Hi ! I'm just starting off with Prefect and I was wondering if I can set up the Prefect server, Prefect UI and 1 Prefect worker directly in my own docker-compose file. Moreover, where do I find the ports to open and volumes to set up ?

Hi @flavienbwk -

prefect server start

acts as a wrapper for the pre-built

docker-compose.yaml

that orchestrates all the applications/nodes required to run the Prefect Server application. You can find that file here, and some configuration options here. Is there a reason you'd need to set up your own

docker-compose.yaml

to get started? I'd normally recommend against this since it adds a lot of friction for components that may be difficult to understand without a broader knowledge of the Prefect stack.

Thank you Nicholas. I work offline, so I wanted to have my own compose file to be able to do a

docker-compose up

with images coming from my own Docker registry.

Got it - if you're able to pull the images once with

prefect server start

, you can subsequently pass the

--skip-pull

arg to avoid having to re-pull images

I mean, it's a totally different server. I use docker pull / docker save on my internet computer and then docker load on my offline one. So I still can't use that method.

Hi @flavienbwk - your frustrations are understandable, as Prefect Server is currently packaged / supported as a single user, single node deployment. There is community work on a helm chart for Server here: https://github.com/PrefectHQ/server/pull/57 if you’d like to give that a spin

Thank you @Chris White, but what alternative do I have ? Should I clone the git repo, edit your

docker-compose.yml

file and then

pip install ./prefect

it ? Will the containers launch with my docker images if I do that ?

That’s one way you could do it - you could also take the docker compose file standalone to avoid having to install

prefect

, and use

docker-compose up

directly with the appropriate environment variable settings

Great, so what does the

prefect server start

do in particular ? Just changing the env values ?

yup, it configures the environment in which

docker-compose up

is run, and responds to any passed user flags by altering the docker compose file. All logic for that command is here: https://github.com/PrefectHQ/prefect/blob/master/src/prefect/cli/server.py

Thank you very much, I'll try it.

👍 👍

Hi again @Chris White , what about creating my tenant ? I get the following error :

requests.exceptions.HTTPError: 400 Client Error: Bad Request for url: <http://localhost:4200/graphql>

I am able to access this URL from my computer.

I can’t help with your networking configuration, but the following will create a tenant for you on a machine that has API access:

prefect backend server # from the terminal

# the following within a python session
>> from prefect import Client; c = Client()
>> client.create_tenant(name="default")

I mean, it's when running :

prefect server create-tenant --name default --slug default

ah i see…

Hmm, not sure, I've just run the docker-compose.yml file. Is this operation automatic ? You can directly run the compose file by git cloning this project : https://github.com/flavienbwk/prefect-docker-compose I haven't changed anything, just added a

.env

file containing the default values

gotcha - it’s can be made automatic if you set

PREFECT_SERVER_DB_CMD="prefect-server database upgrade -y"

in your environment prior to running `docker-compose up`; did you set that variable in your

.env

file?

I see ! It should be that, default is to "echo 'DATABASE MIGRATIONS SKIPPED"

ahh yes yes

Perfect, it works now! Thank you!

excellent - you’re welcome!