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.