New Seafile Deployment and Configuration: Feedback required!

Seafile Server
1

Dear Community,

we (datamate, the primary support and sales partner of Seafile in Europa) have developed a new deployment and configuration approach for Seafile Server.

We didn’t change the software seafile itself, but we replaced the initialization scripts to make it possible to deploy and configure seafile only with environment variables.

This has many advantages

  • Quick and Easy Deployment: Deploy Seafile within minutes, reducing the time and effort traditionally required.
  • Centralized Configuration Management: With all configurations handled in a single location, administration becomes more straightforward and less prone to error. No fiddling with various configuration files.
  • Improved Documentation: Put your configuration to version control and you will get a clear and concise records of configuration changes.
  • Kubernetes Ready: This approach is necessary, that we can deliver a Kubernetes/helm deployment within the next days.

YouTube Video

I created an English YouTube video to demonstrate the installation and configuration.

More information

Important: This only supports Seafile Professional (with up to three users for free). Seafile Community is not supported.

We want your feedback!

  • What do you think of this approach?
  • Does it simplify your life as an admin?
1 Like
2

The helm chart has now reached a status that it is ready for testing:

Feedback is highly appreciated.
Best regards
Christoph from datamate.

3

Hello,
I think this consolidated approach is more than overdue. I have been testing this new install method and it has been working w/o issue so far. Couple of comments:

In my environment I’m using a different load balancer already so I’m only using the seafile-pe.yml file. In order to make this work with my “external” LB, I had to add the following statement to seafile-pe.yml:
ports:

  • 80:80
    Is there a better way to do this since seafile-pe.yml will be overwritten with the next update.

Second, I’m wondering about the long-term support and maintenance of this approach. Who will be responsible for the long-term support of this. Is Seafile moving towards this and will this become the standard install method.

4

Thanks for your feedback. Let me try to answer your questions:

  • exposing port 80 is necessary if your proxy is not part of the same docker network like seafile. As soon as your proxy/load balancer is in the same network, exposing is not necessary. You made everything right, this is just for others to provide more details.
  • if you want to make custom changes, my recommendation is that you create a copy and name it something like custom-seafile-pe.yml and reference this in your .env. Then your changes are not overwritten. After each update you can easily run a
    diff seafile-pe.yml custom-seafile-pe.yml
    to see if something important has changed in the seafile-pe.yml.
  • currently this new approach will be maintained by us (datamate, primary sales and support partner of seafile ltd. in europe). We are totally convinced about this approach, and also we need it for kubernetes deployments.
  • Until now, we have not convinced Seafile Ltd. to make this the officially supported deployment method, but we are working on that. :slight_smile:

Therefore the feedback of the community is important.