Of Hippos, Whales, & Elephants

Bringing PostgreSQL to Production on Docker


     


@PhilVacca

About this talk

Introduction to Docker basics

What makes a container Production-ready

This talk is not about container Orchestration, or managing a fully containerized environment

Containers and the Docker Ecosystem

What is a Docker Container?

Nothing new!

chroot -> BSD Jails -> LXC -> libcontainer

Docker is a specific implementation of a container

. . . but there are others

So, it's just a light-weight VM?

NO! Containers wrap a process, they are not Virtual Machines.

No hypervisor, no init, no cron, no process monitor, no utilities to manage multiple containers. . .

A Docker container has a single entrypoint, which launches a single process.

^^ Basically Docker

PostgreSQL on Docker

Getting Started

The official Docker image

https://hub.docker.com/_/postgres/

  • Each DockerFile command is a layer
  • Each command runs at container build
  • Smaller base images yield smaller containers
  • But small containers aren't always that big a deal

Running the PostgreSQL Docker image

docker run -d --name pg -p 5432:5432 postgres:9.5
psql -h $(docker-machine ip) -U postgres postgres

What about ssh?

Short answer: don't use it

Containers host one process

Changes should be built into the container, not made ad hoc

But if you really must get into the container. . .

docker exec -it pg /bin/bash

Extending the official image

Adding plpythonu

FROM postgres:9.5

RUN apt-get update \
 && apt-get install -y postgresql-plpython-9.5 \
 && rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*

Building the new image

docker build -t pypg:9.5 .
docker run -d --name pg -p 5432:5432 pypg:9.5
psql -h $(docker-machine ip) -U postgres postgres

That is nice and all, but where is my data?

Volume management

Declaring volumes in the image with VOLUME

The docker volume command

docker volume ls
docker volume inspect

Creating stand-alone volumes

Docker engine features volume plugins

  • Flocker
  • AzureFS
  • GlusterFS
  • Many more. . . 
docker volume create -d local --label="pump_up"

Logging

Where are the files?

Log to stdout, collect externally

And / or put logs on a volume

Build a pgBadger only container to handle the physical files

Docker engine features logging plugins

  • json
  • syslog
  • splunk
  • Logstash
  • fluentd
  • Many more. . . 

Are we Production-ready yet?

Limitations of the official image

No data-checksums at initdb (and no control of initdb)

Can pass ENV variable $POSTGRES_INITDB_ARGS

The pgdata directory is all on one volume

Tablespaces? WAL? Postgres Log? WAL shipping?

Authentication methods?

Ways to handle postgresql.conf

Pass parameters to postmaster on startup

Use a volume

You can volume mount a single file (overwrites that file in image)

This works for your SSL certs, too

Implementation steps

Generate a simple postgresql.conf with include directives

Split major aspects of the conf into separate files (e.g. logging, WAL writes, locale, SSL)

Touch those file paths in the Dockerfile to create empty stubs

Mount each file on container startup

Well, now  we're Production-ready, right?

Not hardly

More security

Running as root, using gosu in script

This means anyone can start the container and exec into root

Constraining the container, and OS level optimizations

Set swappiness 0 with --memory-swappiness

Set run-time constraints

  • memory
  • memory swap
  • CPU shares
  • Block IO weight

High availability & Connection Pooling

Initialize streaming replica by adding pg_basebackup to entrypoint

Put pgpool-ii in a container

Build pgbouncer into your Postgres container image

Or, volume mount the socket file, and leave pgbouncer in a seperate container that mounts the same volume

Add service discovery (etcd, Consul, Zookeeper)

Several organizations exploring better failover (Joyent Manatee, Red Hat Project Atomic)

Backups

Snapshot the volumes

Build a pg_dump / pg_basebackup container

Put pgbackrest in a container (and give it more cores)

Health & Monitoring

Monitoring moves up a level

  • docker stat
  • CAdvisor from Google
  • Hosted solutions: Scout, DataDog

Can you run statsd, or another agent?

One process per container is arbitrary

But now you need something to watch the processes (and remember to EXPOSE the port in your Dockerfile)

Hooray! We're Production-ready

Now what have I done?

Challenges with Docker

Keeping track of lots of containers

What you imagine

What you actually have

Dealing with failures

Poorly Understood Security

Every system is hackable

Problems with Docker

Rapidly changing

Changes to machine version not backward compatible (must rebuild whole environment)

Community fragmentation?

Remember, Docker is an implementation, not a standard

Chasing Exciting Things

Thank you, #pgOpen2016!

Questions?



This presentation was built in reveal.js