Deploying Cube Core with Docker

This guide walks you through deploying Cube with Docker.

This is an example of a production-ready deployment, but real-world deployments can vary significantly depending on desired performance and scale.

If you'd like to deploy Cube to Kubernetes (opens in a new tab), please refer to the following resources with Helm charts: gadsme/charts (opens in a new tab) or OpstimizeIcarus/cubejs-helm-charts-kubernetes (opens in a new tab).

These resources are community-maintained, and they are not maintained by the Cube team. Please direct questions related to these resources to their authors.

Prerequisites

Docker Desktop (opens in a new tab)

Configuration

Create a Docker Compose stack by creating a docker-compose.yml. A production-ready stack would at minimum consist of:

One or more Cube API instance
A Cube Refresh Worker
A Cube Store Router node
One or more Cube Store Worker nodes

An example stack using BigQuery as a data source is provided below:

Using macOS or Windows? Use CUBEJS_DB_HOST=host.docker.internal instead of localhost if your database is on the same machine.

Using macOS on Apple Silicon (arm64)? Use the arm64v8 tag for Cube Store Docker images (opens in a new tab), e.g., cubejs/cubestore:arm64v8.

Note that it's a best practice to use specific locked versions, e.g., cubejs/cube:v0.36.0, instead of cubejs/cube:latest in production.

services:
  cube_api:
    restart: always
    image: cubejs/cube:latest
    ports:
      - 4000:4000
    environment:
      - CUBEJS_DB_TYPE=bigquery
      - CUBEJS_DB_BQ_PROJECT_ID=cube-bq-cluster
      - CUBEJS_DB_BQ_CREDENTIALS=<BQ-KEY>
      - CUBEJS_DB_EXPORT_BUCKET=cubestore
      - CUBEJS_CUBESTORE_HOST=cubestore_router
      - CUBEJS_API_SECRET=secret
    volumes:
      - .:/cube/conf
    depends_on:
      - cube_refresh_worker
      - cubestore_router
      - cubestore_worker_1
      - cubestore_worker_2
 
  cube_refresh_worker:
    restart: always
    image: cubejs/cube:latest
    environment:
      - CUBEJS_DB_TYPE=bigquery
      - CUBEJS_DB_BQ_PROJECT_ID=cube-bq-cluster
      - CUBEJS_DB_BQ_CREDENTIALS=<BQ-KEY>
      - CUBEJS_DB_EXPORT_BUCKET=cubestore
      - CUBEJS_CUBESTORE_HOST=cubestore_router
      - CUBEJS_API_SECRET=secret
      - CUBEJS_REFRESH_WORKER=true
    volumes:
      - .:/cube/conf
 
  cubestore_router:
    restart: always
    image: cubejs/cubestore:latest
    environment:
      - CUBESTORE_WORKERS=cubestore_worker_1:10001,cubestore_worker_2:10002
      - CUBESTORE_REMOTE_DIR=/cube/data
      - CUBESTORE_META_PORT=9999
      - CUBESTORE_SERVER_NAME=cubestore_router:9999
    volumes:
      - .cubestore:/cube/data
 
  cubestore_worker_1:
    restart: always
    image: cubejs/cubestore:latest
    environment:
      - CUBESTORE_WORKERS=cubestore_worker_1:10001,cubestore_worker_2:10002
      - CUBESTORE_SERVER_NAME=cubestore_worker_1:10001
      - CUBESTORE_WORKER_PORT=10001
      - CUBESTORE_REMOTE_DIR=/cube/data
      - CUBESTORE_META_ADDR=cubestore_router:9999
    volumes:
      - .cubestore:/cube/data
    depends_on:
      - cubestore_router
 
  cubestore_worker_2:
    restart: always
    image: cubejs/cubestore:latest
    environment:
      - CUBESTORE_WORKERS=cubestore_worker_1:10001,cubestore_worker_2:10002
      - CUBESTORE_SERVER_NAME=cubestore_worker_2:10002
      - CUBESTORE_WORKER_PORT=10002
      - CUBESTORE_REMOTE_DIR=/cube/data
      - CUBESTORE_META_ADDR=cubestore_router:9999
    volumes:
      - .cubestore:/cube/data
    depends_on:
      - cubestore_router

Set up reverse proxy

In production, the Cube API should be served over an HTTPS connection to ensure security of the data in-transit. We recommend using a reverse proxy; as an example, let's use NGINX (opens in a new tab).

