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Cloud Deployment

Our Cloud deployment solution allows you to deploy and manage tribefire components locally or to the Cloud.

On this page

  1. Prerequisites
  2. General
    1. tfcloud CLI
    2. Tribefire Cloud Controller
  3. Creating an Initiative File
  4. Deploying Initiative Components Locally
  5. Additional Information

Prerequisites

  • tfcloud tool (add it to the Path system variable)
  • Docker version 17.0 or later
  • Log in to docker.artifactory.server (you can use the docker login command)

General

From a technical perspective, all management operations are performed from the command line and the actual deployment is based on Docker and Kubernetes. You configure the different components that make up your environment (called an initiative) in an Initiativefile which is later sent using a tfcloud CLI to Tribefire Cloud Controller for the deployment. As of now, each component in an initiative is a preconfigured Docker image.

At the moment, tfcloud should not run on Windows due to issues while pulling Docker images.

tfcloud CLI

tfcloud CLI allows you to deploy and manage your initiatives. With tfcloud CLI you can upload to either:

  • Kubernetes cluster
  • local Docker environment using Docker compose

tfcloud CLI uses REST calls to communicate.

Tribefire Cloud Controller

Tribefire Cloud Controller is a tribefire-based application which runs on a Kubernetes cluster and triggers the deployment of tribefire Docker containers.

Given that each tribefire component can run in their own docker container, they need to know about each other to communicate properly. Tribefire Cloud Controller uses container-specific variables for that. You, as a user, do not need to specify any of those variables - they are fully maintained by Tribefire Cloud Controller. All you need to do is to create your initiative.

There are two different components used for cartridge-master communication, based on the deployment type:

  • Apache ActiveMQ is used for local communication
  • etcd is used for communication in the Cloud

Creating an Initiative File

To create your initiative file, follow the steps below:

  1. Run the tfcloud create my-initiative command (tfcloud-win create my-initiative on Windows). A folder called my-initiative is created in the current directory, containing the YAML InitiativeFile.
  2. Open the InitiativeFile in a code editor. Several default tribefire components should be listed, including the Demo Cartridge:
    components:
    name: tribefire-demo-cartridge      # Name of the component.
    type: cartridge                     # 'cartridge' type requires specifying a docker image and will automatically be connected to tribefire services.
    image: docker.artifactory.server/tribefire-demo-cartridge:2.0.0-rc6          # A valid cartridge docker image. e.g. cartridge webapp deployed at ROOT of tribefire-base-image server.
    env:                                # A map of environment variables to set inside the container.          
        somekey: somevalue
  1. We can add another component to this file to be deployed later, for example the Simple Cartridge:
   components:
   name: tribefire-simple-cartridge      # Name of the component.
   type: cartridge                     # 'cartridge' type requires specifying a docker image and will automatically be connected to tribefire services.
   image: docker.artifactory.server/tribefire-simple-cartridge:2.0.0-rc6          # A valid cartridge docker image. e.g. cartridge webapp deployed at ROOT of tribefire-base-image server.
   env:                                # A map of environment variables to set inside the container.          
       somekey: somevalue
  1. Add other components to the file if needed, and proceed to deployment.

Deploying Initiative Components Locally

Run the command tfcloud deploy --local from the directory of your initiative file. The docker images of all components in the file should be fetched from repository, and deployed locally. To access the deployed initiative, map it in the hosts file (on Windows it should be available under \System32\drivers\etc), as in:

#<ip-address>   <hostname.domain.org>   <hostname>
<... other entries ...>
127.0.0.1    my-initiative.local

Once mapped, tribefire services should be available under my-initiative.local:38000.

Additional Information

You can check the latest developer documentation under https://github.com/braintribehq/tfcloud-cli/blob/master/README.md.