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Disclaimer August 2023

The current state of the Sovereign Workplace contain components that are going to be replaced. Like for example the UCS dev container monolith will be substituted by multiple Univention Management Stack containers.

In the next months we not only expect upstream updates of the functional components within their feature scope, but we are also going to address operational issues like monitoring and network policies.

Of course, further development also includes enhancing the documentation.

The first release of the Sovereign Workplace is scheduled for December 2023. Before that release there will be breaking changes in the deployment.

The Sovereign Workplace (SWP)

The Sovereign Workplace's runtime environment is Kubernetes, or "K8s" in short.

While not all components are still perfectly shaped for the execution inside containers, one of the projects objectives is it to align the applications with the best practises regarding container design and operations.

This documentation aims to give you all that is needed to set up your own instance of the Sovereign Workplace. Basic knowledge of Kubernetes and Devops is required though.

To have an overview of what can be found at Open CoDE and the basic components of the Sovereign Workplace, please check out the OVERVIEW.md in the Info repository.

We love to get feedback from you! Related to the deployment / contents of this repository please use the issues within this project.

If you want to address other topics, please check the section "Rückmeldungen und Beteiligung" of the Infos' project OVERVIEW.md.

Deployment

Note for project members: You can use the project's dev K8s cluster to set up your own instance for development purposes. Please see the project sovereign-workplace-env on the internal Gitlab for more details.

Prerequisites

Mandatory technical prerequisites

These are the requirements of the Sovereign Workplace deployment:

• Vanilla K8s cluster
• Domain and DNS Service
• Ingress controller (supported are nginx-ingress, ingress-nginx, HAProxy)
• Helm, HelmFile and HelmDiff
• Volume provisioner supporting RWO (read-write-once)
• Certificate handling with cert-manager
• Istio is currently required to deploy and operate OX AppSuite8, we are working with Open-Xchange to get rid of this dependency.

TLS Certificate

The setup will create a cert-manager.io Certificate resource.

You can set the ClusterIssuer via certificate.issuerRef.name

Required input variables

You need to expose following environment variables in order to run the installation.

name	default	description
DOMAIN	souvap.cloud	External reachable domain
ISTIO_DOMAIN	istio.souvap.cloud	External reachable domain for Istio Gateway
MASTER_PASSWORD	sovereign-workplace	The password that seeds the autogenerated secrets
SMTP_PASSWORD		Password for SMTP relay gateway
TURN_CREDENTIALS		Credentials for coturn server

Please ensure that you set the DNS records pointing to the loadbalancer/IP for DOMAIN and ISTIO_DOMAIN.

If you want inbound email you need to set the MX records that points to the public IP address of the Postfix-pods.

More details on DNS options including SPF/DKIM and autodiscovery options are to come...

Optional or feature based prerequisites

All of these requirements are optional as long as you do not want to use the related feature.

Feature	Component(s)	Requirement
Component Scalability	Various[^1]	Read-Write-Many Provisioner
Sending outbound emails	Various	SMTP relay/gateway
S/MIME Support	OX AppSuite8	PKI / CI
Improved videoconferencing	Jitsi	STUN/TURN server

CI based deployment

The project includes a .gitlab-ci.yml that allows you to execute the deployment from a Gitlab instance of your choice.

Please ensure to provide the environment variables listed at Required input variables.

When starting the pipeline through the Gitlab UI you will be queried for some of the variables plus the following ones:

• BASE_DOMAIN: The base domain the SWP will use. For example: souvap.cloud
• NAMESPACE: Defines into which namespace of your K8s cluster the SWP will be installed
• MASTER_PASSWORD_WEB_VAR: Overwrites value of MASTER_PASSWORD

Based on your input the following variables will be set:

• DOMAIN = NAMESPACE.BASE_DOMAIN
• ISTIO_DOMAIN = istio.DOMAIN
• MASTER_PASSWORD = MASTER_PASSWORD_WEB_VAR. If MASTER_PASSWORD_WEB_VAR is not set, the default for MASTER_PASSWORD will be used, unless you set MASTER_PASSWORD as a masked CI/CD variable in Gitlab to supercede the default.

