Overview of Container Administration

Containers, especially docker and related implementations are an important and modern way of deploying applications. Their value is primarily in the fact that they are staticly-linked application distribution, allowing the developer, qe and administrator to guarantee that they are using the same software with the same integration points.

Other important aspects of containers is that they represent the first time a highly accessible and usable interface to complex linux technologies is available. For example, SELinux is notorious for it’s complexity, yet docker makes it trivial to run with a well confined application within the container. Similar are cgroups for resource limits, storage allocation, and application migration.

Containers are built on a build server, transported to the consumer, and deployed. A common deployment pattern is for example:

docker run -p 8080:8080 my_awesome_webservice

It’s important to note here that docker is the arbitrator of all resources - in this case host port 8080 is connected to the containers port 8080. The container will only see traffic from the host, as the host is proxying connections through.

To configure our webservice, we pass in environment variables. For example:

docker run -p 8080:8080 -e ADMIN_NAME=claire my_awesome_webservice

Another example of running docker applications is

docker create -p 5432:5432 -v pgsql_data:/data pgsql:latest
docker start <instance name>

Here we see a container instance created from the pgsql latest image, and it has storage connected to “/data”. The location of “pgsql_data” is unknown to us the admin, but it’s a named resource so can be reused. The instance is then started.

Say we wanted to “upgrade” the instance. We would do:

docker pull pgsql:latest
docker rm <instance name>
docker create -p 5432:5432 -v pgsql_data:/data pgsql:latest
docker start <new instance name>

See how we delete and create a new instance, but we provide the same named storage? This is how upgrades are performed, where persistent data is given to the new container.

Key themes - upgrades are unknown to the container. Only data is passed in, and we have that as our only source of state. Resources are arbitrated to us. Hostnames and dynamic. Network traffic is proxied. Configuration is from environment (or our volume state).

389 Directory Server Challenges

389 DS has a large number of challenges in this environment. DS is designed in a way that requires it to be bootstrapped (dscreate), it uses dynamic config in /etc, it has data in multiple locations in /var, and it requires a low numbered port (containers can’t access things as root!).

In the past we also assumed that rpm scripts were run for upgrades and data migrations which requires state. Finally some operations even assume local access.

As a result 389 looks pretty hard to containerise!

Integration design

Thankfully, most of the work is already done. The end result will a container that works such as:

docker run -p 389:3389 -p 636:3636 -v 389_data:/data 389ds:latest

When the container is run, we enter an entry point (dscontainer) which understands and knows how to run in containers. First, it establishes all the locations in /data if they are required. Then it checks if an instance exists. If it exists, we simply start it. If no instance exists, one is created into /data. Special symlinks are added in /etc/ to allow the config to be redirected into /data.

The created instance has no suffix by default because we don’t know what suffix the user may want. We just don’t have the information available.

The dscontainer tool also does a number of helpful things in the setup process. It disable selinux and systemd integration since a container requires none of this. It disable hostname checks because containers use dynamic hostnames. It also acts as a proper init process, able to proxy the signals like sigterm etc to the running process for shutdowns and waiting until the processes are re-attached .

In environments like kubernetes, users and groups are dynamically assigned to the storage and running user, so the dscontainer tool also handles this correctly by setting the running user/group in the setup process. This requires testing to be sure it works.

In the future, the dscontainer tool should proxy environment variables into the dse.ldif before startup. This way DS can be configured with docker native behaviours. Some examples are the directory manager password, replication password, indexing on startup.

Future integration goals

Frequent questions about design choices

Can I change the instance name?

No - the instance name is to allow multiple LDAP servers on a single host. Because docker isolates all our instances, the isolation is provided by docker. So changing the instance name “does nothing” and in fact would make building the image potentially more complex. As a result, we leave it as localhost and be done.

How can I add name the suffix?

Well, naming the suffix would mean we have one in a container - by default because we don’t know what you want to do, we don’t supply a suffix in the container, you need to add one with dsconf. However, in the future we could automate a suffix creation as part of environment configuration to allow automated setup of replication and suffix as part of the containers.

How can I administer the instance?

You should use dsconf and dsidm via the remote ldap port. If that fails, you may need to use docker exec -i -t [name of container instance] dsconf …. instead.

Can I use cockpit with the container?

This is not possible due to how cockpit works - cockpit expects a systemd instance and a running server with command line. We don’t ship an init system so we have no way to launch cockpit inside of the container with the ldap server. As a result, we recommend you use the cli tools.

How can I tune my directory for …

You don’t have to! 389 fully supports auto-tuning inside of docker, even if you provide docker memory and cpu limits, we respect and scale to them.

Other integrations that made this possible

Many other pieces have been put into place in the last 2 years before this. Examples are:

Last modified on 1 March 2024