Mission Control lab (KinD + HCD)

Local lab for Mission Control on KinD with embedded MinIO and HCD clusters pinned to platform/database topology labels.

Run every command from the repository root.

Runbook (in order)

Step	Guide	What you do
1	KinD setup	Preflight, cluster mc, topology labels
2	Mission Control setup	Registry, cert-manager, Helm install, UI
3	HCD setup	MissionControlCluster deploy and rollout
4	CQL and Data API	cqlsh, UI console, Data API curl
5	Observability	MC UI metrics, Grafana
6	Backup and restore	Medusa + MinIO walkthrough
MOP	Restore & rebuild DC2	Optional: corrupt DC2 / survivor restore (two-dcs only)

Lab conventions

Pick one topology profile in .env (same value for steps 1–3):

cp .env.example .env   # set PROFILE=two-dcs | three-racks | minimal
set -a && source .env && set +a

Profile	KinD config	HCD manifest	Cassandra pods
two-dcs (default)	kind/kind-cluster-two-dcs.yaml	manifests/hcd/mission-control-cluster-two-dcs.yaml	6
three-racks	kind/kind-cluster-three-racks.yaml	manifests/hcd/mission-control-cluster-three-racks.yaml	3
minimal	kind/kind-cluster-minimal.yaml	manifests/hcd/mission-control-cluster-minimal.yaml	1

Item	Value
Database namespace	database
Mission Control namespace	mission-control
MissionControlCluster	same as PROFILE (two-dcs, three-racks, or minimal)
Superuser Secret	superuser (namespace database)

Switching PROFILE later: delete the KinD cluster or namespace database before re-running with a different profile.

CQL and Data API

See docs/04-cql-data-api.md. Quick start: ./scripts/cqlsh.sh and port-forward ${PROFILE}-data-api-data-api-cip on 30080.

Repo layout

Path	Purpose
docs/	KinD, Mission Control, and HCD setup guides
kind/	KinD cluster YAML per profile
manifests/mission-control/	Pinned Helm values.yaml + lab overrides.yaml
manifests/hcd/	MissionControlCluster and optional gateways
scripts/	Preflight, topology labels, cqlsh
mops/	Advanced procedures (failed DC rebuild)
concepts/	Architecture and wiring reference

Concepts (reference)

• concepts/deployment-structure.md — Helm + operator flow
• concepts/software-components-wiring.md — component map
• concepts/understanding-a-deployment-quickly.md — triage checklist

Mission Control is the management plane for DataStax Cassandra/HCD on Kubernetes: UI, APIs, and operators that reconcile MissionControlCluster resources into running database topologies.