Mist Cloud Management Platform - Enterprise Edition

Mist helps you manage and monitor your computing infrastructure, across multiple clouds and platforms.

Hardware requirements

Recommended hardware resources are: 4 CPU cores 8 GB RAM 10 GB disk (accessible to /var/lib/docker/)

Installation

Mist is a large application split into microservices which are packages in docker containers. The easiest way to run it is by using docker-compose. So, in order to run it, one needs to install a recent version of docker and docker-compose.

To install the latest stable release, head over to releases and follow the instructions there.

After a few minutes (depending on your connection) all the mist containers will be downloaded and started in the background.

Run docker-compose ps. All containers should be in the UP state, except shortlived container elasticsearch-manage.

Running Mist

Make sure you're inside the directory containing the docker-compose.yml file.

Switch to the directory containing the docker-compose.yml file and run

docker-compose up -d

This will start all the mist docker containers in the background.

To create a user for the first time, first run

docker-compose exec api sh

This should drop you in a shell into one of the mist containers. In there, run

./bin/adduser --admin [email protected]

Replace the email address with yours. Try running ./bin/adduser -h for more options. The --docker-cloud flag will add the docker daemon hosting the mist installation as a docker cloud in the created account.

Mist binds on port 80 of the host. Visit http://localhost and login with the email and password specified above.

Welcome to Mist! Enjoy!

Configuring

After the initial docker-compose up -d, you'll see that a configuration file is created in ./settings/settings.py. Edit this file to modify configuration. Any changes to the ./settings/settings.py require a restart to take effect:

docker-compose restart

Required configuration

URL

If running on anything other than localhost, you'll need to set the CORE_URI setting in ./settings/settings.py. Example:

CORE_URI = "http://198.51.100.12"

Mail settings

In some cases, such as user registration, forgotten passwords, user invitations etc, mist needs to send emails. By default, mist is configured to use a mock mailer. To see logs sent by mist, run

docker-compose logs -f mailmock

If you wish to use a real SMTP server, edit ./settings/settings.py and modify MAILER_SETTINGS.

Don't forget to restart docker-compose for changes to take effect.

TLS settings

This section applies if you've installed mist by using the docker-compose.yml file of a mist release.

Assuming a certificate cert.pem and private key file key.pem in the same directory as the docker-compose.yml file:

Create a docker-compose.override.yml file with the following contents:

version: '2.0'
services:
  nginx:
    volumes:
      - ./nginx-listen.conf:/etc/nginx/nginx-listen.conf:ro
      - ./cert.pem:/etc/nginx/cert.pem:ro
      - ./key.pem:/etc/nginx/key.pem:ro
    ports:
      - 443:443

Create a nginx-listen.conf in the directory of docker-compose.yml, with the following contents:

    listen 80;
    listen 443 ssl;
    server_name www.example.com;
    ssl_certificate     /etc/nginx/cert.pem;
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/nginx/key.pem;
    if ($scheme != "https") {
        rewrite ^ https://$host$uri permanent;
    }

Update CORE_URI in mist's settings (see URL section above).

Run docker-compose up -d.

Managing Mist

Mist is managed using docker-compose. Look that up for details. Some useful commands follow. Keep in mind that you need to run these from inside the directory containing the docker-compose.yml file:

# See status of all applications
docker-compose ps

# Almost all containers should be in the UP state. An exception to this
# is shortlived containers. Currently the only such container is
# elasticsearch-manage. This should run for a few seconds and exit 0 if
# everything went fine.

# Restart nginx container
docker-compose restart nginx

# See the logs of the api and celery containers, starting with the last
# 50 lines.
docker-compose logs --tail=50 -f api celery

# Stop mist
docker-compose stop

# Start mist
docker-compose start
# or even better
docker-compose up -d

# Stop and remove all containers
docker-compose down

# Completely remove all containers and data volumes.
docker-compose down -v

Migrating from previous versions

1. Bring down your current installation by running docker-compose down.
2. Download the docker-compose.yml file of the latest release and place it within the same directory as before. This way the new installation will use the same Docker volumes.
3. Run docker-compose up -d to bring up the new version.
4. Check that everything is in order by running docker-compose ps. Also check if your Mist portal works as expected.

Staging version

If you want to install the latest bleeding edge build of mist, run the following:

mkdir mist-ee && cd mist-ee && echo 'MIST_TAG=staging' > .env
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mistio/mist-ee/staging/docker-compose.yml
docker-compose up -d

Development deployment

If you're planning to modify Mist's source code, an alternative installation method is recommended.

Clone this git repo and all its submodules with something like:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/mistio/mist-ee.git
cd mist-ee
docker-compose up -d

This may take some time.

This setup will mount the checked out code into the containers. By cloning the directory, now there's also a docker-compose.override.yml file in the current directory in addition to docker-compose.yml and is used to modify the configuration for development mode.

The above instructions for running and managing Mist apply.