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Fleet (DigitalOcean)

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Shallowplague edited this page Jun 20, 2026 · 2 revisions

Fleet — multi-droplet on DigitalOcean

Status: experimental (v0.1). CLI-driven (abmfleet). The core — provisioning, registry, aggregation, bulk actions — is built and unit-tested against a mocked DigitalOcean API and a mocked agent. It has not yet been run against live droplets, and there is no fleet web UI yet (the per-droplet agents keep their normal dashboards). Treat it as a working prototype.

This is the answer to the limitation in Architecture and Limitations: the base manager is single-host, so to run one bot per droplet across many DigitalOcean droplets you add a fleet controller on top. Each droplet still runs the normal manager as an agent; the controller provisions them and aggregates their existing HTTP APIs.

   Controller droplet (in the VPC) ── abmfleet
        │  DigitalOcean API (provision/destroy)
        │  HTTP Basic auth over the VPC private network
   ┌────┴─────┬───────────┬───────────┐
 agent A    agent B     agent C   …   (each = normal manager + its bot)

abmfleet CLI The fleet is driven entirely from the abmfleet CLI — there is no fleet web UI (each droplet keeps its own dashboard).

When to use it (and when not to)

Use the fleet if you specifically need one bot per machine — e.g. a dedicated IP and host per bot. If your only goal is per-bot IP diversity, the Proxies feature gives every bot its own IP on a single box for a fraction of the cost — try that first.

Cost reality: N droplets ≈ N× the bill. The fleet doesn't change that; it just makes N droplets manageable from one place.

Prerequisites

  1. A controller droplet running Aquarius Bot Manager, inside the same DigitalOcean VPC as the agents (so it can reach them on private IPs). Install it normally (see Installation).
  2. A DigitalOcean API token with write scope (Account → API → Generate New Token).
  3. At least one SSH key uploaded to DigitalOcean (so you can still SSH to a droplet directly). Get its id with abmfleet sshkeys.
  4. (Recommended) A VPC — abmfleet vpcs lists them. All agents + the controller should share it.

Setup

On the controller droplet:

# save your DigitalOcean token (stored base64-obfuscated in fleet.json — see Security)
abmfleet save-token dop_v1_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

# discover the ids you'll need
abmfleet regions          # e.g. nyc3
abmfleet sizes            # e.g. s-1vcpu-1gb (+ monthly price)
abmfleet sshkeys          # your key id(s)
abmfleet vpcs             # your VPC id

# set fleet defaults so you don't repeat them every time
abmfleet config --region nyc3 --size s-1vcpu-1gb --image ubuntu-22-04-x64 \
                --ssh-keys 12345678 --vpc-uuid <vpc-uuid> --tag aquarius-fleet \
                --name-prefix abm-bot --bot-source aquarius

The controller generates a single fleet Basic-auth credential pair the first time it needs it (stored in fleet.json). The same pair is baked into every agent's cloud-init, so the controller can reach them all.

Provisioning droplets

abmfleet provision --count 5

For each droplet this:

  1. Creates it on DigitalOcean with a generated cloud-init (the file deployed to each droplet — see below), tagged for discovery.
  2. Waits for it to become active and reads its public + private IP.
  3. Registers it in fleet.json.
  4. Waits for the agent API to come up (the agent installs itself on first boot), then deploys one bot via the agent's existing /api/deploy (unless --bot-source "").

Preview the exact cloud-init that will be deployed:

abmfleet cloud-init

It runs the normal install.sh in agent mode (ABM_ACCESS=agent), which binds the droplet's VPC private IP and bakes the fleet credentials into the systemd unit — nothing is exposed to the public internet.

Operating the fleet

abmfleet status                       # aggregate every agent into one view (bots, running counts, reachability)
abmfleet list                         # the registry (names, ids, IPs)
abmfleet refresh                      # re-pull IPs/status from DigitalOcean
abmfleet deploy abm-bot-3 --source zenith   # deploy another bot onto a droplet
abmfleet action restart --targets all       # start/stop/restart bots across droplets
abmfleet destroy abm-bot-3 --yes      # destroy the droplet on DO and drop it from the fleet
abmfleet register                     # adopt already-tagged droplets created out of band

abmfleet status example:

● abm-bot-1     10.0.0.11        bots=1 running=1
● abm-bot-2     10.0.0.12        bots=1 running=1
○ abm-bot-3     10.0.0.13        UNREACHABLE (timed out)

Per-droplet deep work (config editor, console, proxies) is still done on that agent's own dashboard — SSH-tunnel to the droplet's manager exactly as for a standalone install. The fleet controller is the overview + provisioning + bulk layer.

What gets deployed to each droplet

Artifact Purpose
Generated cloud-init (abmfleet cloud-init) First-boot user-data: installs the manager in agent mode with the fleet credentials.
The manager itself (install.sh, agent mode) Binds the VPC private IP, runs under systemd, auto-starts on reboot. No Caddy, no public port.
One bot Deployed by the controller over the agent API after the agent is up.

Security implications (read this)

The fleet concentrates risk on the controller:

  • The controller holds your DigitalOcean API token — it can create and destroy droplets and spend money. Stored base64-obfuscated in fleet.json, which is not encryption. Anyone who reads that file or compromises the controller can recover it. Use a scoped token and rotate it if the box is ever compromised.
  • The controller holds the fleet Basic-auth credentials to every agent — i.e. full control of every bot host.
  • Agents bind the VPC private IP, not the public internet — but anything else in that VPC can reach them. Keep the VPC clean, and don't put untrusted droplets in it.
  • Treat the controller droplet as the crown jewels: lock down SSH to it, keep its dashboard on localhost/tunnel, and back up fleet.json somewhere safe (it contains secrets).
  • Provisioned agents run the bot as root on a single-purpose droplet (simple, but root). If that's not acceptable, adjust the cloud-init to create a non-root user.

See the main Security page for the per-host model that also applies to every agent.

Current limitations

  • Prototype / not live-tested. Built and unit-tested against mocks; run it on a throwaway project first and watch costs.
  • CLI only — no aggregated web dashboard yet (each agent keeps its own).
  • Same-VPC assumption — the controller reaches agents on private IPs, so it must share their VPC/region. Cross-region would need the SSH-tunnel or public-HTTPS reachability model instead (not yet built).
  • DigitalOcean only. The provisioner is DO-specific; the agent/aggregation model would port to other providers, but that code isn't written.
  • No autoscaling / health self-healing — provision/destroy are manual; a dead droplet is reported UNREACHABLE, not auto-replaced.

Aquarius Bot Manager

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