nginx, Frontend, Backend, ZEO container example

This example is a very simple setup with one or more backend instances accessing a ZEO server and data being persisted in a Docker volume.

nginx in this example is used as a reverse proxy.

Setup

Create an empty project directory named nginx-volto-plone-zeo.

mkdir nginx-volto-plone-zeo

Change into your project directory.

cd nginx-volto-plone-zeo

nginx configuration

Add a default.conf that will be used by the nginx image:

upstream backend {
  server backend:8080;
}
upstream frontend {
  server frontend:3000;
}

server {
  listen 80  default_server;
  server_name  plone.localhost;

  location ~ /\+\+api\+\+($|/.*) {
      rewrite ^/(\+\+api\+\+\/?)+($|/.*) /VirtualHostBase/http/$server_name/Plone/++api++/VirtualHostRoot/$2 break;
      proxy_pass http://backend;
  }

  location ~ / {
      location ~* \.(js|jsx|css|less|swf|eot|ttf|otf|woff|woff2)$ {
          add_header Cache-Control "public";
          expires +1y;
          proxy_pass http://frontend;
      }
      location ~* static.*\.(ico|jpg|jpeg|png|gif|svg)$ {
          add_header Cache-Control "public";
          expires +1y;
          proxy_pass http://frontend;
      }

      proxy_set_header        Host $host;
      proxy_set_header        X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
      proxy_set_header        X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
      proxy_set_header        X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
      proxy_redirect http:// https://;
      proxy_pass http://frontend;
  }
}

Note

http://plone.localhost/ is the URL you will be using to access the website. You can either use localhost, or add it in your /etc/hosts file or DNS to point to the Docker host IP.

Service configuration with Docker Compose

Now let's create a docker-compose.yml file:

version: "3"
services:

  webserver:
    image: nginx
    volumes:
      - ./default.conf:/etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf
    depends_on:
      - backend
      - frontend
    ports:
    - "80:80"

  frontend:
    image: plone/plone-frontend:latest
    environment:
      RAZZLE_INTERNAL_API_PATH: http://backend:8080/Plone
    ports:
    - "3000:3000"
    depends_on:
      - backend

  backend:
    image: plone/plone-backend:6.0
    environment:
      SITE: Plone
      ZEO_ADDRESS: db:8100
    ports:
    - "8080:8080"
    depends_on:
      - db

  db:
    image: plone/plone-zeo:latest
    restart: always
    volumes:
      - data:/data
    ports:
    - "8100:8100"

volumes:
  data: {}

Build the project

Start the stack with docker compose.

docker compose up -d

This pulls the needed images and starts Plone.

Access Plone via Browser

After startup, go to http://plone.localhost/ and you should see the site.

Increase the number of backends

To use two containers for the backend, run docker compose with --scale.

docker compose up --scale backend=2

Shutdown and cleanup

The command docker compose down removes the containers and default network, but preserves the Plone database.

The command docker compose down --volumes removes the containers, default network, and the Plone database.