Geodesic

Geodesic is the fastest way to get up and running with a rock solid, production grade cloud platform built entirely from Open Source technologies.

It’s a swiss army knife for creating and building consistent platforms to be shared across a team environment.

It easily versions staging environments in a repeatable manner that can be followed by any team member.

It's a way of doing things that allows companies to collaborate on infrastructure (snowflakes) and radically reduce Total Cost of Ownership, along with a vibrant and active slack community.

It provides a fully customizable framework for defining and building cloud infrastructures backed by AWS and powered by kubernetes. It couples best-of-breed technologies with engineering best-practices to equip organizations with the tooling that enables clusters to be spun up in record time without compromising security.

It's works natively with Mac OSX, Linux, and Windows 10 (WSL).

This project is part of our comprehensive "SweetOps" approach towards DevOps.

It's 100% Open Source and licensed under the APACHE2.

Screenshots

Example of running a shell based on the cloudposse/geodesic base docker image.

Introduction

These days, the typical software application is distributed as a docker image and run as a container. Why should infrastructure be any different? Since everything we write is "Infrastructure as Code", we believe that it should be treated the same way. This is the "Geodesic Way". Use containers+envs instead of unconventional wrappers, complicated folder structures and symlink hacks. Geodesic is the container for all your infrastructure automation needs that enables you to truly achieve SweetOps.

Geodesic is composed of two parts:

1. It is an interactive command-line shell. The shell includes the ultimate mashup of cloud orchestration tools. Those tools are then integrated to work in concert with each other using a consistent framework. Installation of the shell is as easy as running a docker container.
2. It is a distribution of essential services and reference architectures. The distribution includes a collection of 100+ Free Terraform Modules and their invocations, dozens of preconfigured Helmfiles, Helm charts for CI/CD, VPN, SSH Bastion, Automatic DNS, Automatic TLS, Automatic Monitoring, Account Management, Log Collection, Load Balancing/Routing, Image Serving, and much more. What makes these charts even more valuable is that they were designed from the ground up to work well with each other and integrate with external services for authentication (SSO/OAuth2, MFA).

An organization may chose to leverage all of these components, or just the parts that make their life easier. We recommend starting by using geodesic as a Docker base image (e.g. FROM cloudposse/geodesic:... pinned to a release and base OS) in your projects.

Note: Starting with Geodesic 2.0, we distribute Geodesic as a multi-platform (linux/amd64, linux/arm64) Debian-based Docker image and a single-platform (linux/amd64) Alpine-based image. We recommend using the Debian-based image, and the cloudposse/geodesic:latest image now points to it. (Previously cloudposse/geodesic:latest was the Alpine image.) We have deprioritized support for Alpine and may drop it entirely at some point.

Starting with Geodesic version 0.138.0, we distributed 2 versions of linux/arm64 Geodesic Docker images, one based on Alpine and one based on Debian, tagged VERSION-BASE_OS, e.g. 0.138.0-alpine. Prior to this, all Docker images were based on Alpine only and simply tagged VERSION. Prior to the release of Geodesic version 1.0, the Alpine version was the most thoroughly tested and best supported version, and the special Docker tag latest continued to point to the latest Alpine version.

Note: Geodesic is a large collection of tools. To run on an Apple natively under Geodesic, binaries need to be compiled for linux/arm64, while to run on Apple natively on outside of Geodesic (on macOS) they need to be compiled for darwin/arm64. As such, support for the Apple M1 (or later) chip is not fully under Cloud Posse's control, rather it depends on each tool author updating each tool.

To be included in Geodesic and for Geodesic to support both Intel and Apple CPUs, a tool project must distribute both a linux/amd64 and linux/arm64 binary. (In exceptional cases, if a tool is written in the go language and distributes source code only, Cloud Posse may build the needed binaries.) As of Geodesic 2.0, all but a small number of tools have started releasing the necessary binaries, so we removed the ones that were not available on linux/arm64 in order to provide a consistent toolkit on both platforms. (See the Geodesic 2.0 Release Notes for details on which tools were removed.)

