Advanced Configuration

Delve into advanced configurations for your self-hosted Cobrowse.io instance on Kubernetes using Helm.

Image Pull Secret

In order for your Kubernetes cluster to install the Cobrowse service components, you need to specify the Github token that Cobrowse provided to you.

The easiest way to specify this is in values.yaml in the imageCredentials.password value. If you wish to manage this secret externally from the Helm chart, you can follow these instructions.

1. Remove the token from the imageCredentials.password value

2. Deploy the Helm chart without the password. You will notice that the Helm deploy process will delete a Secret resource called cobrowse-docker-cfg. At this time, new pods will no longer be able to pull the cobrowse enterprise docker images from Github.

3. Deploy the cobrowse-docker-cfg Secret resource yourself with the command:

kubectl create secret docker-registry cobrowse-docker-cfg \
   --docker-server=ghcr.io \
   --docker-username=cobrowse-enterprise \
   --docker-password="<github token provided by cobrowse>"

Environment Variables

Many of the Cobrowse service component configurations are managed using environment variables specified in ConfigMap and Secret resources, and these configurations can be overridden outside of the Helm chart by resources that you manage.

ConfigMap Resources

To see a list of all ConfigMap resources managed by the Helm chart, you can run:

kubectl get configmap -l "app=cobrowse-cobrowse-enterprise"
NAME                          DATA   AGE
cobrowse-api-envvars          10     25m
cobrowse-frontend-envvars     1      25m
cobrowse-proxy-envvars        4      25m
cobrowse-recording-envvars    3      25m
cobrowse-sockets-envvars      6      25m

Each of these envvars ConfigMaps can be overridden by creating ConfigMap resources named (respectively):

The naming of each resource is prefixed with your .Release.Name. The examples below assume the .Release.Name is cobrowse.

cobrowse-api-custom-envvars
cobrowse-frontend-custom-envvars
cobrowse-proxy-custom-envvars
cobrowse-recording-custom-envvars
cobrowse-sockets-custom-envvars

Secret Resources

To see a list of all Secret resources managed by the Helm chart, you can run:

kubectl get secret -l "app=cobrowse-cobrowse-enterprise"
NAME                         TYPE     DATA   AGE
cobrowse-api-envvars         Opaque   2      41m
cobrowse-frontend-envvars    Opaque   0      41m
cobrowse-proxy-envvars       Opaque   0      41m
cobrowse-recording-envvars   Opaque   0      41m
cobrowse-sockets-envvars     Opaque   2      41m

Each of these envvars Secrets can be overridden by creating Secret resources named (respectively):

The naming of each resource is prefixed with your .Release.Name. The examples below assume the .Release.Name is cobrowse.

cobrowse-api-custom-envvars
cobrowse-frontend-venvvars
cobrowse-proxy-custom-envvars
cobrowse-recording-custom-envvars
cobrowse-sockets-custom-envvars

Order of Priority

The following order of priority is followed while resolving environment variables, using the api service component as an example:

1. Secret: cobrowse-api-custom-envvars

2. Secret: cobrowse-api-envvars

3. ConfigMap: cobrowse-api-custom-envvars

4. ConfigMap: cobrowse-api-envvars

Thus if you override an environment variable such as redis_url in the cobrowse-api-custom-envvars ConfigMap, then the value will be overridden by the Helm-managed cobrowse-api-envvars Secret. Thus, make sure before overriding an environment variable in the ConfigMap that it isn't set in one of the Secret resources first.

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Optional recording components

If session recordings are not enabled for your account, you may optionally disable the recording pod and persistent volume requirements.

Disable recording pods

The recording pods are responsible for converting stored sessions into video recordings, and are not a requirement if session recordings are disabled. To disable the recording pods, you can configure your value parameters to set the number of recording replicas to be 0.

# values.yml
recording:
  replicas: 0

Disable persistent volume requirement

The persistent volume is responsible for persistent storage of past session recordings, and is not a requirement if session recordings are disabled. To disable the persistent volume requirement, you can configure your value parameters to set the storage parameter to false.

# values.yml
storage: false