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So last week I finally got out from my “tech” comfort zone, and tried to set up a Node.js application which uses a MongoDB database, and to add an extra layer of fun I used Rancher to set up the whole application stack using Docker containers.
I designed a small application with Node, its only function is to calculate the number of hits on the website, you can find the code at Github
The setup was to add an Nginx container as a load balancer at the front-end to serve two back-end Node application containers, and then have the two Node servers connect to a MongoDB database container. In this setup I will use 5 machines from Digital Ocean, 4 to build the application stack with the highest availability, and the 5th as a Rancher server.
On a Digital Ocean machine with Docker 1.4 installed we will apply the following command to set up a Rancher platform on the port 8000:
root@Rancher-Mngmt:~# docker run -d --name rancher-server -p 8080:8080 rancher/server
The previous command will run a docker instance with rancher platform, and proxy the port 8080 on the instance to the same port on the Digital Ocean machine. To make sure that the server is running type this command:
root@Rancher-io-Mngmt:~# docker logs rancher-server
You should see something like the following output:
20:02:41.943 [main] INFO ConsoleStatus - [DONE ] [68461ms] Startup Succeeded, Listening on port 8080
To access Rancher now, type the following url in your browser:
http://DO-ip-address:8080/ you should see something like the following:
To register the Digital Ocean machines with docker 1.4 installed with Rancher, type the following on each machine:
root@Rancher-Test-Instance-X# docker run -it --privileged -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock rancher/agent http://rancher-server-ip:8080
where rancher-server-ip is the ip address of the Rancher server we just installed, or you can click on “Register a New Host “ on Rancher platform and copy the command shown.
After applying the previous command on each machine you should see something like the following when you access the Rancher management server:
If you are familiar with Ansible as a configuration management tool, you can use it to register the Digital Ocean machines with Rancher in one command:
[DO] 178.62.101.243 178.62.27.24 178.62.98.242 178.62.11.154
$ ansible DO -u root -a “docker run -it --privileged -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock rancher/agent http://rancher-server-ip:8080”
After Registering the 4 machines with Rancher, its time to start building our application stack.
The node.js application will calculate the number of hits on a website, so it needs to store this data somewhere. I will use MongoDB container to store the number of hits.
The Dockerfile will be like the following:
FROM ubuntu:14.04 MAINTAINER hussein.galal.ahmed.11@gmail.com ENV chached_FLAG 0 RUN apt-get -qq update && apt-get -yqq upgrade RUN apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 --recv 7F0CEB10 RUN echo 'deb http://downloads-distro.mongodb.org/repo/ubuntu-upstart dist 10gen' | tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/10gen.list RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -yqq mongodb-org RUN mkdir -p /data/db EXPOSE 27017 ADD run.sh /tmp/run.sh ADD init.json /tmp/init.json ENTRYPOINT ["/bin/bash", "/tmp/run.sh"]
The previous Docker file is really simple, lets explain it line by line:
RUN apt-get -qq update && apt-get -yqq upgrade
RUN apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 --recv 7F0CEB10 RUN echo 'deb http://downloads-distro.mongodb.org/repo/ubuntu-upstart dist 10gen' | tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/10gen.list
RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -yqq mongodb-org
RUN mkdir -p /data/db
EXPOSE 27017
ADD run.sh /tmp/run.sh ADD init.json /tmp/init.json
ENTRYPOINT ["/bin/bash", "/tmp/run.sh"]
Let’s take a look at the run.sh file:
#!/bin/bash /usr/bin/mongod & sleep 3 mongoimport --db countdb --collection hits --type json --file /tmp/init.json /usr/bin/mongod --shutdown sleep 3 /usr/bin/mongod
The server started first to be able to import the init.json database to the countdb database and hits collection, then shutdown the server and start it up again but in the foreground this time.
The init.json database file:
{'count': 0}
The Node.js container will install node.js and git packages, and then will run a simple script to update the /etc/hosts file with the ip of the MongoDB container provided by the environment variable: \$MONGO_IP.