You might want to set credential variables in the Gitlab project at Settings > CI/CD > Variables.

Local deployment

Please ensure to provide the environment variables listed at Required input variables. Also, please read Helmfile a little below in case of a non default configuration.

Then go with

helmfile apply -n <NAMESPACE>

and wait a little. After the deployment is finished some bootstrapping is executed which might take some more minutes before you can log in your new instance.

Logging in

When successfully deployed the SWP, all K8s jobs from the deployment should be in the status Succeeded and all pods should be Running.

You should see the portal's login page at https://portal.<DOMAIN>.

Off the shelf you get two accounts with passwords you can look up in the univention-corporate-container-* pod environment. You can use a shell on that container or a kubectl describe-command to get the credentials.

Username / Login	Password environment variable
default.user	DEFAULT_ACCOUNT_USER_PASSWORD
default.admin	DEFAULT_ACCOUNT_ADMIN_PASSWORD

If you do not see any tiles in the portal after the login you may want to wait a couple of minutes, as on the initial start some bootstrapping and cache building is done. This blocks the portal entries from showing up.

Helmfile

Custom Configuration

Deployment selection

By default, all components are deployed. The components of type Eval are used for development and evaluation purposes only - they need to be replaced in production deployments. These components are grouped together in the subdirectory /helmfile/apps/services.

Component	Name	Default	Description	Type
Certificates	certificates.enabled	true	TLS certificates	Eval
ClamAV (Distributed)	clamavDistributed.enabled	false	Antivirus engine	Eval
ClamAV (Simple)	clamavSimple.enabled	true	Antivirus engine	Eval
Collabora	collabora.enabled	true	Weboffice	Functional
Dovecot	dovecot.enabled	true	Mail backend	Functional
Element	element.enabled	true	Secure communications platform	Functional
Intercom Service	intercom.enabled	true	Cross service data exchange	Functional
Jitsi	jitsi.enabled	true	Videoconferencing	Functional
Keycloak	keycloak.enabled	true	Identity Provider	Functional
MariaDB	mariadb.enabled	true	Database	Eval
Nextcloud	nextcloud.enabled	true	File share	Functional
OpenProject	openproject.enabled	true	Project management	Functional
OX Appsuite	oxAppsuite.enabled	true	Groupware	Functional
Provisioning	oxConnector.enabled	true	Backend provisioning	Functional
Postfix	postfix.enabled	true	MTA	Eval
PostgreSQL	postgresql.enabled	true	Database	Eval
Redis	redis.enabled	true	Cache Database	Eval
Univention Corporate Server	univentionCorporateServer.enabled	true	Identity Management & Portal	Functional
XWiki	xwiki.enabled	true	Knowledgebase	Functional

Cluster capabilities

Capability	Default	Options	Notes
cluster.service.type	LoadBalancer	ClusterIP, NodePort, LoadBalancer	External access to TCP/UDP services. Additional Information
cluster.persistence.readWriteMany	false	true, false	Enable if ReadWriteMany (RWX) storage is available (f.e. CephFS, NFS, ...).
cluster.networking.domain	cluster.local		Kubernetes cluster domain.
cluster.networking.cidr	10.0.0.0/8		Kubernetes internal network

Databases

In case you don't got for a develop or evaluation environment you want to point the application to your own database instances.

