Preparing for DX Cloud

Introduction

Moving to Magnolia’s DX Cloud is an exciting step, but there are key aspects to prepare before onboarding. This guide outlines what you need to have ready, how the onboarding process works, and what to expect at different stages of your DX Cloud journey.

Before onboarding

Before the onboarding meeting, Magnolia’s team ensures that:

  • Your subscription is set up in the Admin Cockpit.

  • You have received your shortname (your unique subscription name).

  • The Cockpit URL is functional.

  • Magnolia’s author and public instances are operational.

Understanding the DX Cloud architecture

paas architecture premium

Cluster setup

  • Initially, you receive a development (non-prod) cluster.

  • The production (prod) cluster is only provisioned when the project nears maturity.

  • Clusters run on AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Platform, or TenCent.

  • Magnolia’s SRE team provisions the clusters with the chosen cloud provider.

Customer access

  • You have access to the customer Cockpit.

  • Customers do not have access to Rancher (Kubernetes management tool).

  • We provide an architecture diagram detailing components and configurations to ensure you have a high level understanding of how everything works together.

    See DX Cloud Architecture for more on this topic.

What Magnolia provides

Standard stack

  • GitLab (default for version control and CI/CD pipelines)

    See GitLab CI/CD for more on this topic.

  • Kubernetes orchestrator

    See Kubernetes fundamentals for more on this topic.

  • Docker Registry (default is GitLab-based, but you can bring your own)

  • Custom GitLab URL

GitLab & CI/CD configuration

If you choose our DX Cloud standard, you receive a dedicated GitLab URL. (e.g., gitlab.customer.magnolia-platform.com)

You can opt to use your own GitLab, Azure DevOps, GitHub, or BitBucket pipelines. You are always responsible for maintaining the pipeline. However, in this case, you are also responsible for setting up the pipeline.

Repository Structure

Using our stack

If you decide to use our DX Cloud repository setup, a base-dev repository is provided as a starting point. You should also create a new environment called dev where you use the base-dev repository as the template.

Using your own stack

If you want to use your own repository setup, we demonstrate during onboarding how everything works using our templates. However, you must then replicate that in your own GitLab CI/CD setup.

  • You can rename projects but must retain the shortname assigned at the contract stage.

  • You should called your production repository, prod and your development repository dev (instead of base-<environment>.)

  • Regional Magnolia repositories (regional-<region>) exist but are not customer-accessible.

Deployment Pipeline

The GitLab CI/CD pipeline includes:

  1. Build Stage: Triggers at every commit to build Magnolia.

  2. Push Stage: Pushes the Docker image to the registry.

  3. Deploy Stage: Uses Helm charts to deploy to the environment.

    • Deployment to the UAT, dev, and prod environments is manual (controlled via GitLab UI).

    • The values.yml file defines deployment variables and must match the registry secret (gitlab by default).

Configuring Kubernetes and access

Accessing Kubernetes

  • You do not interact directly with Kubernetes.

  • Deployment authentication is handled via GitLab CI/CD settings:

    • KUBE_CONFIG

    • MAVEN_USER

    • MAVEN_USER_PWD

      You should create these variables at the group level to include for both backend and frontend, so you only need to value them once.

  • Magnolia’s SRE team provides a KubeConfig file upon request.

Support

You must open a support ticket to:

  • Request a Kubernetes service account.

  • Store required secrets in Rancher.

Secrets & Authentication

  • A GitLab access token is required for orchestrator-to-registry communication.

  • If using a custom registry, you must provide the registry domain in your support ticket.

By default, the Kubernetes secrets name is gitlab and contains the required credentials. You can name it what you want; however, it must match the image.pullSecrets.name value in the Helm value: Images. If you do change it, you must inform us so we can create the equivalent name in Kubernetes.
Why is this all important?

By preparing the necessary accounts, credentials, and configurations ahead of time, you ensure a smooth and efficient DX Cloud onboarding experience. If you have any questions, reach out to your Technical Account Manager (TAM) or Magnolia Support.

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