6. Deployment

App Mesh can deploy with multiple ways, generally, App Mesh run on a host as a daemon service managed by native systemd or docker container.

6.1. Quick install by docker container

Start App Mesh daemon docker container with 4g memory limited:

docker run -d --memory=8g --restart=always --name=appmesh --net=host -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock laoshanxi/appmesh

The startup support use environment variable override default configuration with format APPMESH_${BASE-JSON-KEY}_${SUB-JSON-KEY}=NEW_VALUE, E.g. export APPMESH_REST_HttpThreadPoolSize=10, export APPMESH_REST_SSL_VerifyPeer=true.

6.2. Native installation

Install App Mesh as standalone mode on local node without GUI service by release packages.

# import gpg public key in case of signature verification
sudo rpm --import gpg_public.key
sudo dpkg --import gpg_public.key
# centos
sudo yum install appmesh_2.1.1_gcc_9_glibc_2.31_x86_64.rpm
# ubuntu
sudo apt install appmesh_2.1.1_gcc_7_glibc_2.27_x86_64.deb
# SUSE
sudo zypper install appmesh_2.1.1_gcc_9_glibc_2.31_x86_64.rpm

Start service:

$ systemctl enable appmesh
$ systemctl start appmesh
$ systemctl status appmesh
● appmesh.service - App Mesh daemon service
   Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/appmesh.service; enabled; vendor preset: disabled)

Deploy Web UI (access https://host-name)

appc logon -u admin -x admin123
appc add -n appweb --perm 11 -e APP_DOCKER_OPTS="--net=host -v /opt/appmesh/ssl/server.pem:/etc/nginx/conf.d/server.crt:ro -v /opt/appmesh/ssl/server-key.pem:/etc/nginx/conf.d/server.key:ro" -d laoshanxi/appmesh-ui:2.1.2 -f

Note:

On windows WSL ubuntu, use service appmesh start to force service start, WSL VM does not have full init.d and systemd
Use env export APPMESH_FRESH_INSTALL=Y to enable fresh installation (otherwise, SSL and configuration file will reuse previous files on this host) and use sudo -E to pass environment variable to sudo
Use env export APPMESH_SECURE_INSTALLATION=Y to generate initial secure password for user admin and force enable password encrypt
Use env export APPMESH_DisableExecUser=true to disable customized process user
Set env APPMESH_DAEMON_EXEC_USER and APPMESH_DAEMON_EXEC_USER_GROUP to specify daemon process user
Set env APPMESH_PosixTimezone with posix timezone (E.g. export APPMESH_PosixTimezone=”+08”) for CLI and Server
The installation will create appmesh Linux user for default app running
For centos 8, install dependency: sudo yum install libnsl
The installation media structure is like this:

    $ tree -L 1 /opt/appmesh/
	├── apps                         ====> application json files dir
    ├── config.json                  ====> configuration fileGUI)
    ├── security.json                ====> local JSON security configuration file
    ├── bin                          ====> execution binaries dir
    ├── lib64
    ├── log                          ====> app mesh engine log dir
    ├── script
    ├── ssl                          ====> SSL certification files
    └── work                         ====> child app work dir (app log files will write in this dir)

6.3. Docker compose installation with GUI and Consul Service

A simple way deploy appmesh, appmesh-ui and consul by docker-compose.

Install docker-compose:

sudo curl -L "https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/download/v2.14.0/docker-compose-$(uname -s)-$(uname -m)" -o /usr/local/bin/docker-compose
sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/docker-compose

Get integrated docker compose file docker-compose.yaml and configure correct Consul bind IP address and network device name.

$ mkdir appmesh
$ cd appmesh
$ wget -O docker-compose.yaml https://github.com/laoshanxi/app-mesh/raw/main/script/docker-compose.yaml

$ docker-compose -f docker-compose.yaml up -d
Creating apppmesh_appmesh_1    ... done
Creating apppmesh_consul_1     ... done
Creating apppmesh_appmesh-ui_1 ... done

$ docker-compose -f docker-compose.yaml ps
        Name                       Command               State   Ports
----------------------------------------------------------------------
apppmesh_appmesh-ui_1   nginx -g daemon off;             Up
apppmesh_appmesh_1      /opt/appmesh/script/appmes ...   Up
apppmesh_consul_1       docker-entrypoint.sh consu ...   Up

By default, App Mesh will connect to local Consul URL with “https://127.0.0.1:443”, this address is configured with Nginx reverse proxy route to “http://127.0.0.1:8500”.

App Mesh UI is listen at 443 port with SSL protocol, open https://appmesh_node to access with admin user and admin123 for initial password.

For production environment, Consul is better to be a cluster with 3+ server agent, one Consul agent is used for test scenario.

6.4. Join a App Mesh node to a Consul cluster

6.4.1. Option 1: Update configuration

When installed a new App Mesh node and want to connect to existing cluster, just need configure Consul URL parameter in /opt/appmesh/config.json:

  "Consul": {
    "Url": "https://192.168.3.1",
  }

If App Mesh is running in Docker container, need mount /opt/appmesh/config.json out of container to persist the configuration. After configuration change, just restart App Mesh container.

6.4.2. Option 2: Update from UI

All configuration update from UI support hot-update, no need restart App Mesh process to take effect. Click Configuration -> Consul and set Consul URL, Click Submit to take effect.

6.4.3. Option 3: Update from CLI

Command line support join current node to a Consul cluster with specify the Consul URL.

appc join -c http://127.0.0.1:8500 -l 30 -m -w

6.5. Usage scenarios

Integrate with rpm installation script and register rpm startup behavior to appmesh
Remote sync/async shell execute (web ssh)
Host/app resource monitor
Run as a standalone JWT server
File server
Micro service management
Cluster application deployment