Deploying Browsertrix Cloud

Browsertrix Cloud can be deployed anywhere from single-node isolated environments, multi-machine setups and cloud-native Kubernetes!

Browsertrix Cloud currently supports three deployment methods:

Rootless deployment with podman on a single-machine (no Docker required)
Docker Swarm for single or multi-machine deployments
Kubernetes Cluster deployment.

Some basic instructions are provided below, we plan to expand this into more detail tutorial in the future.

(All shell scripts can be found in the ./scripts directory)

Deploying with Docker Swarm

For local deployments, using Docker Swarm is recommended. Docker Swarm can be used in a single-machine mode as well as with multi-machine setups. Docker Swarm is part of Docker, so if you have Docker installed, you can use this method.

Run the init-configs.sh which will copy the sample config configs/config.sample.env to configs/config.env if it doesn't already exist.
You can edit configs/config.env to set all settings for Browsertrix Cloud including, default passwords for superadmin, minio and mongodb.

2.5. Optionally: Run build-swarm.sh to build images locally, such as if you've made any changes, otherwise can skip.

Run run-swarm.sh to initialize the cluster.
Load http://localhost:9871/ to see the Browsertrix Cloud login page. (The API is also available at: http://localhost:9871/api/docs).

You can stop the deployment with stop-swarm.sh and restart again with run-swarm.sh

Note: Currently, unless email settings are configured, you will need to look at the logs to get the invite code for invites. You can do this by running: docker service logs btrix_backend

Deploying with Podman

Browsertrix Cloud can now also be used with Podman for environments that don't support Docker.

Podman allows Browsertrix Cloud to be deployed locally by a non-root user.

Podman deployment also requires either docker-compose or podman-compose.

Initial Installation

To run with Podman as a non-root user, there's a few initial installation

Ensure the podman service over a socket is running with: systemctl --user start podman.socket. Podman does not require a service, but Browsertrix Cloud requires access to the socket to worker.
Ensure podman can set cpu limits as Browsertrix Cloud uses cpu and memory limits for each crawl. After following instructions above, also run sudo systemctl daemon-reload to reload the delegate settings.
Ensure podman-compose is installed via pip install podman-compose.
Run build-podman.sh to build the local images.
Run the init-configs.sh which will copy the sample config configs/config.sample.env to configs/config.env if it doesn't already exist.
You can edit configs/config.env to set all settings for Browsertrix Cloud including, default passwords for superadmin, minio and mongodb.

6.5. Optionally: Run build-podman.sh to build images locally, such as if you've made any changes, otherwise can skip.

Run run-podman.sh to run Browsertrix Cloud using podman.
Load http://localhost:9871/ to see the Browsertrix Cloud login page. (The API is also available at: http://localhost:9871/api/docs).

You can stop the deployment with stop-podman.sh and restart again with run-podman.sh

Note: Currently, unless email settings are configured, you will need to look at the logs to get the invite code for invites. You can do this by running: podman logs -f browsertrix-cloud_backend_1

It's also possible to use Docker Compose with podman by setting export DOCKER_HOST=unix://$XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/podman/podman.sock. You can change the setting in run-podman.sh and stop-podman.sh to use docker-compose instead if desired.

Enabling Signing (for Swarm and Podman Deployments)

Browsertrix Cloud can optionally sign WACZ files with the same key used to generate an SSL cert.

To use this functionality, the machine running Browsertrix Cloud must be associated with a domain and must have port 80 available on that domain, or another port forwarding to port 80.

The docker-compose.signing.yml adds the capability for signing with the authsign module.

To enable signing in the Docker-based deployment:

Copy configs/signing.sample.yaml to configs/signing.yaml and set the domain and email fields in the config. Set staging to false to generate real certificates.
In docker-compose.signing.yaml, set an optional signing token.
In run-swarm.sh, uncomment the option for running with signing.

Deploying to Kubernetes

For deploying in the cloud, the Kubernetes (k8s) deployment is recommended. Browsertrix Cloud uses helm to deploy to K8s.

Ensure helm is installed locally and kubectl is configured for your k8s cluster.
Edit chart/values.yaml to configure your deployment. The ingress section contains the domain the service will be deployed in, and signing can be used to enable WACZ signing.
Run: helm upgrade --install -f ./chart/values.yaml btrix ./chart/ to deploy or upgrade an existing deployment.

To stop, run helm uninstall btrix.

Additional info coming soon

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