backplane 0.4.19

a dead-simple backplane for Dockerized applications

backplane

Website — Documentation — Source Code

A dead-simple backplane for your Docker Compose services - with free SSL and Git-based continuous delivery. Run any Docker app manually or from backplane's app-store in no time.

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Get started

🚀 Check out our Examples section for quick-start templates for Wordpress, Sonarqube and more

pip install backplane
backplane init
backplane up

You can now visit the dashboards of Traefik and Portainer in your browser:

• traefik.127-0-0-1.nip.io
• portainer.127-0-0-1.nip.io

Configure your Docker Compose services

Exposing one of your services through backplane is easy:

• add it to the backplane Docker network
• add a label backplane.enabled with value true

backplane will automatically pick up the service's name (e.g. whoami) and exposes it as a subdomain of your backplane domain (defaults to 127-0-0-1.nip.io).

NOTE: this assumes that your service is accessible on port 80 inside the container. If that is NOT the case, see Advanced configuration

version: "3.3"

services:
  whoami:
    image: "traefik/whoami"
    container_name: "whoami"
    networks:
      - backplane
    labels:
      - "backplane.enabled=true"

networks:
  backplane:
    external: true

Your service will be exposed as http://whoami.127-0-0-1.nip.io.

Use backplane in the cloud

backplane can be used on public cloud hosts, too. Use --https and add a mail address for LetsEncrypt on installation to enable additional security for your applications. An optional --domain can be set on installation (defaults to $SERVER_IP.nip.io, e.g. 193-43-54-23.nip.io if --https is set).

backplane install --https --mail [e-mail] [--domain mydomain.com]
backplane up

This enables the following additional features:

• access your Docker Compose services as subdomains of mydomain.com
• automatic SSL for your Docker Compose services through LetsEncrypt (HTTP-Validation)
• automatic HTTP to HTTPS redirect
• sane security defaults

The Docker Compose stack definition doesn't change from the one without --https. backplane deals with the necessary configuration.

version: "3.3"

services:
  whoami:
    image: "traefik/whoami"
    container_name: "whoami"
    networks:
      - backplane
    labels:
      - "backplane.enabled=true"

networks:
  backplane:
    external: true

Your container will be exposed as https://whoami.mydomain.com.

Deploy to backplane (WIP)

git push your code to the built-in shipmate for dead-simple auto-deployment of your Docker Compose services. shipmate deploys whatever you define in the repository's docker-compose.yml file and can load additional environment variables from a .env file.

Update your ssh config

cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub | pbcopy

Add the following to your local ~/.ssh/config file. This allows you to reach the runner under backplane without further configuration.

Host backplane
    HostName 127.0.0.1
    User backplane
    Port 2222

NOTE: replace "HostName" with your server's IP if you're running in production

Update your git remote

Assuming your repository is called whoami, this is how you add the backplane runner to your git remotes:

git remote add origin "git@backplane:whoami"

Deploy to your server

git commit -am "feat: figured out who I am"
git push backplane master

That's it! backplane will build and deploy your application and expose it automatically.

What is backplane

backplane consists of 3 main services running as Docker containers on your host:

• Traefik, a very popular, cloud-native reverse-proxy
• Portainer, a very popular management interface for Docker
• shipmate, a simple software logistics solution

It aims to provide simple access to core prerequisites of modern app development:

• Endpoint exposure
• Container management
• Deployment workflows

To develop and run modern web-based applications you need a few core ingredients, like a reverse-proxy handling request routing, a way to manage containers and a way to deploy your code. backplane offers this for local development as well as on production nodes in a seemless way.

shipmate makes it easy to bypass long CI pipelines and deploy your application to a remote backplane host with ease.

backplane is mainly aimed at small to medium sized development teams or solo-developers that don't require complex infrastructure. Use it for rapid prototyping or simple deployment scenarios where the full weight of modern CI/CD and PaaS offerings just isn't bearable.

You can migrate from local development to production with a simple git push when using backplane on both ends. Think of it as a micro-PaaS that you can use locally.

What backplane is NOT

• a PaaS solution; backplane only provides a well-configured reverse-proxy and a management interface for containers
• meant for production use. You can, though, but at your own risk

Advanced configuration

backplane is only a thin wrapper around Traefik. If you require more complex routing scenarios or have more complex service setups (e.g. multiple domains per container), simply use Traefik's label-based configuration.

Read more in the docs.

Expose containers with non-standard ports

backplane expects your services to listen to port 80 inside their containers. If that is not the case, you need to tell the backplane about it. Add the following additional labels to tell backplane your service is accessible on port 9000:

labels:
  - backplane.enabled=true
  - "traefik.http.routers.custom.service=custom-http"
  - "traefik.http.services.custom-http.loadbalancer.server.port=9000"

Examples

In the examples directory you'll find examples showing how to integrate backplane with your existing services

Change to any of the example folders and run docker-compose up. The example's README will hold additional information on how to use it.

Development

Dependencies

pip install poetry
poetry shell
poetry install

Build

poetry build

Generate release

semantic-release version

Publish release

semantic-release publish

Author

Fabian Peter, p3r.