Installing Nitrate with Docker and Google Cloud Engine

It is possible to host Nitrate on Google Cloud Engine as a Docker image. The image is configured to use Gunicorn as the backend server. To read more about Nitrate and Gunicorn see Installing Nitrate with Gunicorn.

Warning

You need docker running on the local machine and google-cloud-sdk installed and configured with proper credentials in order for the commands below to work!

Create Docker image

First make sure you are able to start Nitrate via Gunicorn locally! Then inside your application directory create the following files.

app.yaml:

# Copyright 2015 Google Inc.
#
# Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
# you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
# You may obtain a copy of the License at
#
#     http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
#
# Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
# distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
# WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
# See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
# limitations under the License.

# This file specifies your Python application's runtime configuration.
# See https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/managed-vms/config for details.
runtime: custom
vm: true
entrypoint: custom

Use the following Dockerfile to build your image:

# Copyright 2015 Google Inc.
#
# Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
# you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
# You may obtain a copy of the License at
#
#     http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
#
# Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
# distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
# WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
# See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
# limitations under the License

# The Google App Engine python runtime is Debian Jessie with Python installed
# and various os-level packages to allow installation of popular Python
# libraries. The source is on github at:
#   https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/python-docker
FROM gcr.io/google_appengine/python

# Create a virtualenv for the application dependencies.
RUN virtualenv /env

# Set virtualenv environment variables. This is equivalent to running
# source /env/bin/activate. This ensures the application is executed within
# the context of the virtualenv and will have access to its dependencies.
ENV VIRTUAL_ENV /env
ENV PATH /env/bin:$PATH

# update the base OS image
RUN apt-get update
RUN apt-get upgrade -y

# install packages needed to build the Python dependencies
RUN apt-get install -y libkrb5-dev mysql-client

RUN pip install -U pip

# Install gunicorn and Nitrate
# remove django-s3-folder-storage if you don't use Amazon S3 for static files
RUN pip install gunicorn nitrate django-s3-folder-storage

# Add application code.
ADD . /app

# Gunicorn is used to run the application on Google App Engine. $PORT is defined
# by the runtime.
CMD gunicorn -b :$PORT --keyfile /app/ssl/key.pem --certfile /app/ssl/cert.pem mynitrate.wsgi

Note

ssl/ is a directory containing SSL key and certificate if you’d like to serve Nitrate via HTTPS.

Warning

At the time of writing Nitrate is not distributed as a package hosted on Python Package Index. The command pip install nitrate above will fail unless you provide it with the exact URL to nitrate-X.Y.tar.gz! You can build the package on your own using python ./setup.py sdist!

Build and push the latest version of the image

$ IMAGE="gcr.io/YOUR-ORGANIZATION/nitrate:v$(date +%Y%m%d%H%M)"
$ docker build --tag $IMAGE .
$ gcloud docker push $IMAGE

To view all images:

$ docker images

Create the service for the first time

$ kubectl run nitrate --image=gcr.io/YOUR-ORGANIZATION/nitrate:vYYYYMMDDHHMM --port 8080
$ kubectl expose rc nitrate --port 443 --target-port 8080 --name nitrate-https --type=LoadBalancer

These commands will create a resource controller with a single pod running the service. After a while you can view the external IP address using the command:

$ kubectl get svc

Other useful commands (for debugging) are:

$ kubectl get rc
$ kubectl get pods

Create DB structure, first user and upload static files

The commands below are executed from inside the Docker image because they need access to mynitrate/settings.py:

$ kubectl get pods
NAME            READY     STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
nitrate-d2u6p   1/1       Running   0          18h

$ kubectl exec nitrate-d2u6p -i -t -- bash -il
root@nitrate-d2u6p:/home/vmagent/app# source /env/bin/activate
(env)root@nitrate-d2u6p:/home/vmagent/app# PYTHONPATH=. django-admin migrate --settings mynitrate.settings
(env)root@nitrate-d2u6p:/home/vmagent/app# PYTHONPATH=. django-admin createsuperuser --settings mynitrate.settings
(env)root@nitrate-d2u6p:/home/vmagent/app# PYTHONPATH=. django-admin collectstatic --noinput --settings mynitrate.settings

Updating to new version

  • Update Nitrate code and/or settings;

  • Create a new Docker image version and upload it to Google Container Engine;

  • Update the service to use the latest version of the Docker image:

    $ kubectl rolling-update nitrate --image=gcr.io/YOUR-ORGANIZATION/nitrate:vYYYYMMDDHHMM

where you pass the latest version to the --image parameter;

  • Update static files (see above).

How To Configure

All configuration needs to go into mynitrate/settings.py BEFORE you build the Docker image and push it to GCE.