Want to learn more? Check out our getting started with Geodesic guide!

Usage

Quickstart

docker run

Launching Gedoesic is a bit complex, so we recommend you install a launch script by running

docker run --rm cloudposse/geodesic:latest-debian init | bash

After that, you should be able to launch Geodesic just by typing

geodesic

Customizing your Docker image

In general we recommend creating a customized version of Geodesic by creating your own Dockerfile starting with

ARG VERSION=2.0.0
ARG OS=debian
FROM cloudposse/geodesic:$VERSION-$OS

# Add configuration options such as setting a custom BANNER,
# setting the initial AWS_PROFILE and AWS_DEFAULT_REGION, etc. here

ENV BANNER="my-custom-geodesic"

You can see some example configuration options to include in Dockerfile.options.

Multi-platform gotchas

Although the Geodesic base image is provided in 2 architectures, when you do a local build of your custom image, it will, by default, only be built for the architecture of the machine you are building on. This is fine until you want to share it. You need to be aware that if you push just the image you built with docker build you will only be supporting a single architecture. You should use docker buildx to build a multi-platform image and push it to a Docker repository for sharing.

If you intend to support both architectures, you need to be sure that any customizations you install are properly installed for both architectures. Package managers handle this for you automatically, but if you are downloading files directly, you need to be careful to select the right one. See the use of TARGETARCH in Dockerfile.debian for some examples.

Adding packages

You can also add extra commands by installing "packages". Both Debian and Alpine have a large selection of packages to choose from. Cloud Posse also provides a large set of packages for installing common DevOps commands and utilities via cloudposse/packages, but linux/arm64 packages are only provided for Debian, not Alpine. The package repositories are pre-installed in Geodesic, all you need to do is add the packages you want via RUN commands in your Dockerfile. Debian will automatically select the correct architecture for the package.

Installing packages in Debian

Debian uses apt for package management and we generally recommend using the apt-get command to install packages. In addition to the default repositories, Geodesic pre-installs the Cloud Posse package repository and the Google Cloud SDK package repository. Unlike with apk, you do not need to specify a package repository when installing a package because all repositories will be searched for it. Also unlike apk, apt-get does not let you specify a version range on the command line, but they do allow wildcards. Package versions include a release number (typically "1") at the end, to allow for updated packages when there is a bug in the package itself. Therefore, best practice is to use a wildcard for the release number when specifying a package version. For example, to install the Google Cloud SDK at a version 300.0.0:

RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y google-cloud-sdk="300.0.0-*"

Note the -y flag to apt-get install. That is required for scripted installation, otherwise the command will ask for confirmation from the keyboard before installing a package.

Installing packages in Alpine

Under Alpine, you install a package by specifying a package name and a repository label (if not the default repository). (You can also specify a version, see the Alpine documentation for details). In addition to the default package repository, Geodesic installs 3 others:

As always, because of Docker layer caching, you should start your command line by updating the repo indexes, and then add your packages. Alpine uses apk. So, to install Teleport support from the Cloud Posse package repository, pinned to version 4.2.x (which is the last to support Alpine), we can add this to our Dockerfile:

RUN apk update && apk add -u teleport@cloudposse=~4.2

Customizing your shell at launch time

After you have built your Docker image, or if you are using a shared Docker image, you can add further customization at launch time. When Geodesic starts up, it looks for customization scripts and configuration so you can do things like add command aliases or override preconfigured options. Detailed information about launch-time configuration is in the customization document, available from within the shell via man customization.

Share the Love

Like this project? Please give it a ★ on our GitHub! (it helps us a lot)

Are you using this project or any of our other projects? Consider leaving a testimonial. =)

Related Projects

Check out these related projects.

