Setup of cc-backend

How to configure and deploy cc-backend

Introduction

Recommended workflow for deployment

Why we do not provide a docker container

The ClusterCockpit web backend binary has no external dependencies, everything is included in the binary. The external assets, SQL database and job archive, would also be external in a docker setup. The only advantage of a docker setup would be that the initial configuration is automated. But this only needs to be done one time. We therefore think that setting up docker, securing and maintaining it is not worth the effort.

It is recommended to install all ClusterCockpit components in a common directory, e.g. /opt/monitoring, var/monitoring or var/clustercockpit. In the following we use /opt/monitoring.

Two systemd services run on the central monitoring server:

clustercockpit : binary cc-backend in /opt/monitoring/cc-backend.
cc-metric-store : Binary cc-metric-store in /opt/monitoring/cc-metric-store.

ClusterCockpit is deployed as a single binary that embeds all static assets. We recommend keeping all cc-backend binary versions in a folder archive and linking the currently active one from the cc-backend root. This allows for easy roll-back in case something doesn’t work.

Please Note

cc-backend is started with root rights to open the privileged ports (80 and 443). It is recommended to set the configuration options user and group, in which case cc-backend will drop root permissions once the ports are taken. You have to take care, that the ownership of the ./var folder and its contents are set accordingly.

Workflow to deploy new version

This example assumes the DB and job archive versions did not change.

Stop systemd service:

sudo systemctl stop clustercockpit.service

Backup the sqlite DB file! This is as simple as to copy it.
Copy new cc-backend binary to /opt/monitoring/cc-backend/archive (Tip: Use a date tag like YYYYMMDD-cc-backend). Here is an example:

cp ~/cc-backend /opt/monitoring/cc-backend/archive/20231124-cc-backend

Link from cc-backend root to current version

ln -s  /opt/monitoring/cc-backend/archive/20231124-cc-backend /opt/monitoring/cc-backend/cc-backend

Start systemd service:

sudo systemctl start clustercockpit.service

Check if everything is ok:

sudo systemctl status clustercockpit.service

Check log for issues:

sudo journalctl -u clustercockpit.service

Check the ClusterCockpit web frontend and your Slurm adapters if anything is broken!

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