How to deploy Rocket Chat 6.2.6 – Team Communication Tool in docker swarm behind Traefik v2.0

Prepare Rocket Chat Environment

I am going to use docker compose to prepare environment file for deploying Rocket Chat application. The compose file is known as YAML ( YAML stands for Yet Another Markup Language) and has extension .yml or .yaml

I am going to create application folders in /opt location in Ubuntu to store configuration files, nothing but docker compose files (.yml or .yaml).

Now it’s time to create a folder, rock inside /opt directory and also place configuration file, rock.yml inside of it to deploy Rocket Chat using docker-compose.

Use the below commands to create the folder.

Go to /opt directory by typing cd /opt in Ubuntu console

Make a folder in /opt with sudo mkdir -p rock

Let’s get into rock folder by typing cd rock

Now create docker compose file inside rock folder using sudo touch rock.yml

Open rock.yml docker-compose file with nano editor using sudo nano rock.yml and copy and paste the below code in it.

Rocket Chat Docker Compose

Here is the docker compose file for Rocket Chat. I am going to utilize the MongoDB stack as a back-end database for it that was deployed in the previous post.

version: "3.7"
services:
  rocketchat:
    image: rocketchat/rocket.chat:latest
    volumes:
      - /mnt/chatuploads:/app/uploads
    depends_on:
      - mongo
    environment:
      - PORT=3000
      - ROOT_URL=http://127.0.0.1:3000
      - MONGO_URL=mongodb://mongo/rocketchat
      - MONGO_OPLOG_URL=mongodb://mongo/local
      - Accounts_UseDNSDomainCheck=False
      - ADMIN_USERNAME=user
      - ADMIN_PASS_FILE=/run/secrets/rock_password
      - ADMIN_EMAIL=user@example.com
    networks:
      - proxy
    ports:
      - "3000:3000"
    deploy:
      placement:
        constraints: [node.role == worker]
      replicas: 1
      update_config:
        parallelism: 2
        delay: 10s
      restart_policy:
        condition: on-failure
      labels:
        - "traefik.enable=true"
        - "traefik.docker.network=proxy"
        - "traefik.http.routers.rocketchat.rule=Host(`team.example.com`)"
        - "traefik.http.routers.rocketchat.tls=true"
        - "traefik.http.routers.rocketchat.tls.certresolver=default"
        - "traefik.http.routers.rocketchat.entrypoints=websecure"
        - "traefik.http.services.rocketchat.loadbalancer.server.port=3000"
volumes:
  chatuploads:
    driver: "local"
networks:
  proxy:
    external: true

I used Traefik stack that was deployed (proxy stack) earlier to Docker Swarm Cluster as a reverse proxy / load balancer.

Also proxy docker overlay network for the application to be accessible externally.

Deploy Rocket Chat using Docker Compose

Now it’s time to deploy our docker compose file above, rock.yml using the below command

docker stack deploy --compose-file rock.yml rock

In the above command, you have to replace rock.yml with your docker-compose file name and rock with whatever name you want to call this particular application.

As mentioned earlier I named my docker-compose as rock.yml and named my application stack as rock

With docker compose in docker swarm what ever we are deploying is called as docker stack and it has multiple services in it as per the requirement.

Check rock stack status using docker stack ps rock

We can use docker service logs rock to see rock stack logs

Access or Install Rocket Chat

Now type http://team.example.com in the browser of choice, it will automatically redirect to https://team.example.com/home ( Be sure to replace example.com in the example above with your actual domain name).

Make sure that you have DNS entry for your application (team.example.com) in your DNS Management Application.

Fill in the details in the setup wizard to continue.

• Your name

• Your user name (admin)

• Your email address

• Your password.

Click on Continue to go to the next step.

You will be asked to provide your organization’s information. Fill in the required information and click on continue.

Next, you will be asked to provide information about your Rocket.Chat instance. Fill in your site name, language, and if you want to have a private or public community. Then click on continue.

In the final step of the setup, you will be asked if you want to keep your server as a stand-alone instance or if you want to register it with Rocket.Chat to have access to additional functions and resources. Keep the instance standalone.

Once the setup is completed, you can access your Rocket.Chat and be the first user in the #general channel

Please find below images for your reference.

We can customize the login screen of the Rocket Chat instance by going to the Assets option in the Administration window. See the below image for reference.

Rocket Chat is trusted by blockchain innovators such as Aragon, Brave, Hyperledger, Golem, and Token.

If you want to migrate from other platforms to Rocket Chat, there are plenty of tools available.

Migrating from Slack. Do so easily with Slack Importer and Slack Bridge.

Migrating from Atlassian? There is HipChat Importers for the purpose.

Now we have Rocket Chat Team Collaboration installed in our Docker Swarm successfully.

Stay tuned for Wekan (Open Source Kanban) deployment in the next post…🙄

Let me know your feedback or thoughts by commenting on it below.