Packer for Creating GraphDB GCP VM Image

Packer configuration for building GraphDB VM images for Google Cloud.

About GraphDB

Ontotext GraphDB is a highly efficient, scalable and robust graph database with RDF and SPARQL support. With excellent enterprise features, integration with external search applications, compatibility with industry standards, and both community and commercial support, GraphDB is the preferred database choice of both small independent developers and big enterprises.

What's Included

The VM image includes the following libraries and software:

• GraphDB
• GraphDB Cluster Proxy
• OpenTelemetry
• Google Cloud Ops Agent
• Google Cloud CLI

Usage

1. Authentication

Before being able to run Packer, you have to authenticate your local gcloud CLI in Google. You can follow the official documentation on this here https://cloud.google.com/docs/authentication/gcloud.

2. Variables

The Packer configuration in this repository expect you to provide several required variables. Here's an example variables.pkrvars.hcl that you can extend and use:

# Required
project_id      = "your-google-cloud-project-id"
build_zone      = "us-east1-b"
graphdb_version = "10.7.0"

# Optional
image_storage_locations = ["us"]

You can check the rest of the variables in variables.pkr.hcl.

3. Running Packer

After preparing the variables, you can build VM images with:

packer build -var-file="variables.pkrvars.hcl" .

Observability

The image installs OpenTelemetry Java agent for auto instrumentation of GraphDB as well as Google's own Ops Agent for monitoring VMs. However, both of them are disabled by default, so to get them working you'd have to:

Enable Google Cloud Ops Agent

systemctl enable google-cloud-ops-agent.service
systemctl start google-cloud-ops-agent.service

Instrument GraphDB

Edit /etc/graphdb/graphdb.env and make sure that the following lines are not commented:

JAVA_TOOL_OPTIONS="-javaagent:/opt/opentelemetry/opentelemetry-javaagent.jar"
OTEL_RESOURCE_PROVIDERS_GCP_ENABLED="true"
OTEL_SERVICE_NAME="GraphDB"
OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_PROTOCOL="grpc"

Finally, you'd have to restart GraphDB with:

systemctl restart graphdb.service

GraphDB Cluster Proxy

By default, the VM will start only the GraphDB systemd service graphdb.service on port 7200. The image has a second systemd service definition graphdb-cluster-proxy.service for a second GraphDB process in cluster proxy mode on port 7201.

This proxy is used in the clustered setup of GraphDB, see https://graphdb.ontotext.com/documentation/10.7/cluster-basics.html for more information.

To start the cluster proxy process, use:

systemctl enable graphdb-cluster-proxy.service
systemctl start graphdb-cluster-proxy.service

Support

For questions or issues related to this Packer configuration, please submit an issue.

License

This code is released under the Apache 2.0 License. See LICENSE for more details.