The Imixs-Cloud

Imixs-Cloud is a conceptual infrastructure project, describing a lightweight docker based server environment for business applications. The main objectives of this project are simplicity, transparency and operational readiness.

Imixs-Cloud runs on docker swarm to build, run and maintain business services. The project is open source and part of the Open Source project Imixs-Workflow. This project is continuous under development and we sincerely invite you to participate in it.

Rules

The main objectives of this project can be itemized under the following rules:

A Imixs-Cloud can be setup easily and run on commodity hardware.
All services and infrastructure components are running on docker swarm.
The docker command line interface (CLI) is used to setup and manage nodes and services.
Docker UI Front-End components are used to monitor the infrastructure.
Business applications are deployed to a central Docker-Registry and started as services.
All services are isolated and accessible only through a central proxy server.
Scalabillity and configuration is managed by docker-compose.

Basic Architecture

The basic architecture of the Imixs-Cloud consists of the following components:

A Docker-Swarm Cluster running on virtual or hardware nodes.
One management node, providing central services.
One or many worker nodes to run the services.
A central Reverse-Proxy service to dispatch requests (listening on port 80) to applications.
A management UI running on the management node.
A private registry to store custom docker images.

Nodes

A Imixs-Cloud consists of at least two nodes.

The management node is the swarm manager and provides a private registry and a reverse proxy service.
The worker nodes are serving the applications.

Only the management node should be visible via the internet. Worker nodes are only visible internally in the swarm. The infrastructure can be scaled by adding new worker nodes.

The Configuration Directory

The management node holds the configuration for all services in a central directory which can be synchronized with a code repository like Git. The configuration directory is used to setup and run the Imixs-Cloud and its services. The directory can be located in a project directory and is structured like in the following example:

/-
 |+ management/
    |- registry/
    |- swarmpit/
    |- traefik/
 |+ apps/
    |+ MY-APP/
       |  docker-compose.yml

The /management/ subfolder holds the configuration for all management services running on the management node only. The /apps/ directory contains service setups to start applications running typically on the worker nodes. Each sub-directory holds at least one docker-compose.yml file to startup the corresponding service and optional additional configuration files.

You can checkout this structure from GitHub or you can create the folders manually.

$ git clone https://github.com/imixs/imixs-cloud.git

How to Setup

Docker-Swarm is used to run a cluster of docker hosts serving business applications in docker-containers. Each node in the swarm has at least installed Docker.

Read the following sections to setup a Imixs-Cloud environment:

How to setup Imixs-Cloud - basic setup information for a docker-swarm.
The Private Registry - how to setup and work with a private registry.
How to secure Imixs-Cloud - advanced setup and security information.
HTTPS support - how to setup HTTPS encryption.
Version Control - how to setup a Git repo
Stateful Services - how to deploy stateful services.

How to Manage Services

After you have setup the Imixs-Cloud environment you can deploy and start your docker containers. In Docker-Swarm, containers are started as services within a so called 'stack'. A stack is described by a docker-compose.yml file. Each service of a stack can comunitcate with eachother in the same stack. A docker-compose file looks like this:

version: '3.1'

services:
  app:
    image: my-registry.com:8300/apps/my-app:1.0.0
    environment:
    ....
    networks:
      - frontend
      - backend  
....
  db:
    image: postgres:9.6.1
    environment:
	....
    volumes: 
      - dbdata:/var/lib/postgresql/data
    networks:
      - backend
.....
volumes:
  dbdata:
....
networks:
  frontend:
    external:
      name: imixs-proxy-net 
  backend:

Networks

In this example there a three services, all bound to a internal overlay network called 'backend'. Only the service 'imixs/imixs-office-workflow' is connected in addition to the external proxy network, so that only this application is visible outside of the stack. Read the Imixs-Cloud setup guide to learn how the proxy network is working.

docker deploy stack

You can define new custom applications in the /apps/ directory. Each application has its own sub-folder and consists at least of one docker-compose.yml file.

 |+ apps/
    |+ MY-APP/
       |  docker-compose.yml

To deploy and run a custom application within the Imixs-Cloud, you run the docker stack deploy command:

docker stack deploy -c apps/MY-APP/docker-compose.yml MY-APP

Updating a Stack

If you need to change some configuration or add a new services to a stack, you can restart the already existing stack with the same command. Docker-Swarm will automatically redeploy all affected services.

Running Services form the Private Registry

If your stack contains images hosted on the private registry, you need to specify the registry name and port number to enable docker-swarm to download the image. See the following example:

version: '3'

services:
  app:
    image: my-registry.com:8300/app/my-app:1.0.0
....

Contribute

Imixs-Cloud is open source and are sincerely invited to participate in it. If you want to contribute to this project please report any issues here. All source are available on Github.

ryanzebian/imixs-cloud