You can also use a reverse proxy to enable HTTP 2.0 and GZIP compression

First we'll create a new server configuration file called nginx/cube.conf:

server {
  listen 443 ssl;
  server_name cube.my-domain.com;
 
  ssl_protocols               TLSv1 TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2;
  ssl_ecdh_curve              secp384r1;
  # Replace the ciphers with the appropriate values
  ssl_ciphers                 "ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA512:DHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA512:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:DHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA384 OLD_TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_CHACHA20_POLY1305_SHA256 OLD_TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_CHACHA20_POLY1305_SHA256";
  ssl_prefer_server_ciphers   on;
  ssl_certificate             /etc/ssl/private/cert.pem;
  ssl_certificate_key         /etc/ssl/private/key.pem;
  ssl_session_timeout         10m;
  ssl_session_cache           shared:SSL:10m;
  ssl_session_tickets         off;
  ssl_stapling                on;
  ssl_stapling_verify         on;
 
  location / {
    proxy_pass http://cube:4000/;
    proxy_http_version 1.1;
    proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
    proxy_set_header Connection "upgrade";
  }
}

Then we'll add a new service to our Docker Compose stack:

services:
  ...
  nginx:
    image: nginx
    ports:
      - 443:443
    volumes:
      - ./nginx:/etc/nginx/conf.d
      - ./ssl:/etc/ssl/private

Don't forget to create a ssl directory with the cert.pem and key.pem files inside so the Nginx service can find them.

For automatically provisioning SSL certificates with LetsEncrypt, this blog post (opens in a new tab) may be useful.

Security

Use JSON Web Tokens

Cube can be configured to use industry-standard JSON Web Key Sets for securing its API and limiting access to data. To do this, we'll define the relevant options on our Cube API instance:

If you're using queryRewrite for access control, then you must also configure scheduledRefreshContexts so the refresh workers can correctly create pre-aggregations.

services:
  cube_api:
    image: cubejs/cube:latest
    ports:
      - 4000:4000
    environment:
      - CUBEJS_DB_TYPE=bigquery
      - CUBEJS_DB_BQ_PROJECT_ID=cube-bq-cluster
      - CUBEJS_DB_BQ_CREDENTIALS=<BQ-KEY>
      - CUBEJS_DB_EXPORT_BUCKET=cubestore
      - CUBEJS_CUBESTORE_HOST=cubestore_router
      - CUBEJS_API_SECRET=secret
      - CUBEJS_JWK_URL=https://cognito-idp.<AWS_REGION>.amazonaws.com/<USER_POOL_ID>/.well-known/jwks.json
      - CUBEJS_JWT_AUDIENCE=<APPLICATION_URL>
      - CUBEJS_JWT_ISSUER=https://cognito-idp.<AWS_REGION>.amazonaws.com/<USER_POOL_ID>
      - CUBEJS_JWT_ALGS=RS256
      - CUBEJS_JWT_CLAIMS_NAMESPACE=<CLAIMS_NAMESPACE>
    volumes:
      - .:/cube/conf
    depends_on:
      - cubestore_worker_1
      - cubestore_worker_2
      - cube_refresh_worker

Securing Cube Store

All Cube Store nodes (both router and workers) should only be accessible to Cube API instances and refresh workers. To do this with Docker Compose, we simply need to make sure that none of the Cube Store services have any exposed

