ADR Supplement: Supabase Deployment Options

Primary Focus

This ADR supplement evaluates the maintainability and initial effort required to set up and maintain various Supabase deployment options, including supabase-community, maintaining the deprecated supabase/bitnami charts + images, and assessing alternatives listed on the official Supabase website.

Deployment Options

1. Supabase-Community (https://github.com/supabase-community/supabase-kubernetes)

Effort
- Approximately two weeks for one person, primarily dealing with Helm charts and ensuring clean integration with LeapfrogAI.
- Parallelizing configuration work by service (realtime, Kong, REST, storage, etc.) across multiple contributors could potentially reduce this timeframe.
Additional Considerations
- Database migration testing may require extra time. Ideally, this would involve swapping out the PVC, but additional work may be necessary if the new Postgres container doesn't seamlessly adopt existing database files, variables, and configurations.
- Requires comparing the new supabase-community values file and templates with our existing values file and the previous Bitnami values file and templates.
Advantages
- Actively maintained
- Good Kubernetes deployment base and images
- Supports all Supabase features
- Potential to contribute changes back to the upstream repository
Initial Integration Notes
- Initial configurations available on the branch 968-adr-bitnami-supabase-deprecation-continuation
- Working Docker containers compatible with a uds-core cluster
- Functional Kubernetes deployment with all Supabase components running and networked
- Supabase accessible via "https://supabase-kong.uds.dev" with working dashboard, database, and realtime features
- DB migration container runs sucessfully
- Operational Zarf package
- Not yet ready for LeapfrogAI integration; requires at minimum adjustments to secrets management
- Configs not production-ready; includes hardcoded credentials in charts and default values needs additional evaluation for security and sensibility
- Requires additional templates to reduce manual configuration
- Some configurations and templates may be adaptable from the Bitnami chart and alternative setups
Required Improvements
- Implement JWT job/secrets
- Enhance database persistence to prevent accidental deletion
- Secure Postgres credentials
- Align declarative config names
- Test and potentially modify Supabase Realtime changes for Kong
- Adjust max file size for storage
- Ensure secrets availability so that other components can complete startup and migrations, namely the LeapfrogAI UI and API
- Address any issues with pgvector and dashboard configurations
- Resolve any read/write issues due to dockerfile user permissions
- Configure gotrue site URL for auth and Keycloak integration
Maintenance Requirements
- Maintain two small Dockerfiles primarily to resolve permissions issues due to assumed root user
- Additional Dockerfiles may be necessary for extended feature support
- Ongoing maintenance of templates and values file for use with the base supabase-community Helm chart
Resources
- https://github.com/supabase-community/supabase-kubernetes/tree/main
- https://github.com/defenseunicorns/leapfrogai/compare/main...968-adr-bitnami-supabase-deprecation-continuation

2. Alternative Supabase Versions (https://supabase.com/docs/guides/self-hosting)

2.1 Maintaining Fork of Deprecated Supabase Bitnami Images/Charts

Effort
- Fastest setup (estimated 1-2 days) due to minimal changes in chart configurations and images. This time would primarily involve pushing updated images, adjusting configurations to reflect new image locations, and establishing a new repository for ongoing maintenance.
Advantages
- Fastest setup option
- No database migration required
- Useful as a reference for supabase-community configuration
Disadvantages
- Removed from Bitnami repo; full maintenance responsibility falls on our team
- 3 external dependencies from Bitnami
Maintenance Requirements
- Requires maintaining 5 custom images and 1 chart with 7 templates and in-depth understanding of Supabase.
- Potentially maintaining the Kong chart if Bitnami decides to remove it.
Resources

2.2 Stackgres Supabase Deployment

Effort
- Similar deployment time to supabase-community, but introduces an additional dependency that may add a couple days.
Advantages
- Useful as a reference for supabase-community configuration
Disadvantages
- Built on top of supabase-community
- Adds an opinionated Kubernetes Postgres deployment and operator
- Requires same setup time as supabase-community plus additional dependency
- Not actively maintained; serves as an example deployment
Maintenance Requirements
- Same as supabase-community in addition to stackgres configuration
Resources
- https://stackgres.io/blog/running-supabase-on-top-of-stackgres/
- https://github.com/ongres/apps-on-stackgres/tree/main/examples/supabase

2.3 DigitalOcean Deployment

Effort
- Not applicable for direct deployment within our environment
Advantages
- Useful as a reference for environment variables
Disadvantages
- Combines Stackgres and Terraform
- Year-old deployment example
- Hybrid Kubernetes-Docker deployment
- Not suitable for our purposes (SAAS deployment)
Maintenance Requirements
- Not applicable for direct deployment within our environment
Resources
- https://github.com/digitalocean/supabase-on-do
- https://github.com/digitalocean/supabase-on-do/blob/main/packer/supabase/docker-compose.yml

2.4 AWS Deployment

Effort
- Not applicable for direct deployment within our environment
Advantages
- Useful as a reference for environment variables
Disadvantages
- AWS-focused deployment using CloudFormation
- No Kubernetes configs
- Not suitable for our purposes (SAAS deployment)
Maintenance Requirements
- Not applicable for direct deployment within our environment
Resources
- https://github.com/supabase-community/supabase-on-aws/tree/main

2.5 Postgres AIO Docker Container

Effort
- Estimated 2 weeks to 1 month for one person to create a new Helm chart and associated templates.
Advantages
- Useful as a reference for supabase-community configuration
- Simplest implementation in terms of number of pods and configuration between services, may integrate with istio without modification
Disadvantages
- Not suitable for production use in its current state, built for Postgres testing
- Lacks charts, requiring full chart and template maintenance
- Unclear feature support
- Infrequently maintained
Maintenance Requirements
- Requires an in-depth understanding of Supabase to maintain a single complex dockerfile, helm chart, all templates, and values.
Resources
- https://github.com/supabase/postgres/tree/develop/docker/all-in-one

2.6 Supabase Terraform

Effort
- Not applicable for direct deployment within our environment
Advantages
- None
Disadvantages
- Similar to DigitalOcean deployment but unmaintained and focused on terraform
Maintenance Requirements
- Not applicable for direct deployment within our environment
Resources
- https://github.com/supabase-community/supabase-terraform

2.7 Supabase Traefik

Effort
- Not applicable for direct deployment within our environment
Advantages
- None
Disadvantages
- Docker Compose-centric deployment
- Unmaintained
- Likely superseded by updates from supabase-community and official Supabase Docker images
Maintenance Requirements
- Not applicable for direct deployment within our environment
Resources
- https://github.com/supabase-community/supabase-traefik

Recommendation

This analysis suggests that supabase-community offers the most promising long-term solution due to its active maintenance, comprehensive feature support, and potential for community contributions. While maintaining a fork of the deprecated Bitnami chart offers the fastest initial setup, it carries a significant, ongoing maintenance burden. Other alternatives are either unsuitable for our environment or lack the necessary features and maintenance support.

defenseunicorns / leapfrogai

ADR: Bitnami Supabase deprecation continuation #968

Describe what should be investigated or refactored