Pro/Contra of xwiki on docker in production?

Help / Discuss
#1

Dear community and devs,

i’ve successfully installed the latest xwiki stable on docker ce on a CentOS host, using the stable tomcat postgres image.
It works like a charm, including test-imports of xar backups of production, subwikis, LDAP authentication, …

On https://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Download/DownloadVersion/?projectVersion=10.6.1 below the Docker Image link you state: “An easy solution to test a full-fledged XWiki, with a configuration very close to a production setup.”

Sooo, what are the differences / disadvantages of this setup versus an old-school installation using tomcat and postgresql? Is anyone of you running a xwiki production instance on docker?

Any feedback greatly appreciated.
Thanks, Mario

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#2

I’m also interested in the answer to those questions! :slight_smile:

IMO if you know how to run Docker in production then you’re good. This means knowing how to:

  • create/restore backups (easy since you only need to save the permanent directory)
  • upgrade XWiki (easy again since you just need to point a new docker container to the existing permanent directory)
  • monitor docker containers, e.g. restart them if they’re down
  • etc

The XWiki docker images are still missing some configuration abilities such as clustering, etc. See https://jira.xwiki.org/projects/XDOCKER/issues/XDOCKER-67?filter=allopenissues

Thanks
-Vincent

PS: I’m one of the creators of the Docker images for XWiki

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#3

Does this still hold in 2022 and the recent XWiki versions? I see there are a lot of open issues in the linked Jira project.

#4

Not sure what your question is. If it’s whether the XWiki docker images can be used in production then the answer is: does your infra team knows how to use docker in production? If the answer to that is yes then the answer to the former question is yes too :wink: Basically my answer from above still stands.

Re open issues, you can check if they affect you. Note that the number of open issues is not a great criteria. With that criteria you wouldn’t use XWiki at all (or any software for that matter ;)). The XWiki platform project has over 3000 open issues

#5

OMG!!

No, seriously. Let me give you an example: suppose a new servlet container comes out, you decide to support it, of course there will be a initial phase where issues will arise that could make Xwiki unstable or however not production-ready (risk of data loss, etc) when deployed inside that servlet container, despite it being very stable in another one.

So, to me at least, Docker is a bit like a new servlet container: while XWiki works perfectly inside, i.e., Tomcat on a regular server, I’m asking whether there are issues that can make XWiki inside Docker less reliable.

E.g. I gave a quick look at Jira and found these that look important:

Yes, that was the question. I hope my post clears my point.

#6

We also use the docker-compose setup and it’s actually nice to get started, but there could be better documentation on (what I found a bit confusing):

  • how to adjust the available memory for the application (e.g. which env variables to the docker internals: the tomcat ones or the jvm ones or both)
  • how to increase the log level or even see application logs in case the startup fails
  • there seem to be some configurations that become reset after a restart e.g. some of the notification events (and even the log levels?)