Version: 1.1.x

Installation

This page contains detailed instructions for installing Rasa X in a scalable cluster environment using OpenShift or Kubernetes (K8S).

Rasa X is available as a Helm Chart for a cluster setup. If you are not using Helm in your cluster, you can still use the following instructions to generate the Kubernetes or OpenShift object configurations via the Helm command-line interface, and install those configurations manually.

Installation

note

If you’re installing Rasa Enterprise, please follow the Rasa Enterprise instructions where given. If a step does not have separate instructions, the step applies to both Rasa X and Rasa Enterprise.

note

The support for the Rasa Open Source server deployment in the Rasa X Helm chart will be dropped in the future.

It's recommended to use the Rasa Helm chart to deploy Rasa Open Source, more info you can find in the docs.

1. Create Namespace

We recommend installing Rasa X in a separate namespace to avoid interfering with existing cluster deployments. To create a new namespace run the following command:

kubectl create namespace <your namespace>

2. Create Values File

Prepare an empty file called values.yml which will include all your custom configuration for the installation with Helm.

3. Configure Credentials

To configure the credentials, copy the section below into the values.yml file and replace each <safe credential> marker with a different alphanumeric string. Please use safe credentials to avoid data breaches.

# rasax specific settings
rasax:
# initialUser is the user which is created upon the initial start of Rasa Enterprise
initialUser:
# username specifies a name of this user - defaults to "admin"
username: "<username>"
# password for the Rasa Enterprise user
password: "<safe credential>"
# passwordSalt Rasa X uses to salt the user passwords
passwordSalt: "<safe credential>"
# token Rasa X accepts as authentication token from other Rasa services
token: "<safe credential>"
# jwtSecret which is used to sign the jwtTokens of the users
jwtSecret: "<safe credential>"
# rasa: Settings common for all Rasa containers
rasa:
# token Rasa accepts as authentication token from other Rasa services
token: "<safe credential>"
# RabbitMQ specific settings
rabbitmq:
# rabbitmq settings of the subchart
auth:
# password which is used for the authentication
password: "<safe credential>"
# global settings of the used subcharts
global:
# postgresql: global settings of the postgresql subchart
postgresql:
# postgresqlPassword is the password which is used when the postgresqlUsername equals "postgres"
postgresqlPassword: "<safe credential>"
# redis: global settings of the redis subchart
redis:
# password to use in case there no external secret was provided
password: "<safe credential>"

4. Specify Rasa X and Rasa Open Source Versions

You can install the latest stable Rasa X version and the latest Rasa Open Source version by specifying the following in your values.yml:

# rasax specific settings
rasax:
# Rasa X configuration you did in previous steps
# ...
tag: "1.1.0"
# rasa: Settings common for all Rasa containers
rasa:
# Rasa Open Source configuration you did in previous steps
# ...
# tag refers to the Rasa image tag
tag: "undefined-full"

To install the latest edge release of Rasa X instead, set the latest tag for Rasa X:

# rasax specific settings
rasax:
# Rasa X configuration you did in previous steps
# ...
tag: "latest"
# rasa: Settings common for all Rasa containers
rasa:
# Rasa Open Source configuration you did in previous steps
# ...
# tag refers to the Rasa image tag
tag: "undefined-full"

You can also choose any compatible Rasa X and Rasa Open source versions according to the Compatibility Matrix.

5. Optional: Configure Custom Action Server

See these instructions to configure a custom action server.

note

If you are following the Using Helm to Generate Object Configurations guide, stop here and continue with them.

6. Deploy Rasa X

Run the following commands:

# Add the repository which contains the Rasa X Helm chart
helm repo add rasa-x https://rasahq.github.io/rasa-x-helm
# Deploy Rasa X
helm install \
--generate-name \
--namespace <your namespace> \
--values values.yml \
rasa-x/rasa-x
note

OpenShift only: OpenShift requires additional settings related to the security context, in the Rasa X Helm chart repository, you can find an example values file with settings for OpenShift.

