mist.io

Mist.io helps you operate, monitor and govern your computing infrastructure, across clouds and platforms. The code is provided under the GNU AGPL v3.0 License.

An enterprise version that includes Role Based Access, VPN tunnels and Insights for cost optimization is available as a service at https://mist.io

Hardware requirements

Recommended hardware resources are: 4 CPU cores 8 GB RAM 10 GB disk (accessible to /var/lib/docker/)

Installation

Mist.io is a large application split into microservices which are packages in docker containers. The easiest way to run it is by using docker-compose. So, in order to run it, one needs to install a recent version of docker and docker-compose.

If you want to install a stable release, head over to mist.io's github releases and follow the instructions there.

Alternatively, if you want to run the latest development version of mist.io, run the following:

mkdir mist.io && cd mist.io && echo 'MIST_TAG=master' > .env
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mistio/mist.io/master/docker-compose.yml
docker-compose up -d

After a few minutes (depending on your connection) all mist.io containers will be downloaded and started in the background.

Run docker-compose ps. All containers should be in the UP state, except shortlived container elasticsearch-manage.

To run a different mist.io version, replace master with a different branch's name in the above echo and wget commands.

Running mist.io

Make sure you're inside the directory containing the docker-compose.yml file.

Switch to the directory containing the docker-compose.yml file and run

docker-compose up -d

This will start all the mist.io docker containers in the background.

To create a user for the first time, first run

docker-compose exec api sh

This should drop you in a shell into one of the mist.io containers. In there, run

./bin/adduser --admin admin@example.com

Replace the email address with yours. Try running ./bin/adduser -h for more options. The --docker-cloud flag will add the docker daemon hosting the mist.io installation as a docker cloud in the created account.

Mist.io binds on port 80 of the host. Visit http://localhost and login with the email and password specified above.

Welcome to mist.io! Enjoy!

Configuring mist.io

After the initial docker-compose up -d, you'll see that a configuration file is created in ./config/settings.py. Edit this file to modify configuration. Any changes to the ./config/settings.py require a restart to take effect:

docker-compose restart

Required configuration

URL

If running on anything other than localhost, you'll need to set the CORE_URI setting in ./config/settings.py. Example:

CORE_URI = "http://198.51.100.12"

Mail settings

In some cases, such as user registration, forgotten passwords, user invitations etc, mist.io needs to send emails. By default, mist.io is configured to use a mock mailer. To see logs sent by mist.io, run

docker-compose logs -f mailmock

If you wish to use a real SMTP server, edit ./config/settings.py and modify MAILER_SETTINGS.

Don't forget to restart docker-compose for changes to take effect.

Managing mist.io

Mist.io is managed using docker-compose. Look that up for details. Some useful commands follow. Keep in mind that you need to run these from inside the directory containing the docker-compose.yml file:

# See status of all applications
docker-compose ps

# Almost all containers should be in the UP state. An exception to this
# is shortlived containers. Currently the only such container is
# elasticsearch-manage. This should run for a few seconds and exit 0 if
# everything went fine.

# Restart nginx container
docker-compose restart nginx

# See the logs of the api and celery containers, starting with the last
# 50 lines.
docker-compose logs --tail=50 -f api celery

# Stop mist.io
docker-compose stop

# Start mist.io
docker-compose start
# or even better
docker-compose up -d

# Stop and remove all containers
docker-compose down

# Completely remove all containers and data volumes.
docker-compose down -v

Development deployment

If you're planning to modify mist.io's source code, an alternative installation method is recommended.

Clone this git repo and all its submodules with something like:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/mistio/mist.io.git
cd mist.io
docker-compose up -d

This may take some time.

This setup will mount the checked out code into the containers. By cloning the directory, now there's also a docker-compose.override.yml file in the current directory in addition to docker-compose.yml and is used to modify the configuration for development mode.

The above instructions for running and managing mist.io apply.