Salted Dokku

Deploy Dokku using SaltStack. 🐳

TODO:

• use salt-cloud to provision instances
• add a bastion host

SaltStack

Salt handles the configuration management and remote execution for the instances.

A quick guide on SaltStack is available at: OpsSchool.org

Installation

(local)$ virtualenv -p python3 .venv
(local)$ source .venv/bin/activate
(local)$ pip install salt-ssh

Remote execution

To ping all available instances in the roster, use:

(local)$ salt-ssh '*' test.ping

To execute a command on the available instances in the roster, use:

(local)$ salt-ssh '*' cmd.run 'date'

The output will include the instance name and the command execution result.

Configuration management

To see the instances and what configuration applies to those, run:

(local)$ salt-ssh '*' state.show_top

To apply the latest changes to the instances, use:

(local)$ salt-ssh '*' state.apply

To target just a specific instance for updates, use:

(local)$ salt-ssh 'dokku-01' state.apply

Dokku

Dokku as our PaaS for deploying prodution or staging apps.

Suggested list:

• Pick a larger instance (on AWS: an m5.x) running Ubuntu with a bit of root storage (>50G) and provision it (allow SSH connections to it)
• Attach some persistent block storage or network drive to it
• Optionally, attach the new instance to a load balancer and assign a sub-domain to it (ex. dokku.domain.com)
• Update the etc/salt/roster file to include the new instance IP address
• Run salt-ssh 'dokku-XX' state.apply
• Install some plugins (ex. postgres, letsencrypt, or slack)
• Reboot the instance
• Open the browser to check if everything works as intended.

The last step will configure the instance to be ready for immediate use. It will deploy ssh keys (see states/users), install relevant packages and update the mount points.

To upgrade, deploy a new Dokku instance and re-associate the load-balancer, block storage/network drive and the elastic IP address to the new instance. Make backups before!

Local client

To download a local bash client, download and allow execution of the official script:

https://github.com/dokku/dokku/blob/master/contrib/dokku_client.sh

Example:

(local)$ curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dokku/dokku/master/contrib/dokku_client.sh > ~/.bin/dokku
(local)$ chmod +x ~/.bin/dokku

Adding a new Dokku user

To add a new user, update the file in states/dokku/authorized_keys based on this template:

command="FINGERPRINT=<FINGERPRINT> NAME=\"<USER_ALIAS>\" `cat /home/dokku/.sshcommand` $SSH_ORIGINAL_COMMAND",no-agent-forwarding,no-user-rc,no-X11-forwarding,no-port-forwarding <PUBLIC_KEY_CONTENTS>

To get the public key fingerprint, use:

(local)$ ssh-keygen -lf states/users/keys/<USER>.id_rsa.pub

Next apply the changes:

(local)$ salt-ssh 'dokku-*' state.apply

Creating applications

To create an application, follow the official guide.

(local)$ ssh -t [email protected] apps:create <NEW_APP_NAME>

Consider the following naming scheme for the applications: <REPOSITORY_NAME>-<FEATURE/BRANCH>.

Next point your application to the new Dokku origin:

(local/app)$ git remote add dokku [email protected]:<NEW_APP_NAME>
(local/app)$ git push dokku <YOUR_BRANCH>:master

To see all available apps, use:

(local)$ ssh -t [email protected] apps:list

CI

You can automate your continuous integration server to create the applications.

Here's a template you can use to automatically let your build server provision new applications is your commit includes the keyword [staging]:

export STAGING=`git show -s --format=%B --grep '\[staging\]'`
export DOKKU_REPO=`echo $REPONAME | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]' | tr '_' '-'`
export DOKKU_BRANCH=`echo $BRANCH | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]' | tr '_' '-'`
export DOKKU_TO_CLONE_ID=template-app
export DOKKU_ID="$DOKKU_REPO-$DOKKU_BRANCH"
if [ $CIRCLE_BRANCH == 'develop' ] || [ -n "$STAGING" ]
then
  echo `ssh -t [email protected] apps:create "$DOKKU_ID"`
  echo `git remote add dokku "[email protected]:$DOKKU_ID"`
  git push dokku "$BRANCH:master" -f
  export DOKKU_STAGED=`dokku config:get STAGED`
  if [[ $DOKKU_STAGED != *'yes'* ]]
  then
    export DOKKU_DEF_CONF=`ssh -t [email protected] config:export --format=shell $DOKKU_TO_CLONE_ID`
    echo `dokku config:set --no-restart $DOKKU_DEF_CONF STAGED=yes`
    echo `dokku config:unset --no-restart DATABASE_URL`
    echo `dokku domains:add $DOKKU_ID.dokku.domain.com`
    # Plugins
    # echo `dokku proxy:ports-remove https:443:3000`
    # echo `dokku proxy:ports-add http:80:3000`
    # echo `dokku letsencrypt`
    # echo `dokku postgres:clone "pg-$DOKKU_TO_CLONE_ID" "pg-$DOKKU_ID"`
    # echo `dokku postgres:link "pg-$DOKKU_ID" "$DOKKU_ID"`
    # echo `dokku postgres:promote "pg-$DOKKU_ID" "$DOKKU_ID"`
  fi
  dokku ps:report
  dokku urls
fi
echo "STAGING $STAGING"