Component	Name	Type	Parameter	Key	Default
Element	Synapse	PostgreSQL
			Name	databases.synapse.name	matrix
			Host	databases.synapse.host	postgresql
			Port	databases.synapse.port	5432
			Username	databases.synapse.username	matrix_user
			Password	databases.synapse.password
Keycloak	Keycloak	PostgreSQL
			Name	databases.keycloak.name	keycloak
			Host	databases.keycloak.host	postgresql
			Port	databases.keycloak.port	5432
			Username	databases.keycloak.username	keycloak_user
			Password	databases.keycloak.password
	Keycloak Extension	PostgreSQL
			Name	databases.keycloakExtension.name	keycloak_extensions
			Host	databases.keycloakExtension.host	postgresql
			Port	databases.keycloakExtension.port	5432
			Username	databases.keycloakExtension.username	keycloak_extensions_user
			Password	databases.keycloakExtension.password
Nextcloud	Nextcloud	MariaDB
			Name	databases.nextcloud.name	nextcloud
			Host	databases.nextcloud.host	mariadb
			Username	databases.nextcloud.username	nextcloud_user
			Password	databases.nextcloud.password
OpenProject	Keycloak	PostgreSQL
			Name	databases.openproject.name	openproject
			Host	databases.openproject.host	postgresql
			Port	databases.openproject.port	5432
			Username	databases.openproject.username	openproject_user
			Password	databases.openproject.password
OX Appsuite	OX Appsuite	MariaDB
			Name	databases.oxAppsuite.name	CONFIGDB
			Host	databases.oxAppsuite.host	mariadb
			Username	databases.oxAppsuite.username	root
			Password	databases.oxAppsuite.password
XWiki	XWiki	MariaDB
			Name	databases.xwiki.name	xwiki
			Host	databases.xwiki.host	mariadb
			Username	databases.xwiki.username	xwiki_user
			Password	databases.xwiki.password

Scaling

The Replicas of components can be increased, while we still have to look in the actual scalability of the components (see column Scales at least to 2).

Component	Name	Default	Service	Scaling	Scales at least to 2
ClamAV	replicas.clamav	1	✅	✅	not tested
	replicas.clamd	1	✅	✅	not tested
	replicas.freshclam	1	✅	❌	not tested
	replicas.icap	1	✅	✅	not tested
	replicas.milter	1	✅	✅	not tested
Collabora	replicas.collabora	1	✅	✅	not tested
Dovecot	replicas.dovecot	1	✅	❌	not tested
Element	replicas.element	2	✅	✅	✅
	replicas.synapse	1	✅	❌	not tested
	replicas.synapseWeb	2	✅	✅	✅
	replicas.wellKnown	2	✅	✅	✅
Jitsi	replicas.jibri	1	✅	✅	not tested
	replicas.jicofo	1	✅	✅	not tested
	replicas.jitsi	1	✅	✅	not tested
	replicas.jvb	1	✅	❌	❌
Keycloak	replicas.keycloak	1	✅	✅	not tested
Nextcloud	replicas.nextcloud	1	✅	✅	not tested
OpenProject	replicas.openproject	1	✅	✅	not tested
Postfix	replicas.postfix	1	✅	❌	not tested
XWiki	replicas.xwiki	1	✅	✅	not tested

Component integration

Functional use cases

Overview

Some use cases require inter component integration.

flowchart TD
  OXAppSuiteFrontend-->|SilentLogin, Filepicker, CentralNavigation|IntercomService
  IntercomService-->|SilentLogin, TokenExchange|Keycloak
  IntercomService-->|Filepicker|Nextcloud
  IntercomService-->|CentralNavigation|Portal
  OXAppSuiteBackend-->|Filepicker|Nextcloud
  Nextcloud-->|CentralNavigation|Portal
  OpenProject-->|CentralNavigation|Portal
  XWiki-->|CentralNavigation|Portal
  Nextcloud-->|CentralContacts|OXAppSuiteBackend
  OXAppSuiteFrontend-->|Filepicker|OXAppSuiteBackend

Intercom Service (ICS)

The UCS Intercom Service's role is to enable cross application integration based on browser interaction. Handling authentication when the frontend of an application is using the API from another application is often a challenge. For more details on the ICS please refer to its own README.md.

