Configuring Moose for cloud environments

In the Packaging Moose for deployment page, we looked at how to package your moose application into Docker containers (using the moose build —-docker command), and you’ve pushed them to your container repository.

We can connect and configure your container image with remote Clickhouse and Redis-hosted services. You can also optionally use Redpanda for event streaming and Temporal for workflow orchestration.

The methods used to accomplish this are generally similar, but the specific details depend on your target cloud infrastructure. So, we’ll look at the overarching concepts and provide some common examples.

Specifying your repository container

Earlier, we created two local containers and pushed them to a docker repository.

Terminal

>docker images
REPOSITORY                                              TAG               IMAGE ID       CREATED              SIZE
moose-df-deployment-aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu           0.3.175           c50674c7a68a   About a minute ago   155MB
moose-df-deployment-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu            0.3.175           e5b449d3dea3   About a minute ago   163MB

We pushed the containers to the 514labs Docker Hub account. So, we have these two containers available for use:

514labs/moose-df-deployment-aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu:0.3.175
514labs/moose-df-deployment-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu:0.3.175

In later examples, we’ll use an AMD64 (x86_64) based machine, so we’ll stick to using the following container image: 514labs/moose-df-deployment-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu:0.3.175

We’ll also examine how the container image name can be used in various cloud providers and scenarios.

General overview

The general approach is to use a cloud provider that supports specifying a container image to launch your application. Examples include the Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), Amazon’s Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), and Elastic Container Service (ECS). Each provider also offers a way of configuring container environment variables that your container application will have access to.

Essential Environment Variables

Based on our production deployments, here are the essential environment variables you’ll need to configure for your Moose application in cloud environments:

Logging and Telemetry

# Logger configuration
MOOSE_LOGGER__LEVEL=Info
MOOSE_LOGGER__STDOUT=true
MOOSE_LOGGER__FORMAT=Json

# Telemetry configuration
MOOSE_TELEMETRY__ENABLED=false
MOOSE_TELEMETRY__EXPORT_METRICS=true

# For debugging
RUST_BACKTRACE=1

HTTP Server Configuration

# HTTP server settings
MOOSE_HTTP_SERVER_CONFIG__HOST=0.0.0.0
MOOSE_HTTP_SERVER_CONFIG__PORT=4000

External Service Connections

For detailed configuration of the external services, refer to the Preparing Clickhouse and Redpanda page.

Clickhouse

MOOSE_CLICKHOUSE_CONFIG__DB_NAME=<your_database_name>
MOOSE_CLICKHOUSE_CONFIG__USER=<your_clickhouse_user>
MOOSE_CLICKHOUSE_CONFIG__PASSWORD=<your_clickhouse_password>
MOOSE_CLICKHOUSE_CONFIG__HOST=<your_clickhouse_host>
MOOSE_CLICKHOUSE_CONFIG__HOST_PORT=8443
MOOSE_CLICKHOUSE_CONFIG__USE_SSL=1
MOOSE_CLICKHOUSE_CONFIG__NATIVE_PORT=9440

Redis

Moose requires Redis for caching and message passing:

MOOSE_REDIS_CONFIG__URL=<your_redis_url>
MOOSE_REDIS_CONFIG__KEY_PREFIX=<your_key_prefix>

Redpanda (Optional)

If you choose to use Redpanda for event streaming:

MOOSE_REDPANDA_CONFIG__BROKER=<your_redpanda_broker>
MOOSE_REDPANDA_CONFIG__NAMESPACE=<your_namespace>
MOOSE_REDPANDA_CONFIG__MESSAGE_TIMEOUT_MS=10043
MOOSE_REDPANDA_CONFIG__SASL_USERNAME=<your_redpanda_username>
MOOSE_REDPANDA_CONFIG__SASL_PASSWORD=<your_redpanda_password>
MOOSE_REDPANDA_CONFIG__SASL_MECHANISM=SCRAM-SHA-256
MOOSE_REDPANDA_CONFIG__SECURITY_PROTOCOL=SASL_SSL
MOOSE_REDPANDA_CONFIG__REPLICATION_FACTOR=3

Temporal (Optional)

If you choose to use Temporal for workflow orchestration:

MOOSE_TEMPORAL_CONFIG__CA_CERT=/etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
MOOSE_TEMPORAL_CONFIG__API_KEY=<your_temporal_api_key>
MOOSE_TEMPORAL_CONFIG__TEMPORAL_HOST=<your_temporal_namespace>.tmprl.cloud

Securing Sensitive Information

When deploying to cloud environments, it’s important to handle sensitive information like passwords and API keys securely. Each cloud provider offers mechanisms for this:

Kubernetes: Use Secrets to store sensitive data. See our Kubernetes deployment guide for examples.
Amazon ECS: Use AWS Secrets Manager or Parameter Store to securely inject environment variables.
Other platforms: Use the platform’s recommended secrets management approach.

Never hardcode sensitive values directly in your deployment configuration files.

Please share your feedback about Moose monitoring capabilities through our GitHub repository.

Preparing Infrastructure

Kubernetes Deployment