Last month we finished setting up an automated backup system, centralized
monitoring for our beta tests and made it easier to configure Nextcloud to send
out emails.
Additionally, we worked on making it easier to add other applications to an
OpenAppStack cluster. Lastly we have worked on making it easier to use
Deflect in combination with OpenAppStack, and done
several maintenance related tasks.
Backups
We have finished setting up Velero for backing up OAS data
to S3-compatible storage. At the moment, restoring from the backups still takes
some work and you can only restore your whole OpenAppStack to an older state,
but we are working on improving that. We have also added steps to enable
backups to our installation
instructions
Monitoring
For the beta test, we wanted to make sure that we can keep an eye on all the
OpenAppStack clusters we set up for testers. To do this, we have made it
possible for a cluster to send monitoring data to a central Prometheus
monitoring instance. This way we can be notified if any of our test clusters
misbehave, so we can help our testers earlier and better.
Nextcloud email settings
We made it possible to add SMTP email configuration while installing
OpenAppStack. This will automatically set up Nextcloud to send notification
emails. In the future we will make sure Rocket.Chat also automatically uses
these settings.
Improved customizability
OpenAppStack runs on Kubernetes. Some people will want to use Kubernetes for
other purposes as well. Others might want to be able to test their own
applications on OpenAppStack’s infrastructure, for example to add their
application to OAS in the future.
To be precise, we have added a “custom flux” setup. This allows you to add a
second repository that gets tracked by our auto update mechanism. In this
repository, you can specify additional Kubernetes manifests or Helm applications
that you want to be installed on OpenAppStack. We have written
documentation
for this as well.
Deflect integration
In the future, you can sign up for Deflect from within
OpenAppStack. We are making it as easy as possible to set up.
Last month month eQualit.ie has implemented steps to make this integration
easier for us. We are continuing this work in the next couple of months.
In other news
As part of the beta test preparations, we have:
- Updated all applications
- Released 0.4.0 version for beta test
Additionally, a partner has been testing our WordPress helm
chart. We have gained a
lot of valuable feedback from these tests and applied many improvements to it.