Umbraco in Docker

Overview

The important points of this solution are:

• Use a single Umbraco instance for administration and scheduling (aka "master server")
• Use multiple load-balanced Umbraco instances for rendering (aka "front-end" servers)
• All Umbraco instances point at the same SQL Express container
• Static content is stored on a shared file system

To get things set up, you will:

1. Start the SQL container and create a blank database
2. Run Umbraco on the host and complete the setup wizard
3. Build the Umbraco Docker image
4. Run everything locally with docker-compose

Setup

Start the SQL container and create a blank database

Select a strong password for the sa account. Then run a SQL container to be accessible at sqlexpress2017 from the other containers and with a host volume mounted at C:\data:

docker run -d -h sqlexpress2017 -e ACCEPT_EULA=Y -e sa_password="[YourStrongPassword]" --mount type=volume,source=umbraco_data,target=C:/data --name sqlexpress2017 microsoft/mssql-server-windows-express:2017-latest

Now inspect the container to get its IP address:

docker inspect -f "{{range .NetworkSettings.Networks}}{{.IPAddress}}{{end}}" sqlexpress2017

Connect using SSMS and create a new, empty database:

USE [master]
GO

CREATE DATABASE [umbraco] ON PRIMARY 
( NAME = N'umbraco_data', FILENAME = N'C:\data\umbraco.mdf' )
LOG ON
( NAME = N'umbraco_log', FILENAME = N'C:\data\umbraco_log.ldf' )
GO

Run Umbraco on the host and complete the setup wizard

Download Umbraco and unzip to src/umbraco/site. Run the site in IIS Express (or however you'd like) and proceed through the setup wizard.

At the first step, select Customize. Next, select Custom connection string and enter the following (substituting the password):

Server=sqlexpress2017;Database=umbraco;User Id=sa;Password=[YourStrongPassword];MultipleActiveResultSets=True

Important! Allow Umbraco to generate a machine key for your site in the last step. Installing a starter kit site is optional.

You can now shut down IIS Express and stop/destroy the SQL container:

docker stop sqlexpress2017
docker container rm sqlexpress2017

Build the Umbraco Docker image

Now that our Umbraco web.config is updated, we can build our Umbraco Docker image. This will include our custom bits in App_Code/LoadBalancing.cs:

docker build -t umbraco ./src/umbraco

Run everything locally with docker-compose

At this point, the necessary components should be in place:

• Initialized Umbraco database stored in host volume umbraco_data
• Umbraco image that can be used as either master or slave

To fire everything up, run:

docker-compose up

You should now be able to access your Umbraco site at http://localhost:8000.

References

• Umbraco flexible load balancing
• Explicit master scheduling server