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Deploying Gel to Azure​

Gel Cloud: The easiest way to run Gel

Gel Cloud is the official hosted service managed by the Gel team, offering the simplest and most reliable way to run Gel in production. While self-hosting is possible (as shown in these guides), Gel Cloud provides a seamlessly integrated experience with perfect compatibility between local development and production environments. It includes a generous free tier, Vercel and GitHub (deploy previews work out of the box), a hosted UI, and using it directly supports the development of Gel itself!

Try Gel Cloud today at cloud.geldata.com

In this guide we show how to deploy Gel using Azure's Postgres Flexible Server as the backend.

Prerequisites​

  • Valid Azure Subscription with billing enabled or credits (free trial).

  • Azure CLI (install).

Provision a Gel instance​

Login to your Microsoft Azure account.

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$ 
az login


Create a new resource group.


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$ 
GROUP=my-group-name
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$ 
az group create --name $GROUP --location westus


Provision a PostgreSQL server.




If you already have a database provisioned you can skip this step.




For convenience, assign a value to the PG_SERVER_NAME environment
                variable; we'll use this variable in multiple later commands.


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$ 
PG_SERVER_NAME=postgres-for-gel


Use the read command to securely assign a value to the PASSWORD
                environment variable.


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$ 
echo -n "> " && read -s PASSWORD


Then create a Postgres Flexible server.


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$ 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
az postgres flexible-server create \
  --resource-group $GROUP \
  --name $PG_SERVER_NAME \
  --location westus \
  --admin-user gel_admin \
  --admin-password $PASSWORD \
  --sku-name Standard_D2s_v3 \
  --version 14 \
  --yes




If you get an error saying "Specified server name is already used."
                    change the value of PG_SERVER_NAME and rerun the command.




Allow other Azure services access to the Postgres instance.


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$ 
  
  
  
  
  
az postgres flexible-server firewall-rule create \
  --resource-group $GROUP \
  --name $PG_SERVER_NAME \
  --rule-name allow-azure-internal \
  --start-ip-address 0.0.0.0 \
  --end-ip-address 0.0.0.0


Gel requires Postgres' uuid-ossp extension which needs to be enabled.


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$ 
  
  
  
  
az postgres flexible-server parameter set \
  --resource-group $GROUP \
  --server-name $PG_SERVER_NAME \
  --name azure.extensions \
  --value uuid-ossp


Azure is not able to reliably pull docker images because of rate limits, so you will need to provide docker hub login credentials
                to create a container. If you don't already have a docker hub account you can
                create one here.



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$ 
echo -n "docker user> " && read -s DOCKER_USER
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$ 
echo -n "docker password> " && read -s DOCKER_PASSWORD


Start a Gel container.


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$ 
  
  
  
  
  
PG_HOST=$(
  az postgres flexible-server list \
    --resource-group $GROUP \
    --query "[?name=='$PG_SERVER_NAME'].fullyQualifiedDomainName | [0]" \
    --output tsv
)
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$ 
DSN="postgresql://gel_admin:$PASSWORD@$PG_HOST/postgres?sslmode=require"
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$ 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
az container create \
  --registry-username $DOCKER_USER \
  --registry-password $DOCKER_PASSWORD \
  --registry-login-server index.docker.io \
  --os-type Linux \
  --cpu 1 \
  --memory 1 \
  --resource-group $GROUP \
  --name gel-container-group \
  --image geldata/gel \
  --dns-name-label geldb \
  --ports 5656 \
  --secure-environment-variables \
    "GEL_SERVER_PASSWORD=$PASSWORD" \
    "GEL_SERVER_BACKEND_DSN=$DSN" \
  --environment-variables \
    GEL_SERVER_TLS_CERT_MODE=generate_self_signed


Persist the SSL certificate. We have configured Gel to generate a self
                signed SSL certificate when it starts. However, if the container is restarted a
                new certificate would be generated. To preserve the certificate across failures
                or reboots copy the certificate files and use their contents in the
                GEL_SERVER_TLS_KEY and GEL_SERVER_TLS_CERT environment variables.


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$ 
  
  
  
  
key="$( az container exec \
          --resource-group $GROUP \
          --name gel-container-group \
          --exec-command "cat /tmp/gel/edbprivkey.pem" \
        | tr -d "\r" )"
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$ 
  
  
  
  
cert="$( az container exec \
           --resource-group $GROUP \
           --name gel-container-group \
           --exec-command "cat /tmp/gel/edbtlscert.pem" \
        | tr -d "\r" )"
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$ 
  
  
  
az container delete \
  --resource-group $GROUP \
  --name gel-container-group \
  --yes
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$ 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
az container create \
  --registry-username $DOCKER_USER \
  --registry-password $DOCKER_PASSWORD \
  --registry-login-server index.docker.io \
  --os-type Linux \
  --cpu 1 \
  --memory 1 \
  --resource-group $GROUP \
  --name gel-container-group \
  --image geldata/gel \
  --dns-name-label geldb \
  --ports 5656 \
  --secure-environment-variables \
    "GEL_SERVER_PASSWORD=$PASSWORD" \
    "GEL_SERVER_BACKEND_DSN=$DSN" \
    "GEL_SERVER_TLS_KEY=$key" \
  --environment-variables \
    "GEL_SERVER_TLS_CERT=$cert"


To access the Gel instance you've just provisioned on Azure from your local
                machine link the instance.


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$ 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
printf $PASSWORD | gel instance link \
  --password-from-stdin \
  --non-interactive \
  --trust-tls-cert \
  --host $( \
    az container list \
      --resource-group $GROUP \
      --query "[?name=='gel-container-group'].ipAddress.fqdn | [0]" \
      --output tsv ) \
  azure




The command groups gel instance and gel project are not
                    intended to manage production instances.




You can now connect to your instance.


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$ 
gel -I azure






Health Checks​


Using an HTTP client, you can perform health checks to monitor the status of
                your Gel instance. Learn how to use them with our health checks guide.