jbu.io

Code, Cloud Computing and Docker

Discoverable HTTP Load Balancing in Mesos/Marathon using Beethoven and NGINX

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Beethoven is an application written in Go that automatically configures Nginx for applications deployed on Marathon/Mesos. Beethoven runs in Docker and can be managed by Marathon to provide HTTP load balancing.

Feature Highlights

  • Uses NGINX for HTTP based load balancing
  • Handlebars for powerful template parsing
  • Zero downtime load balancing when changes occur
  • Allows stream filtering so NGINX re-configuration is only triggered by RegEx patterns
  • Listens to the realtime SSE from Marathon to quickly change upstreams based on application/tasks state changes
  • RESTful endpoints for current status
  • Flexible configuration options (local config, spring-cloud configuration remote configuration fetching and ENV variables)
  • Easy to get started add a FROM containx/beethoven to your Dockerfile add your template, config options and deploy!

A look at the Beethoven container…

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Securing Mesosphere Marathon using the Marathon-LDAP Plugin

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Mesosphere Marathon has adapted their plugin interface, offering two extension points.  This includes the ability to have custom plugins handling UI/Rest based authentication as well as securing operations.

I looked around to see what has been released in the open source community and didn’t see much.  I wanted to be able to lock down Marathon based on the following requirements:

  • UI/REST based authentication against LDAP / Active Directory
  • Ability to offer flexible configuration based on LDAP Groups, for example:
    • Everyone who is authenticated should be able to see running containers
    • Admins have unlimited control
    • Developers can do full CRUD operations against an ID namespace of /dev

As a result of these requirements I decided to create the Marathon-LDAP Plugin.   This article will cover how easy it is to secure your Marathon clusters against an LDAP server.

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Eating my own dog food: Building a PaaS

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For the past few years I have been a key game changer in moving my employers into SOA/Microservices architecture.  Along with this I have pushed Mesos/Marathon and Docker as the clustering/container technology.  I have completely changed the way engineering handles processes to be alignment with automation and continuous delivery of many services.

I had an epiphany when talking to a friend recently… For whatever reason I don’t use any of the above technologies for my personal blogs, websites and open-source projects.  Yes, I contribute to the Docker project and have written management tools to handle blue/green deployments but I’m not using them for my own (outside-of-work) coding.

Why you might ask?  I guess I was probably too exhausted from working 12+ hour days and leading my existing projects after hours to put the time in.  Rackspace is one of my sponsors and along with that I receive a generous cloud credit each month.  I’ve been using a fraction of what I could possibly use from them.

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Releasing cross-platform Go binaries using Goxc and BinTray in 5 minutes

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I see many Go projects on GitHub that mention publicly releasing binaries for their projects in the future when time permits.  After releasing Depcon and Docker Volume Netshare I wanted an easy way to release updates so users could quickly grab the latest binary regardless of their platform.

There are many ways to do this and after researching various cross-compilation options and a place to store built binaries I settled on Goxc for compilation and Bintray to store the final binaries and packages. [Read more…]

Introducing Depcon: The fastest way to deploy Docker to Mesos/Marathon

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Depcon is the fastest way to start deploying Docker containers to a Mesos/Marathon cluster.  Here are a list of features to help you get started using Depcon in your deployment pipeline:

  • Native Binary: Written in Go with binary support for Linux, Mac OS X, Windows & BSD systems
  • Full Marathon Support: Supports 100% of the Marathon API
  • Multi formats descriptors: Accepts Marathon deployment descriptors in JSON or YAML
  • Group Support: Support for creating advanced deployment groups with nested dependencies
  • Output Format: All output and responses can be outputted in CLI Tabular, JSON or YAML formats
  • Property Substitution: Supports ${PROPERTY} substitution within the application descriptor.  For example you can inject values from the build system directly into the template which resolves and deploys
  • Scaling: Quickly scale a running Docker application to set desired instance count
  • Resources: Quickly update CPU or Memory of a running  Docker application
  • Task: Full task management
  • Async/Sync Deployments:  Depcon allows you to deploy an application and either wait for it to become healthy or simply deploy and exit allowing you to poll on your own frequency using Depcon.
  • Environment Configuration: Depcon creates and uses a configuration file which allows you to define preferred global options as well as named environments.  With named environments authentication details and endpoint info is saved allowing you to switch between environments quickly.

Kubernetes, Compose & Amazon ECS Future Support

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