MC Hub

Web interface to launch Magic Castle clusters without knowing anything about Terraform.

Requirements

• Docker
• Bash interpreter

Basic setup

Before running the MC Hub Docker container, you need to setup a few things.

1. Create a directory named clusters_backup and give it the proper permissions.

   mkdir clusters_backup
   sudo chmod -R 777 clusters_backup
   

If you are using Google Cloud as a DNS provider, do the following steps.

1. Create a service account that has permissions to manage the DNS settings (if you don't already have one). The account should have the DNS Administrator role.
2. Create a new keypair and download it, in JSON format.
3. Copy the JSON key file to the root of the repository in a file named gcloud-key.json.

   cp <JSON key file location> gcloud-key.json
   

Configuration

You need to create a configuration file named configuration.json in the current directory.

Read the section on the JSON Configuration for more information.

Running the pre-built Docker image

1. Run the latest image of MC Hub. This command binds the port 5000 from the container's Flask server to the host's port 8080. You may change port 8080 to another port. Also change v9.1.2 for the latest version of MC Hub in the following command.

   If you are not using the Google Cloud DNS provider, remove the line --mount "type=bind,source=$(pwd)/gcloud-key.json,target=/home/mcu/credentials/gcloud-key.json" \.

   docker run --rm -p 8080:5000 \
     --mount "type=volume,source=database,target=/home/mcu/database" \
     --mount "type=bind,source=$(pwd)/gcloud-key.json,target=/home/mcu/credentials/gcloud-key.json" \
     --mount "type=bind,source=$(pwd)/clusters_backup,target=/home/mcu/clusters" \
     --mount "type=bind,source=$(pwd)/configuration.json,target=/home/mcu/configuration.json" \
     cmdntrf/mc-hb:v9.1.2

2. Navigate to http://localhost:8080 and start building clusters!

3. Kill the container when you are done.

   docker kill <CONTAINER ID>
   

Building the image from source

Refer to the Developer Documentation.

Cluster storage & backup

Magic Castle clusters are built in the directory /home/mcu/clusters/<cluster name>.<domain> inside the docker container. This folder contains the logs from terraform commands, the plans and the state file.

By running the container according to the above instructions, a bind mount was created. This makes the /home/mcu/clusters/<cluster name>.<domain> directory accessible to the host machine in $(pwd)/clusters_backup.

Also, a volume named database was created and will persist the database even if the container fails or is destroyed. However, the database volume can only be accessed from within a running container, not by the host machine.

In the end, if one MC Hub container is destroyed or fails, a new container will recover all the previously created clusters in the directory.

Adding SAML Authentication and HTTPS to MC Hub

Option 1. Deploying with an Ansible playbook (recommended)

Use Ansible MC Hub.

Option 2. Configuring the server manually

Check out the wiki page.