Then wait until the deployment is ready. If you want to check on its status, the following command will block until the Rasa X deployment is ready:

kubectl --namespace <your namespace> \
wait \
--for=condition=available \
--timeout=20m \
--selector app.kubernetes.io/component=rasa-x \
deployment

Alternatively you can also monitor the pods directly. Note that the deployment process can involve containers restarting until everything is ready (e.g. if the database container is not ready yet).

7. Access Rasa X

By default the Rasa X deployment is exposed via the nginx service. You can get the IP address using this command:

kubectl --namespace <your namespace> \
get service \
-l app.kubernetes.io/component=nginx \
-o jsonpath="{.status.loadBalancer.ingress[0].ip}"

You can then access the deployment on http://<ip>:8000

Note: Depending on the used cluster / cloud provider this might not work. Please refer to the cloud provider’s documentation / administrator what the recommended way for exposing the nginx service is. We are also happy to help you with any issues in the Rasa Forum.

8. Optional: Activate Rasa Enterprise

Rasa X can be upgraded to Rasa Enterprise by uploading a valid license. To learn how to do this, please visit the Product Activation section.

Go to Next Steps

Reference

Accessing Secrets

This section describes how to retrieve secrets from your running deployment. You have the option to retrieve the following secrets:

descriptiondefault secret name
PostgreSQL database passwordpostgresql
Redis lock store and cache passwordredis
RabbitMQ event broker passwordrabbit

Run the following command, replacing <secret name> with one of the values in the table, and <your namespace> and <your release name> with your namespace and the name of your release:

secret=<secret name>
namespace=<your namespace>
release_name=<your release name>
kubectl --namespace ${namespace} \
get secret ${release_name}-${secret} -o yaml | \
awk -F ': ' '/password/{print $2}' | base64 -d ; echo
note

If you’re not sure what namespace or release name your deployment runs under, you can use the following commands to find out. To list the available namespaces, run:

kubectl get namespaces

And to list the releases under a particular namespace namespace, run:

helm list --namespace <your namespace>

Accessing Logs

This section describes how to get logs from the running containers.

  1. Get the name of the pod which you want to get the logs of.

    kubectl --namespace <your namespace> \
    get pods
    # The output should be similar to this:
    # NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE
    # rasa-app-58d476497-ktkqn 1/1 Running 0 45m
    # rasa-duckling-7696b7f474-km6dx 1/1 Running 0 45m
    # rasa-event-service-7657b6b489-96drn 1/1 Running 1 45m
    # rasa-nginx-64b6b464f6-p9bmb 1/1 Running 0 45m
    # rasa-postgresql-0 1/1 Running 0 45m
    # rasa-rabbit-0 1/1 Running 0 45m
    # rasa-rasa-production-c86fbf7f7-q9pp5 1/1 Running 0 45m
    # rasa-rasa-worker-5d49485976-6z2kj 1/1 Running 0 45m
    # rasa-rasa-x-5788cddbb7-5zf86 1/1 Running 0 45m
    # rasa-redis-master-0 1/1 Running 0 45m

    rasa-rasa-x-5788cddbb7-5zf86 is for example the name of the Rasa X container.

  2. To get the logs of the container run:

    kubectl --namespace <your namespace> \
    logs <name of the pod>

Using Helm to Generate Object Configurations

If you don’t want or cannot use Helm to install Rasa X in your cluster, you can still use Helm to generate the Kubernetes / OpenShift resource files.

  1. Follow the installation instructions until the deployment part.

  2. Run the following command to generate the Kubernetes / OpenShift resource files and write them in a file rasa-x-deployment.yml:

    helm repo add rasa-x https://rasahq.github.io/rasa-x-helm
    helm repo update
    helm template \
    --namespace <your namespace> \
    --values values.yml \
    <your release name> \
    rasa-x/rasa-x > rasa-x-deployment.yml

  3. You can then deploy these manually by running:

    kubectl --namespace <your namespace> \
    create -f rasa-x-deployment.yml

Next Steps