Rancher GitLab Deployment Tool
rancher-gitlab-deploy is a tool for deploying containers built with GitLab CI onto your Rancher infrastructure.
It fits neatly into the gitlab-ci.yml workflow and requires minimal configuration. It will upgrade existing services as part of your CI workflow.
Both GitLab's built in Docker registry and external Docker registries are supported.
rancher-gitlab-deploy will pick as much of its configuration up as possible from environment variables set by the GitLab CI runner.
This tool is not suitable if your services are not already created in Rancher. It will upgrade existing services, but will not create new ones. If you need to create services you should use rancher-compose in your CI workflow, but that means storing any secret environment variables in your Git repo.
Installation
I recommend you use the pre-built container:
https://hub.docker.com/r/cdrx/rancher-gitlab-deploy/
But you can install the command locally, with pip, if you prefer:
pip install rancher-gitlab-deploy
Usage
You will need to create a set of API keys in Rancher and save them as secret variables in GitLab for your project.
Three secret variables are required:
RANCHER_URL (eg https://rancher.example.com)
RANCHER_ACCESS_KEY
RANCHER_SECRET_KEY
Rancher supports two kind of API keys: environment and account. You can use either with this tool, but if your account key has access to more than one environment you'll need to specify the name of the environment with the --environment flag. This is so that the tool can upgrade find the service in the right place. For example, in your gitlab-ci.yml:
deploy:
stage: deploy
image: cdrx/rancher-gitlab-deploy
script:
- upgrade --environment production
rancher-gitlab-deploy will use the GitLab group and project name as the stack and service name by default. For example, the project:
http://gitlab.example.com/acme/webservice
will upgrade the service called webservice in the stack called acme.
If the names of your services don't match your repos in GitLab 1:1, you can change the service that gets upgraded with the --stack and --service flags:
deploy:
stage: deploy
image: cdrx/rancher-gitlab-deploy
script:
- upgrade --stack acmeinc --service website
You can change the image (or :tag) used to deploy the upgraded containers with the --new-image option:
deploy:
stage: deploy
image: cdrx/rancher-gitlab-deploy
script:
- upgrade --new-image registry.example.com/acme/widget:1.2
You may use this with the $CI_BUILD_TAG environment variable that GitLab sets.
rancher-gitlab-deploy's default upgrade strategy is to upgrade containers one at time, waiting 2s between each one. It will start new containers after shutting down existing ones, to avoid issues with multiple containers trying to bind to the same port on a host. It will wait for the upgrade to complete in Rancher, then mark it as finished. The upgrade strategy can be adjusted with the flags in --help (see below).
GitLab CI Example
Complete gitlab-ci.yml:
image: docker:latest
services:
- docker:dind
stages:
- build
- deploy
build:
stage: build
script:
- docker login -u gitlab-ci-token -p $CI_BUILD_TOKEN registry.example.com
- docker build -t registry.example.com/group/project .
- docker push registry.example.com/group/project
deploy:
stage: deploy
image: cdrx/rancher-gitlab-deploy
script:
- upgrade
A more complex example:
deploy:
stage: deploy
image: cdrx/rancher-gitlab-deploy
script:
- upgrade --environment production --stack acme --service web --new-image alpine:3.4 --no-finish-upgrade
Help
$ rancher-gitlab-deploy --help
Usage: rancher-gitlab-deploy [OPTIONS]
Performs an in service upgrade of the service specified on the command
line
Options:
--rancher-url TEXT The URL for your Rancher server, eg:
http://rancher:8000 [required]
--rancher-key TEXT The environment or account API key
[required]
--rancher-secret TEXT The secret for the access API key
[required]
--rancher-label-separator TEXT Where the default separator (',') could
cause issues
--environment TEXT The name of the environment to add the host
into (only needed if you are using an
account API key instead of an environment
API key)
--stack TEXT The name of the stack in Rancher (defaults
to the name of the group in GitLab)
[required]
--service TEXT The name of the service in Rancher to
upgrade (defaults to the name of the service
in GitLab) [required]
--start-before-stopping / --no-start-before-stopping
Should Rancher start new containers before
stopping the old ones?
--batch-size INTEGER Number of containers to upgrade at once
--batch-interval INTEGER Number of seconds to wait between upgrade
batches
--upgrade-timeout INTEGER How long to wait, in seconds, for the
upgrade to finish before exiting. To skip
the wait, pass the --no-wait-for-upgrade-to-
finish option.
--wait-for-upgrade-to-finish / --no-wait-for-upgrade-to-finish
Wait for Rancher to finish the upgrade
before this tool exits
--rollback-on-error / --no-rollback-on-error
Rollback the upgrade if an error occured.
The rollback will be performed only if the
option --wait-for-upgrade-to-finish is
passed
--new-image TEXT If specified, replace the image (and :tag)
with this one during the upgrade
--finish-upgrade / --no-finish-upgrade
Mark the upgrade as finished after it
completes
--sidekicks / --no-sidekicks Upgrade service sidekicks at the same time
--new-sidekick-image <TEXT TEXT>...
If specified, replace the sidekick image
(and :tag) with this one during the upgrade
--create / --no-create If specified, create Rancher stack and
service if they don't exist
--labels TEXT If specified, add a comma separated list of
key=values to add to the service
--label <TEXT TEXT>... If specified, add a Rancher label to the
service
--variables TEXT If specified, add a comma separated list of
key=values to add to the service
--variable <TEXT TEXT>... If specified, add a environment variable to
the service
--service-links TEXT If specified, add a comma separated list of
key=values to add to the service
--service-link <TEXT TEXT>... If specified, add a service link to the
service
--host-id TEXT If specified, service will be deployed on
requested host
--debug / --no-debug Enable HTTP Debugging
--ssl-verify / --no-ssl-verify Disable certificate checks. Use this to
allow connecting to a HTTPS Rancher server
using an self-signed certificate
--secrets TEXT If specified, add a comma separated list of
secrets to the service
--secret TEXT If specified add a secret to the service
--help Show this message and exit.
History
[1.7] - 2020-12-16
Fixed a bug when updating variables on existing service, thanks to @ffouchier Added the --rancher-label-separator option, thanks to @NigelGreenway for the PR Added the --service-links option, thanks to @mrpolman for the PR Added the support for secrets with the --secret option, thanks to @earzur for the PR
[1.6] - 2018-09-09
Added the --rollback-on-error option, thanks to @TZK- for the PR Added the --label, --variables, --variable options, thankls to @tsteenkamp for the PR
[1.5] - 2017-11-25
Fixed UnicodeError bug with authentication, thank you to @evilmind for the fix
[1.4] - 2017-07-18
Fixed some bug to do with error and sidekick handling and made --no-start-before-stopping the default behaviour
[1.3] - 2017-03-16
Added the --new-sidekick-image flag to change sidekick images while upgrading, thank you @kariae for the PR
[1.2] - 2017-01-03
Added the --sidekicks flag to upgrade sidekicks at the same time, thank you @kiesiu for the PR
[1.1] - 2016-09-29
Fixed a bug that caused a crash when using --environment, thank you @mvriel for the PR
[1.0] - 2016-09-14
First release, works.
License
MIT