• Packages - Cloud Posse installer and distribution of native apps
• Build Harness - Collection of Makefiles to facilitate building Golang projects, Dockerfiles, Helm charts, and more
• terraform-aws-components - Catalog of reusable Terraform components and blueprints for provisioning reference architectures

Help

Got a question? We got answers.

File a GitHub issue, send us an email or join our Slack Community.

DevOps Accelerator for Startups

We are a DevOps Accelerator. We'll help you build your cloud infrastructure from the ground up so you can own it. Then we'll show you how to operate it and stick around for as long as you need us.

Work directly with our team of DevOps experts via email, slack, and video conferencing.

We deliver 10x the value for a fraction of the cost of a full-time engineer. Our track record is not even funny. If you want things done right and you need it done FAST, then we're your best bet.

• Reference Architecture. You'll get everything you need from the ground up built using 100% infrastructure as code.
• Release Engineering. You'll have end-to-end CI/CD with unlimited staging environments.
• Site Reliability Engineering. You'll have total visibility into your apps and microservices.
• Security Baseline. You'll have built-in governance with accountability and audit logs for all changes.
• GitOps. You'll be able to operate your infrastructure via Pull Requests.
• Training. You'll receive hands-on training so your team can operate what we build.
• Questions. You'll have a direct line of communication between our teams via a Shared Slack channel.
• Troubleshooting. You'll get help to triage when things aren't working.
• Code Reviews. You'll receive constructive feedback on Pull Requests.
• Bug Fixes. We'll rapidly work with you to fix any bugs in our projects.

Slack Community

Join our Open Source Community on Slack. It's FREE for everyone! Our "SweetOps" community is where you get to talk with others who share a similar vision for how to rollout and manage infrastructure. This is the best place to talk shop, ask questions, solicit feedback, and work together as a community to build totally sweet infrastructure.

Discourse Forums

Participate in our Discourse Forums. Here you'll find answers to commonly asked questions. Most questions will be related to the enormous number of projects we support on our GitHub. Come here to collaborate on answers, find solutions, and get ideas about the products and services we value. It only takes a minute to get started! Just sign in with SSO using your GitHub account.

Newsletter

Sign up for our newsletter that covers everything on our technology radar. Receive updates on what we're up to on GitHub as well as awesome new projects we discover.

Office Hours

Join us every Wednesday via Zoom for our weekly "Lunch & Learn" sessions. It's FREE for everyone!

Contributing

Bug Reports & Feature Requests

Please use the issue tracker to report any bugs or file feature requests.

Developing

If you are interested in being a contributor and want to get involved in developing this project or help out with our other projects, we would love to hear from you! Shoot us an email.

In general, PRs are welcome. We follow the typical "fork-and-pull" Git workflow.

1. Fork the repo on GitHub
2. Clone the project to your own machine
3. Commit changes to your own branch
4. Push your work back up to your fork
5. Submit a Pull Request so that we can review your changes

NOTE: Be sure to merge the latest changes from "upstream" before making a pull request!

Copyright

Copyright © 2017-2023 Cloud Posse, LLC

License

See LICENSE for full details.

Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one
or more contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file
distributed with this work for additional information
regarding copyright ownership.  The ASF licenses this file
to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the
"License"); you may not use this file except in compliance
with the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at

  https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing,
software distributed under the License is distributed on an
"AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY
KIND, either express or implied.  See the License for the
specific language governing permissions and limitations
under the License.

Trademarks

All other trademarks referenced herein are the property of their respective owners.

About

This project is maintained and funded by Cloud Posse, LLC. Like it? Please let us know by leaving a testimonial!

We're a DevOps Professional Services company based in Los Angeles, CA. We ❤️ Open Source Software.

We offer paid support on all of our projects.

Check out our other projects, follow us on twitter, apply for a job, or hire us to help with your cloud strategy and implementation.

Contributors

Erik Osterman	Igor Rodionov	Andriy Knysh	Sarkis Varozian	Oscar Sullivan