Clowder

Clowder is an open source datamanagement for long tail data.

TL;DR;

helm repo add ncsa https://opensource.ncsa.illinois.edu/charts/
helm install clowder ncsa/clowder --set commKey=clowderiscool

Introduction

This chart bootstraps a Clowder deployment on a Kubernetes cluster using the Helm package manager.

Prerequisites

• Kubernetes 1.16+
• helm 3
• PV provisioner support in the underlying infrastructure

Installing the Chart

To install the chart with the release name my-release:

helm install my-release ncsa/clowder --set commKey=clowderiscool

The command deploys Clowder on the Kubernetes cluster in the default configuration. The configuration section lists the parameters that can be configured during installation. This will also install MongoDB, RabbitMQ, elasticsearch as well as some extractors.

Tip: List all releases using helm list

Uninstalling the Chart

To uninstall/delete the my-release deployment:

helm uninstall my-release

The command removes all the Kubernetes components associated with the chart and deletes the release.

Configuration

The following table lists the configurable parameters of the Clowder chart and their default values.

Clowder Options

A list of values frequently changed.

Parameter	Description	Default
memory	Memory for the clowder application in MB.	4096
commKey	Administrator key. This key will give administrator level access to Clowder and is not associated with any user.	""
secretKey	Secret key used for cookies. This should be set the same for all clowder instances in a replicated setup. Best is for kubernetes to generate a random key.	""
initialAdmins	List of initial admins in clowder, this is a list of email addresses and these will always be admins.	[]
registerThroughAdmins	Should the admin be required to approve all new users. Setting this to false will result in all new users immediately be given access to Clowder.	true
idleTimeoutInMinutes	Number of minutes you stay logged into clowder without any interactions.	30
tempfolder	Folder used to save files by clowder, before being send to storage location.	/home/clowder/data/tmp
helpmenu	List of additional menu entries to be added to the clowder help menu.	[]
userid	the id of the user that runs the clowder process, this is helpful if you want to write to a shared storage as a specific user.	10001
groupid	the id of the groups that runs the clowder process, this is helpful if you want to write to a shared storage as a specific group.	0
replicaCount	Number of instances to run of clowder.	1
monitor.replicaCount	number of instances to run of monitor.	1

Extra Clowder Options

These options can be used to set any other clowder variables, or plugins.

Parameter	Description	Default
extraOptions	List of additional options to be passed to the clowder process.	[]
extraPlugins	List of additional plugins should be enabled. This will allow you to add additional login mechanisms.	[]
extraConfig	List of additional configuration options to set for clowder.	[]
extraVolumes	List of additional volumes for clowder, for example to hold large datasets.	[]
extraVolumeMounts	List of additional volumemounts for clowder, for example to hold large datasets.	[]

Specify each parameter using the --set key=value[,key=value] argument to helm install. For example,

helm install my-release ncsa/clowder --set clowderkey=ncsa

The above command sets the clowder admin key ncsa.

Alternatively, a YAML file that specifies the values for the parameters can be provided while installing the chart. For example,

helm install my-release ncsa/clowder -f values.yaml

Tip: You can use the default values.yaml

Users

To be able to work with clowder you will need an account on the server. Clowder will not ship with any accounts and will require users to be approved by an admin. The list of initial admins is set using initialAdmins. Any user that creates an account with an email specified in this list will automatically be approved.

Emails

Clowder will use emails when users sign up. To enable emails you need to configure the email server. To setup emails use

smtp:
  mock: false
  host: smtp.example.com

If this is not set, the clowder server will use a mock and print the emails in the clowder logs.

Helpmenu

You can add additional entries to the help menu, each entry in the list needs to have a label and a URL, for example to add a FAQ:

helpmenu:
  - label: FAQ
    url: https://example.com/faq

Persistence

Clowder can use a disk storage (default) or S3. In case of S3 it can either use an existing bucket, or use minio to provide the bucket.

Existing PersistentVolumeClaims

1. Create the PersistentVolume
2. Create the PersistentVolumeClaim
3. Install the chart

helm install my-release ncsa/clowder --set persistence.existingClaim=PVC_NAME

Extra Options

To mount additional storage:

extraVolumes:
  - name: sites
    persistentVolumeClaim:
      claimName: clowder-sites
extraVolumeMounts:
  - name: sites
    mountPath: /home/clowder/sites
    readOnly: true

To enable different login options (for example CILogon):

extraPlugins:
  - 10051:services.CILogonProvider
extraConfig:
  - securesocial.registrationEnabled = false
  - securesocial.cilogon.authorizationUrl = "https://cilogon.org/authorize"
  - securesocial.cilogon.accessTokenUrl = "https://cilogon.org/oauth2/token"
  - securesocial.cilogon.userinfoUrl = "https://cilogon.org/oauth2/userinfo"
  - securesocial.cilogon.clientId = "cilogon:/client_id/XYZ"
  - securesocial.cilogon.clientSecret = "XYZ"

ChangeLog

This is auto generated using:

docker run -it --rm -v $(pwd):/data mogensen/helm-changelog:latest

See CHANGELOG.md for the changes.