FROM ubuntu:14.04 MAINTAINER hussein.galal.ahmed.11@gmail.com ENV CACHED_FLAG 1 # Install node RUN apt-get update -qq && apt-get -y upgrade RUN apt-get install -yqq nodejs git git-core VOLUME [ "/var/www/nodeapp" ] ADD ./run.sh /tmp/run.sh
# Install Dependencies WORKDIR /var/www/nodeapp # Run The App ENTRYPOINT ["/bin/bash", "/tmp/run.sh"]
The ENTRYPOINT of the Docker container is executing the /tmp/run.sh script:
MONGO_DN=mongo if [ -n "$MONGO_IP" ] then echo "$MONGO_IP $MONGO_DN" >> /etc/hosts fi # Fetch the application git clone https://github.com/galal-hussein/hitcntr-nodejs.git mv hitcntr-nodejs/* . rm -rf hitcntr-nodejs # Run the Application nodejs index.js
The previous script will check for the MONGO_IP environment variable and if it is set, it will add the content of this variable to /etc/hosts, then pull the code from Github Repo, and finally run the node application.
The Dockerfile of the Nginx container will install nginx webserver and add the configuration files, and ran a script to update /etc/hosts file like the Node.js container, and finally run the web server.
Nginx Dockerfile:
#dockerfile for nginx/nodejs FROM ubuntu:14.04 MAINTAINER hussein.galal.ahmed.11@gmail.com ENV CACHED_FLAG 0 # Install nginx RUN apt-get update -qq && apt-get -y upgrade RUN apt-get -y -qq install nginx # Adding the configuration files ADD conf/nginx.conf /etc/nginx/nginx.conf ADD conf/default /etc/nginx/conf.d/default ADD ./run.sh /tmp/run.sh # Expose the port 80 EXPOSE 80 # Run nginx ENTRYPOINT [ "/bin/bash", "/tmp/run.sh" ]
The Dockerfile is very simple and use the same commands like the previous images.
run.sh:
NODE_1_DN=node_app1 NODE_2_DN=node_app2 if [ -n "$NODE_APP1_IP" ] then echo "$NODE_APP1_IP $NODE_1_DN" >> /etc/hosts fi if [ -n "$NODE_APP2_IP" ] then echo "$NODE_APP2_IP $NODE_2_DN" >> /etc/hosts fi # Run Nginx /usr/sbin/nginx
Since we are using two Node application servers, we need to proxy the http requests received by Nginx to those servers and to do that we need to add the ips of the Node.js containers to the hosts file.
The ips of the Node.js containers are defined by the two environment variables (NODE_APP1_IP, and NODE_APP2_IP).
Now for the final step, build and then push the images to Docker hup:
~/rancher_vm# docker build -t husseingalal/nodeapp_mongo mongo/ ~/rancher_vm# docker build -t husseingalal/nodeapp_node node/ ~/rancher_vm# docker build -t husseingalal/nodeapp_nginx nginx/ ~/rancher_vm# docker push husseingalal/nodeapp_mongo ~/rancher_vm# docker push husseingalal/nodeapp_node ~/rancher_vm# docker push husseingalal/nodeapp_nginx
Now Docker will ask you for your account credentials, then the images will be pushed to the Docker hub to be used later with Rancher.
Note that the option “Manage Network on docker0“ was chosen to make sure that we will enable one of the unique features of Rancher which is cross container networking, this feature enables Docker containers on different hosts to communicate in a virtual private network.
After clicking Create, you should see that the machine is started to download the image and install it along with another docker instance called Network Agent which is used to create the virtual private network we just talked about.
Note that we used the Node.js image we just created, before creating the container make sure to add the MONGO_IP environment variable to add the ip of the MongoDB server, you can get the private ip of the MongoDB server from the Rancher panel:
After that click Create to begin the creation process of the Node.js container. On the second host create the second Node.js Application container using the same steps.
Since the nginx instance will be facing the internet, we should proxy the port 80 from inside the container to the port 80 of the Digital Ocean machine:
We need also to add the ips of the two Node.js application servers which are connected to Nginx, you can add the ips through creating two environment variables (NODE_APP1_IP, NODE_APP2_IP):
Now wecan access the application using the ip address of the Host machine http://<the-ip-address>.
In part 1 of this series, I created a Node.js application stack using Docker containers and Rancher platform. The stack consists of Nginx container which balances the load between two Node.js application containers and using MongoDB as our database.
In part 2 I introduce one of the newest features of Rancher: Github Authentication, also I will use Github WebHooks feature for automatic deployment of the web application.
If you’d like to learn more about Rancher, please schedule a demo:
Hussein Galal is a Linux System Administrator, with experience in Linux, Unix, Networking, and open source technologies like Nginx, Apache, PHP-FPM, Passenger, MySQL, LXC, and Docker. You can follow Hussein on Twitter @galal_hussein.*