Monitoring

All Cube logs can be found by through the Docker Compose CLI:

docker-compose ps

           Name                           Command               State                    Ports
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
cluster_cube_1                 docker-entrypoint.sh cubej ...   Up      0.0.0.0:4000->4000/tcp,:::4000->4000/tcp
cluster_cubestore_router_1     ./cubestored                     Up      3030/tcp, 3306/tcp
cluster_cubestore_worker_1_1   ./cubestored                     Up      3306/tcp, 9001/tcp
cluster_cubestore_worker_2_1   ./cubestored                     Up      3306/tcp, 9001/tcp

docker-compose logs

cubestore_router_1    | 2021-06-02 15:03:20,915 INFO  [cubestore::metastore] Creating metastore from scratch in /cube/.cubestore/data/metastore
cubestore_router_1    | 2021-06-02 15:03:20,950 INFO  [cubestore::cluster] Meta store port open on 0.0.0.0:9999
cubestore_router_1    | 2021-06-02 15:03:20,951 INFO  [cubestore::mysql] MySQL port open on 0.0.0.0:3306
cubestore_router_1    | 2021-06-02 15:03:20,952 INFO  [cubestore::http] Http Server is listening on 0.0.0.0:3030
cube_1                | 🚀 Cube API server (vX.XX.XX) is listening on 4000
cubestore_worker_2_1  | 2021-06-02 15:03:24,945 INFO  [cubestore::cluster] Worker port open on 0.0.0.0:9001
cubestore_worker_1_1  | 2021-06-02 15:03:24,830 INFO  [cubestore::cluster] Worker port open on 0.0.0.0:9001

Update to the latest version

Find the latest stable release version from Docker Hub (opens in a new tab). Then update your docker-compose.yml to use a specific tag instead of latest:

services:
  cube_api:
    image: cubejs/cube:v0.36.0
    ports:
      - 4000:4000
    environment:
      - CUBEJS_DB_TYPE=bigquery
      - CUBEJS_DB_BQ_PROJECT_ID=cube-bq-cluster
      - CUBEJS_DB_BQ_CREDENTIALS=<BQ-KEY>
      - CUBEJS_DB_EXPORT_BUCKET=cubestore
      - CUBEJS_CUBESTORE_HOST=cubestore_router
      - CUBEJS_API_SECRET=secret
    volumes:
      - .:/cube/conf
    depends_on:
      - cubestore_router
      - cube_refresh_worker

Extend the Docker image

If you need to use dependencies (i.e., Python or npm packages) with native extensions inside configuration files or dynamic data models, build a custom Docker image.

You can do this by creating a Dockerfile and a corresponding .dockerignore file:

touch Dockerfile
touch .dockerignore

Add this to the Dockerfile:

FROM cubejs/cube:latest
 
COPY . .
RUN apt update && apt install -y pip
RUN pip install -r requirements.txt
RUN npm install

And this to the .dockerignore:

schema
cube.py
cube.js
.env
node_modules
npm-debug.log

Then start the build process by running the following command:

docker build -t <YOUR-USERNAME>/cube-custom-image .

Finally, update your docker-compose.yml to use your newly-built image:

services:
  cube_api:
    image: <YOUR-USERNAME>/cube-custom-image
    ports:
      - 4000:4000
    environment:
      - CUBEJS_API_SECRET=secret
      # Other environment variables
    volumes:
      - .:/cube/conf
    depends_on:
      - cubestore_router
      - cube_refresh_worker
      # Other container dependencies

Note that you shoudn't mount the whole current folder (.:/cube/conf) if you have dependencies in package.json. Doing so would effectively hide the node_modules folder inside the container, where dependency files installed with npm install reside, and result in errors like this: Error: Cannot find module 'my_dependency'. In that case, mount individual files:

    # ...
    volumes:
      - ./schema:/cube/conf/schema
      - ./cube.js:/cube/conf/cube.js
      # Other necessary files

Limits Distribution