AIMS Deployment Guide using Docker
This document is a guide to run AIMS using Docker. To make it easy for an end user to set up and run the application within the docker container, the guide is written in a step by step manner. There are two parts of the application, the backend, and the frontend. The backend includes setting up SQL Server and APIs server. Before following this guide, install the docker on your system. Once you set up the docker on your system, you are then ready to move along deploying AIMS using docker. If you wish to setup a free SSL on Server, we recommend Let's Encrypt. You may see detailed help using their official documentation, help, and download here: (https://letsencrypt.org/).
1. Setting up Docker
Installing Docker on Windows or Linux (Ubuntu) is easy. Please refer to the official documentation along with step by step help here (https://docs.docker.com/install/). For downloading Docker for Windows 10, use the link given below:
(https://docs.docker.com/docker-for-windows/install/).
If you are using Windows, please switch to Linux containers before running the command given below. The figure below shows how you can switch the containers on windows.
Figure 1: Switching docker containers on windows
Step **2. Setting up SQL Server**
We will first setup the SQL Server using the Linux image within a docker container. Open the terminal (On windows open Powershell) and type the following command to pull the docker image for SQL Server.
Figure 2: Installing SQL Server 2017 using Docker
| docker pull mcr.microsoft.com/mssql/server:2017-latest |
This command will pull the image for SQL Server into the container. Once the image is downloaded, we can install SQL Server with some configuration using the command below:
Figure 3: Running SQL Server
| docker run -e 'ACCEPT_EULA=Y' -e 'SA_PASSWORD=Master002!' -p 1433:1433 --name sqlserver -d mcr.microsoft.com/mssql/server:2017-latest |
The given command runs SQL Server within the container. Different chunks of the command are explained in the table below.
Table 1: Explanation of command for running SQL Server Image
| Attribute | Explanation |
| ACCEPT_EULA=Y | Accepting the license agreement |
| SA_PASSWORD | "sa" is a system administrator user, and this attributes provides the password required to run the SQL Server Instance |
| -p 1433:1433 | Specifies port, left side of port is the port on host computer on which docker is installed, right side of the port is on which SQL Server is running within the docker container Note:- Please note port 1433 (right side) from the docker container is mapped to port 1433 (left side) on the host computer. Sometimes, it happens the port 1433 is already taken on the host computer and in this case the container will not run. Please change the port which is on the left side to some other port number e.g “1434”. After you run the command, please use the command “docker ps -a” to check the status of the container. If it is showing “Up” under the status column. You are ready to run the next command. |
| --name | Name of the container |
3. Pulling and running the backend image from Docker Hub
Once we are done with setting up the SQL Server on a docker container. We can now step forward to set up the backend APIs for AIMS. Steps are given below in order to setup the backend APIs.
3.1. Pull Image from Docker Hub
Figure 4: Pull AIMS APIs Image from Docker Hub
| docker pull somaliaims/aimsapis:release1 |
3.2. Run APIs Server
Once the image is pulled successfully. We are now ready to run the APIs server. The image that we have downloaded is name as "somaliaims/aimsapis". Use the command below to setup and run the AIMS APIs Server.
Figure 5: Running AIMS APIs Server
| docker run -it --rm --link sqlserver -e 'SQLSERVER_HOST=sqlserver' -e 'SQLSERVER_SA_PASSWORD=Master002!' -p 5000:80 somaliaims/aimsapis:release1 --name aims-server |
If the commands runs successfully, that means the AIMS API Server is set up and you can view it using the URL http://localhost:5000/swagger/ on the host computer. The breakdown and explanation of the command given in figure 5 is described in the table below.
Table 2: Explanation of command for setting up AIMS APIs Server
| Attribute | Explanation |
| --link sqlserver | Link attribute connects the current container with the container named after this attribute. In this case it is ‘sqlserver’ |
| -e ‘SQLSERVER_HOST=sqlserver’ | This parameter is passing the name of the SQL Server container which we started in the previous command given in Figure 3. Passing this container name will be used as a connection string. |
| -e ‘SQLSERVER_SA_PASSWORD’ | This is the password for ‘sa’ user |
| -p 5000:80 | P parameter is for port, the port on the left is the one using which we can access the application from the host computer. The port on the right side is the one on which the application is listening within the container. Note:- We can expose any port number to the host computer. For example, we can use 5001 instead of 5000 |
4. Pulling and running the frontend image from Docker Hub
Setting up front is also a two step process. We can download the image for the frontend using the command given below.
4.1. Pull Image from Docker Hub
Figure 5: Pulling Frontend Image from Docker Hub
| docker pull somaliaims/aimsui:release1 |
The command will pull the Image for AIMS UI. Once the pull is completed, we are ready to run the UI Client.
4.2. Run Frontend Client
Use the command below to run the client after pulling the image (somaliaims/aimsui) from the Docker Hub.
Figure 6: Running Frontend Application
| docker run -p 7000:82 --env BACKEND_API_URL=http://localhost:5000/api/ somaliaims/aimsui:release1 --name aimsui-client |
The breakdown of the command and its explanation is given in the table below.
Table 3: Explanation of command for setting up AIMS APIs Server
| Attribute | Explanation |
| --env BACKEND_API_URL | --env is an attribute used for the environment, whereas BACKEND_API_URL is a constant configured in the UI application to get and set up the URL for APIs Server. We have set up our API server on port 5000. So in this case it would be http://localhost:5000/api/ |
| --name aims-ui-client | --name is an attribute which is used to set the name of the container in the given command |
If everything is executed smoothly, we can then access our UI client using this URL: http://localhost:7000/.
X 5. AIMS Management
Once all set up and AIMS is running, we can login with the default manager account already created during database initialization to manage the basic data. The default account information is given below:
Table 4: Default Manager Account Information
| Username | Password |
| aims.developer18@gmail.com | test |