RockSteady

RockSteady is an application management and deployment system developed for Altmetric and BotsAndUs.

Background

RockSteady provides a user interface that allows a team to deploy Docker images to a Nomad cluster. It integrates with Docker Hub and Amazon's Elastic Container Registry (ECR) to find Docker images that can be deployed, and stores a Nomad job spec for each application which is deployed. Users can then deploy an arbitrary image to the cluster using a simple UI, or configurre applications to automatically deploy builds from a specific Git branch through a webhook integration with CircleCI.

Requirements

RockSteady is a Rails application, and uses PostgreSQL as a backing store for application configuration. You'll need a working Ruby installation (2.5+), and a local node.js install with Yarn to install the asset pipeline.

To run the application locally:

git clone git@github.com:PowerRhino/rocksteady.git
cd rocksteady
bundle
yarn install
rails db:create db:schema:load
rails s

Alternatively, using docker-compose:

docker-compose build && docker-compose up

The command will start Rocksteady, Postgres and a Nomad agent. The project directory is mounted in the container, so you'll be able to make live changes. Adding/removing gems or npm packages requires a docker-compose build.

RockSteady is also available as a Docker image, and is capable of self-hosting if a Nomad cluster is available.

Configuration

Rocksteady is configured using the following environment variables:

• PORT – the port that the application will use for its HTTP server.
• DATABASE_URL – URI pointing to a Postgres database.
• SECRET_KEY_BASE – Secret key for Rails sessions.
• NOMAD_API_URI – HTTP(S) endpoint to a server for the Nomad cluster being used.
• ECR_BASE – Base URI for ECR repositories (not including the repository name).
• ROCKSTEADY_THEME_LABEL - (optional) a custom label to be placed next to the application name.
• ROCKSTEADY_THEME_COLOUR - (optional) when set to warning triggers some colour changes in the UI to make the user aware of a possibly sensitive environment.

AWS configuration is supplied using the standard AWS configuration methods. You can specify this using an explicit key pair and region:

• AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID – AWS access key with permission to read images from ECR.
• AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY – Corresponding AWS secret key.
• AWS_REGION – AWS region to use for ECR.

Alternatively, if you have an appropriate profile in place:

• AWS_PROFILE – Locally-configured AWS profile supplying an AWS keypair and region.

Bootstrapping

RockSteady is capable of self-hosting as a job running on a Nomad cluster. An example job spec is included in nomad_job.hcl which can be customised as appropriate for your environment.