In order to establish a session with the Intercom Service, the application that wants to use the ICS must initiate a silent login.

Currently only OX AppSuite is using the frontend based integration, and therefore it is right now the only consumer of the ICS API.

Filepicker

The Nextcloud filepicker which is integrated into the OX AppSuite allows you to add attachments or links to files from and saving attachments to Nextcloud.

The filepicker is using frontend and backend based integration. Frontend based integration means that OX AppSuite in the browser is communicating with ICS. While using backend based integration, OX AppSuite middleware is communicating with Nextcloud, which is especially used when adding a file to an email or storing a file into Nextcloud.

Central Navigation

Central navigation is based on an API endpoint in the portal that provides the contents of the portal for a user in order to allow components to render the menu showing all available SWP applications for the user.

(Read & write) Central contacts

Open-Xchange App Suite is used to manage contacts within the Sovereign Workplace. There is an API in the AppSuite that is being used by Nextcloud to lookup contacts as well as to create contacts. This is maybe done when a file is shared with a not yet available personal contact.

Identity data flows

An overview of

• components that consume the LDAP service. Mostly by using a dedicated LDAP search account.
• components using Keycloak as identity provider. If not otherwise denoted based on the OAuth2 / OIDC flows.

Some components trust others to handle authentication for them.

flowchart TD
    K[Keycloak]-->L[LDAP]
    N[Nextcloud]-->L
    A[OX AppSuite]-->L
    D[OX Dovecot]-->L
    P[Portal/Admin]-->L
    O[OpenProject]-->|in 2023|L
    X[XWiki]-->|in 2023|L
    A-->K
    N-->K
    D-->K
    O-->K
    X-->K
    P-->|SAML|K
    E[Element]-->K
    J[Jitsi]-->K
    I[IntercomService]-->K
    C[Collabora]-->N
    F[Postfix]-->D

Provisioning

Currently active provisioning is only done for OX AppSuite. The OX-Connector synchronizes creates, modifies and deletes activities for the following objects to the OX AppSuite using the AppSuite's SOAP API:

• Contexts
• Users
• Groups
• Functional Mailboxes
• Resources

Component specific documentation

We want to provide more information per component in separate, component specific README.md files. In order to establish a common view on the components we are going to cover various aspects:

• Component overview: Shall provide a quick introduction including the components prerequisites and subcomponents (f.e. pods).
• Resources: Will contain a link to the components upstream documentation, the helm chart and image locations.
• Operational Capabilities
  • Install: The components installs within the SWP.
  • Restart: Deleting and restarting pods works seamlessly.
  • Update: Redeploying the component with a different configuration works as expected. The component makes use of the updates configuration afterwards.
  • Upgrade: Component allows to upgrade existing deployments with more current versions of itself.
  • Secrets: The component uses K8s secrets.
  • Logging: Only logging to STDOUT, no logs inside the container.
  • Monitoring: Application provides based on kube-prometheus-stack CRD: ServiceMonitor and PrometheusRule. Optional: Grafana Dashboard.
  • Scale: If supported (as we use community products) the component should be manually scalable. Optional: Autoscaling.
  • Network policies: Deny by default, allow application related traffic.
  • Uninstall: Documented and working complete uninstallation of the component.
• Debugging: Some helpful information when it comes to debugging a component, e.g. setting log level.

Links to component README.mds

• Intercom-Service

Tests

There is a frontend end-to-end test suite that can get triggered if the deployment is performed via a Gitlab pipeline.

Currently, the test suite is in progress to be published, so right now it is only usable by project members. But that will change soon, and it could be used to create custom tests and perform them after deployment.

The deployment pipeline provides a variable named TESTS_PROJECT_URL that points to the test pipeline residing in another Gitlab repository. At the end of the deployment the test pipeline is triggered. Tests are just performed for components that have been deployed prior.

Footnotes

[^1] Required for scaling components Nextcloud, Dovecot and ClamAV Distributed.