up the user with the pgo update user command: pgo update user hippo --password=datalake)

User Synchronization

The pgo create user, pgo update user, and pgo delete user commands are synchronized with the pgAdmin 4 deployment. Note that if you use pgo create user without the --managed flag prior to deploying pgAdmin 4, then the user’s credentials will not be synchronized to the pgAdmin 4 deployment. However, a subsequent run of pgo update user --password will synchronize the credentials with pgAdmin 4.

Deleting pgAdmin 4

You can remove the pgAdmin 4 deployment with the pgo delete pgadmin command.