pdelboca / ckan-azure-deployment

A draft repository to document steps on how to deploy CKAN in Azure

Deploying CKAN in Azure

This repository documents some steps and considerations when deploying CKAN to an Azure Infrastructure.

Basic Services required

• App Service for Solr
• App Service for CKAN
• Redis Instance
• PostgreSQL
• Container Registry to push images

Notes on deploying

• In this repository we need set up the ckan.ini file at BUILD time (when creating the docker container) since in this scenario, secrets are managed in Github.
• SSH needs to be built in the Dockerfile https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/app-service/configure-custom-container?tabs=alpine&pivots=container-linux
• In basic quick deployments, make sure to set redirect_after_login configuration so it does not redirect to localhost.

Basic Steps

Resource Creation

• Create a resource group
• Create a container registry.
• Create an Azure Cache for Redis.
• Create an Azure Database for Postgresql.
• Create a Web App for Contaniers for Solr pointing to Docker Hub ckan/ckan-solr:2.10.
• Create an Azure Storage

Resource Configuration

• Go to the Solr App -> Add WEBSITES_PORT=8983 to the configuration and restart the app.
• Go to the Container Registry -> Access Keys and allow Admin user so we can push our CKAN Dockerfile
• Go to the Azure Database -> Create a database called ckan
• Go to the Azure Storage -> Create a File Share (here CKAN will store all uploaded data and assets)

Deployment and Main App Configuration

• Connect to the Container Registry (See Quick Start in Azure Portal for instructions).
• Build locally the image in this Repository using --build-arg (See Basic variable structure in this README)
  • Having an image in ACR is a requirement to create an Azure Web App. We will set the CKAN_SITE_URL with the value that it is going to have later.
• Push the image to the ACR
• Create a Web App using the image pushed to the ACR container
• Go to the newly created Web App -> Configuration -> Path mappings, and mount the Azure Storage File Share as a directory (example: /storage)
  • You must ensure that ckan.storage_path configuration option points to this mounted directory

Basic variables Structure when Building the image

docker build . \
    --build-arg CKAN_SQLALCHEMY_URL='postgresql://<user>:<pass>@<name>.postgres.database.azure.com/ckan?sslmode=require' \
    --build-arg SOLR_URL='https://<name>.azurewebsites.net/solr/ckan' \
    --build-arg CKAN_REDIS_URL='rediss://default:<pass>@<name>.redis.cache.windows.net:6380' \
    --build-arg CKAN_SITE_URL='https://<name>.azurewebsites.net'
    -t myckan:latest

Notes:

• Double s in rediss is not a typo, is for Secure Connections
• Get Redis password from Azure Portal
• Get Postgres user and password from the portal as well

Tutorials and Materials

• https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/container-apps/
• https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/app-service/configure-connect-to-azure-storage
• https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/app-service/configure-custom-container