libreoffice-online/kubernetes/helm

Collabora Online for Kubernetes

In order for Collaborative Editing to function correctly on kubernetes, it is vital to ensure that all users editing the same document end up being served by the same pod. Using the WOPI protocol, the https URL includes a unique identifier (WOPISrc) for use with this document. Thus load balancing can be done by using WOPISrc – ensuring that all URLs that contain the same WOPISrc are sent to the same pod.

Helm chart for deploying Collabora Online in Kubernetes cluster

How to test this specific setup:

1. Install Kubernetes cluster locally - minikube - https://minikube.sigs.k8s.io/docs/

2. Install helm - https://helm.sh/docs/intro/install/

3. Install HAProxy Kubernetes Ingress Controller - https://www.haproxy.com/documentation/kubernetes/latest/installation/community/kubernetes/

4. Create an my_values.yaml for your minikube setup (if you setup differe e.g. take an look in then values.yaml of the helmchart - e.g. for annotations using NGINX Ingress Controller or more komplex setups, see Nodes ):

   Here an example my_values.yaml:

   replicaCount: 3
   
   ingress:
     enabled: true
     annotations:
       haproxy.org/timeout-tunnel: "3600s"
       haproxy.org/backend-config-snippet: |
         mode http
         balance leastconn
         stick-table type string len 2048 size 1k store conn_cur
         http-request set-var(txn.wopisrcconns) url_param(WOPISrc),table_conn_cur()
         http-request track-sc1 url_param(WOPISrc)
         stick match url_param(WOPISrc) if { var(txn.wopisrcconns) -m int gt 0 }
         stick store-request url_param(WOPISrc)      
     hosts:
       - host: chart-example.local
         paths:
         - path: /
           pathType: ImplementationSpecific
   
     image:
       tag: "latest"
       pullPolicy: Always
   

   Important notes:

   1. If you have multiple host and aliases setup set aliasgroups in my_values.yaml

      collabora:
        - host: "<protocol>://<host-name>:<port>"
          aliases: ["<protocol>://<its-first-alias>:<port>, <protocol>://<its-second-alias>:<port>"]
      

   2. Specify server_name when the hostname is not reachable directly for example behind reverse-proxy

      collabora:
        server_name: <hostname>:<port>
      

5. Install helm-chart using below command (with a new namespace collabora)

   helm repo add collabora https://collaboraonline.github.io/online/
   helm install --create-namespace --namespace collabora collabora-online collabora/collabora-online -f my_values.yaml
   

6. Finally spin the collabora-online in kubernetes

   A. HAProxy service is deployed as NodePort so we can access it with node's ip address. To get node ip

   minikube ip
   

   Example output:

   192.168.0.106
   

   B. Each container port is mapped to a NodePort port via the Service object. To find those ports

   kubectl get svc --namespace=haproxy-controller
   

   Example output:

   |----------------|---------|--------------|------------|------------------------------------------|
   |NAME            |TYPE     |CLUSTER-IP    |EXTERNAL-IP |PORT(S)                                   |
   |----------------|---------|--------------|------------|------------------------------------------|
   |haproxy-ingress |NodePort |10.108.214.98 |<none>      |80:30536/TCP,443:31821/TCP,1024:30480/TCP |
   |----------------|---------|--------------|------------|------------------------------------------|
   

   In this instance, the following ports were mapped:

   • Container port 80 to NodePort 30536
   • Container port 443 to NodePort 31821
   • Container port 1024 to NodePort 30480

   C. Now in this case to make our hostname available we have to add following line into /etc/hosts:

   192.168.0.106   chart-example.local
   

7. To check if everything is setup correctly you can run:

   curl -I -H 'Host: chart-example.local' 'http://192.168.0.106:30536/'
   

   It should return a similar output as below:

   HTTP/1.1 200 OK
   last-modified: Tue, 18 May 2021 10:46:29
   user-agent: COOLWSD WOPI Agent 6.4.8
   content-length: 2
   content-type: text/plain
   

Some useful commands to check what is happening :

• Where is this pods, are they ready ?

  kubectl -n collabora get pod
  

  example output :

  NAME                                READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
  collabora-online-5fb4869564-dnzmk   1/1     Running   0          28h
  collabora-online-5fb4869564-fb4cf   1/1     Running   0          28h
  collabora-online-5fb4869564-wbrv2   1/1     Running   0          28h
  

• What is the outside host that multiple coolwsd servers actually answering ?

  kubectl get ingress -n collabora
  

  example output :

  |-----------|------------------|---------------------|------------------------|-------|
  | NAMESPACE |       NAME       |        HOSTS        |         ADDRESS        | PORTS |
  |-----------|------------------|---------------------|------------------------|-------|
  | collabora | collabora-online | chart-example.local |                        |  80   |
  |-----------|------------------|---------------------|------------------------|-------|
  

• To uninstall the helm chart

  helm uninstall --namespace collabora collabora-online
  

Notes:

• For big setups, you maybe NOT want to restart every pod to modify WOPI hosts, therefore it is possible to setup an additional webserver to serve a ConfigMap for using Remote/Dynamic Configuration:

  collabora:
    env:
      - name: remoteconfigurl
        value: https://dynconfig.public.example.com/config/config.json
  
  dynamicConfig:
    enabled: true
  
    ingress:
      enabled: true
      annotations:
        "cert-manager.io/issuer": letsencrypt-zprod
      hosts:
        - host: "dynconfig.public.example.com"
      tls:
        - secretName: "collabora-online-dynconfig-tls"
          hosts:
            - "dynconfig.public.example.com"
  
    configuration:
       kind: "configuration"
       storage:
         wopi:
           alias_groups:
             groups:
              - host: "https://nextcloud\\.public\\.example\\.com/"
                allow: true
              - host: "https://moodle\\.public\\.example\\.com/"
                allow: true
                aliases:
                  - "https://moodle3\\.public\\.example2\\.de/"
  

  PS: In current state of Collabora needs outside of debuggin for Remove/Dynamic Configuration HTTPS, see here in wsd/COOLWSD.cpp

• Works well with Prometheus Operator (Helmchart) and there setup of Grafana, by enabling following values:

  prometheus:
    servicemonitor:
      enabled: true
      labels:
        release: "kube-prometheus-stack"
    rules:
      enabled: true # will deploy alert rules
      additionalLabels:
        release: "kube-prometheus-stack"
  grafana:
    dashboards:
      enabled: true # will deploy default dashboards
  

  PS: The labels release=kube-prometheus-stack is setup with the helmchart of the Prometheus Operator. For Grafana Dashboards it maybe need scan enable to scan in correct namespaces (or ALL), enabled by sidecar.dashboards.searchNamespace in Helmchart of grafana (which is part of PrometheusOperator, so grafana.sidecar.dashboards.searchNamespace)