adubeniuk/vgs-docker

vgs trial task docker

vgs-docker's Issues

Possible improvements

As there's no limit to perfection there are few thigns here which could be improved.

1. use Ansible to generate rsyslog and nginx configs from jinja2 templates
   this will make the configs highly customizable and easily managed

2. use Ansible dynamic inventory and Ansible docker module instead of docker-compose to run (and scale) the containers
   https://divhide.com/2016/05/10/using-a-docker-connection-with-ansible/

3. use Docker Machine to provision on multiple Docker hosts via various cloud drivers such as AWS, GCP or DigitalOcean
   this will allow to make this setup really production ready and be able to test that on a local machine with VirtualBox as one of the supported drivers

and last but not least

4. abandon rsyslog in favor of the native Docker supported logging drivers

Define nginx container logging approach

There could be multiple ways to get the logs from nginx to the logging agent in the container environment.

As this is quite an important decision I would like to describe some of the available options:

• use nginx built-in syslog module to forward logs to the remote syslog
• use docker built-in syslog logging driver to forward logs to the remote syslog
• mount /var/log/nginx as docker data volume and attach that volume to the logging agent container

First option is the easiest to implement but it could also have the worst consequences.
By its design nginx will simply freeze when unable to write its logs in this case over syslog.

Second option seems rational as it will also allow us to get the logs from the Docker host itself.
Also it allows us to change logging driver from syslog to any other supported logging driver including fluentd.

However none of these two options require separate logging container.
Indeed we could forward the logs directly to the centralized logging server either from the nginx or the Docker host itself eliminating the need for an auxiliary logging container.

But as the separate logging agent is strictly required by the task I will proceed with the dedicated logging container option and storing nginx logs on a docker data volume.