Apache Spark K8s Operator

July 17, 2026 · View on GitHub

Apache Spark™ K8s Operator is a subproject of Apache Spark and aims to extend K8s resource manager to manage Apache Spark applications via Operator Pattern.

Install Helm Chart

Apache Spark provides a Helm Chart.

helm repo add spark https://apache.github.io/spark-kubernetes-operator
helm repo update
helm install spark spark/spark-kubernetes-operator

Building Spark K8s Operator

Spark K8s Operator is built using Gradle. To build, run:

./gradlew build -x test

Running Tests

./gradlew build

Updating Dependency Verification Metadata

When upgrading dependencies, regenerate gradle/verification-metadata.xml from scratch. Since --write-verification-metadata is append-only and keeps stale entries of removed or old dependencies, delete the existing file first so that the regenerated file contains only the checksums of the current dependencies. Pass --refresh-dependencies so that metadata files (BOM / parent POMs) already present in the local Gradle cache are downloaded and recorded again — without it their checksums are silently dropped and CI fails with a cold cache:

rm gradle/verification-metadata.xml
./gradlew --write-verification-metadata sha512 build --refresh-dependencies

Note that Gradle rewrites the file without the ASF license header, so restore the header after regeneration.

Build Docker Image

./gradlew buildDockerImage

Install Helm Chart from the source code

helm install spark -f build-tools/helm/spark-kubernetes-operator/values.yaml build-tools/helm/spark-kubernetes-operator/

Run Spark Pi App

$ kubectl apply -f examples/pi.yaml

$ kubectl get sparkapp
NAME   CURRENT STATE      AGE
pi     ResourceReleased   4m10s

$ kubectl delete sparkapp/pi

Run Spark Cluster

$ kubectl apply -f examples/prod-cluster-with-three-workers.yaml

$ kubectl get sparkcluster
NAME   CURRENT STATE    AGE
prod   RunningHealthy   10s

$ kubectl port-forward prod-master-0 6066 &

$ ./examples/submit-pi-to-prod.sh
{
  "action" : "CreateSubmissionResponse",
  "message" : "Driver successfully submitted as driver-20260110030233-0000",
  "serverSparkVersion" : "4.2.0",
  "submissionId" : "driver-20260110030233-0000",
  "success" : true
}

$ curl http://localhost:6066/v1/submissions/status/driver-20260110030233-0000/
{
  "action" : "SubmissionStatusResponse",
  "driverState" : "FINISHED",
  "serverSparkVersion" : "4.2.0",
  "submissionId" : "driver-20260110030233-0000",
  "success" : true,
  "workerHostPort" : "10.1.1.172:44233",
  "workerId" : "worker-20260110030145-10.1.1.172-44233"
}

$ kubectl delete sparkcluster prod
sparkcluster.spark.apache.org "prod" deleted

Run Spark Pi App on Apache YuniKorn scheduler

If you have not yet done so, follow YuniKorn docs to install the latest version:

helm repo add yunikorn https://apache.github.io/yunikorn-release

helm repo update

helm install yunikorn yunikorn/yunikorn --namespace yunikorn --version 1.8.0 --create-namespace --set embedAdmissionController=false

Submit a Spark app to YuniKorn enabled cluster:


$ kubectl apply -f examples/pi-on-yunikorn.yaml

$ kubectl describe pod pi-on-yunikorn-0-driver
...
Events:
  Type    Reason             Age   From      Message
  ----    ------             ----  ----      -------
  Normal  Scheduling         1s    yunikorn  default/pi-on-yunikorn-0-driver is queued and waiting for allocation
  Normal  Scheduled          1s    yunikorn  Successfully assigned default/pi-on-yunikorn-0-driver to node docker-desktop
  Normal  PodBindSuccessful  1s    yunikorn  Pod default/pi-on-yunikorn-0-driver is successfully bound to node docker-desktop
  Normal  Pulled             0s    kubelet   Container image "apache/spark:4.2.0-scala" already present on machine
  Normal  Created            0s    kubelet   Created container: spark-kubernetes-driver
  Normal  Started            0s    kubelet   Started container spark-kubernetes-driver

$ kubectl delete sparkapp pi-on-yunikorn
sparkapplication.spark.apache.org "pi-on-yunikorn" deleted from default namespace

Clean Up

Check the existing Spark applications and clusters. If exists, delete them.

$ kubectl get sparkapp
No resources found in default namespace.

$ kubectl get sparkcluster
No resources found in default namespace.

Remove HelmChart and CRDs.

helm uninstall spark

kubectl delete crd sparkapplications.spark.apache.org

kubectl delete crd sparkclusters.spark.apache.org

Contributing

Please review the Contribution to Spark guide for information on how to get started contributing to the project.