When you are designing an infrastructure the first thing you need is an architecture diagram. There are various tools that can be used to build an Oracle OCI Architecture diagram like Visual Paradigm, Draw.io graphics, Cacoo template, OKIT, and many more. These tools are really helpful in understanding and preparing an OCI infrastructure diagram. These diagrams are a great way to represent the overall design, deployment, and topology and provide a bird’s eye view on the architecture.
From all the tools mentioned above, OKIT might be the best as it was released recently and offers much more than the other tools. In this blog, we will be discussing:
- Overview of OKIT
- Interface of OKIT
- Steps to Install OKIT
- Accessing OKIT from your browser
- Creating a Custom Template
Overview Of OCI OKIT
OCI Designer ToolKIT (OKIT) is an Open-Source browser-based Design tool for OCI which provides a very fast designing of a complete OCI based Infrastructure. It is a Drag and Drop application through which admins can prepare an OCI based Infrastructure and can also export it in Ansible / Terraform scripts.
It is a graphical environment through which you can create and visualize OCI environments by using your web browser. The interface is extremely simple and easy to use which makes it fast to deploy and use. It allows designers or architects to visualize and create an infrastructure and then let them export in different formats such as:
- SVG
- png
- jpeg
This toolkit can further be used to add key property information to the build infrastructure which can further be exported to different frameworks like:
- Ansible
- Terraform
- OCI Resource Manager
Interface Of OKIT
The OCI Designer ToolKIT provides a simple and minimalistic interface which can be divided into three parts.
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Palette
It is present on the left side of the screen on which you have access to different OCI artefacts. These icons can be dragged and dropped into Canvas to build an infrastructure.
Canvas
Present on the center of the screen where the infrastructure diagram is built. Initially, it will only have a compartment and you will have to drag and drop artefacts from the palette.
Properties
On the right side of the screen, we have Properties slide-out panel through which you can edit the properties if the selected artefacts which will then be implemented when we export them for different frameworks.
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Steps To Install OKIT
Step 1: Connect to your instance(on which you want to install OKIT) using PuTTY.
Step 2: Install Git using the below commands:
$ sudo yum install -y git
Step 3: Install Docker using the below commands:
$ sudo yum install -y yum-utils device-mapper-persistent-data lvm2 $ sudo yum-config-manager --add-repo https://download.docker.com/linux/centos/docker-ce.repo $ sudo yum install -y docker-ce $ sudo systemctl start docker
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Step 4: Install CLI using the below command:
$ bash -c "$(curl -L https://raw.githubusercontent.com/oracle/oci-cli/master/scripts/install/install.sh)"
When prompted for Install directory and every other resource path, Press Enter (choose the default).
When prompted for ‘Y/N’ for $Path, Enter Y, when prompted for a path for RC file Press Enter (choose the default).
Once it is installed, check the OCI CLI Version by typing:
$ oci -v
Step 5: Now we need to configure OCI to create OCI config file. Use the below command
$ oci setup config
When prompted for directory press ENTER (choose Default) then paste the OCID of the user, tenancy and then write the region.
Press Y and then Enter when asked for new API Signing Key. Leave directory, name, and passphrase empty.
This will configure the OCI config file.
Now add the newly created public key into API keys present under your User.
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Step 6: Clone OCI Designer toolkit form Git using the below command:
$ git clone -b v0.5.1 --depth 1 https://github.com/oracle/oci-designer-toolkit.git
Once it has been cloned, change directory to oci-designer-toolkit and build the Docker image using these commands:
$ cd oci-designer-toolkit $ sudo docker build --tag okit --file ./containers/docker/Dockerfile --force-rm ./containers/docker/
$ sudo docker run -d --rm -p 80:80 \ --name okit \ --hostname okit \ -v ~/.oci:/root/.oci \ -v `pwd`/okitweb:/okit/okitweb \ -v `pwd`/visualiser:/okit/visualiser \ -v `pwd`/log:/okit/log \ okit
Accessing OKIT From Your Browser
Once you have configured OKIT on your instance you just need to check if your Security List allows it to connect to it.
So, go into you OCI account and Security List of your Public Subnet and add an Ingress Rule as shown below:
Once you have added this Rule, you can now access it from your Local machine’s Browser from the below URL:
http://<Instance’s Public IP>/okit/designer
Also Check: Oracle OCI CLI. Click here
Creating A Custom Template
OKIT lets you build and save a custom template. Creating a template is very easy and fast using this toolkit. Let’s take an example of a Load Balancer front-ending a pair of instances.
Select “New” from the menu and use the Drag & Drop features of OKIT to create the following architecture.
You can now save the diagram and it will be available to resue.
Related/Further Readings
- Oracle cloud infrastructure compartments – User, Groups, Compartment, Policy, Tags, Federation & MFA
- Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI): Region, AD, Tenancy, Compartment, VCN, IAM, Storage Service
- OCI Regions | OCI Availability Domain | Oracle Cloud Region | OCI Realms
- Gateways In OCI
- Storage In Oracle Cloud (OCI)
- Oracle Cloud Infrastructure 2022 Architect Associate Certification
- Oracle Cloud (OCI): How To Recover SSH Keys In Compute Instance
- Overview Of Policy & How It Work In Oracle Cloud (OCI)
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Karthik says
Hi Summit,
Very Nice post, please keep the good work. I explore the same with the steps and facing some issues on CentOS/Oracle Linux. Have you noticed the error during your installations?
https://yum.oracle.com/repo/OracleLinux/OL7/oci/included/x86_64/repodata/repomd.xml: [Errno 14] HTTPS Error 404 – Not Found
Trying other mirror.
One of the configured repositories failed (OCI specific release packages Oracle Linux 7Server (x86_64)),
and yum doesn’t have enough cached data to continue. At this point the only
safe thing yum can do is fail. There are a few ways to work “fix” this:
1. Contact the upstream for the repository and get them to fix the problem.
2. Reconfigure the baseurl/etc. for the repository, to point to a working
upstream. This is most often useful if you are using a newer
distribution release than is supported by the repository (and the
packages for the previous distribution release still work).
3. Run the command with the repository temporarily disabled
yum –disablerepo=ol7_ociyum_config …
4. Disable the repository permanently, so yum won’t use it by default. Yum
will then just ignore the repository until you permanently enable it
again or use –enablerepo for temporary usage:
yum-config-manager –disable ol7_ociyum_config
or
subscription-manager repos –disable=ol7_ociyum_config
5. Configure the failing repository to be skipped, if it is unavailable.
Note that yum will try to contact the repo. when it runs most commands,
so will have to try and fail each time (and thus. yum will be be much
slower). If it is a very temporary problem though, this is often a nice
compromise:
yum-config-manager –save –setopt=ol7_ociyum_config.skip_if_unavailable=true
failure: repodata/repomd.xml from ol7_ociyum_config: [Errno 256] No more mirrors to try.
https://yum.oracle.com/repo/OracleLinux/OL7/oci/included/x86_64/repodata/repomd.xml: [Errno 14] HTTPS Error 404 – Not Found
Karthik says
This issue happen when I execute docker build step.
sudo docker build –tag okit –file ./containers/docker/Dockerfile –force-rm ./containers/docker/
Sandro Vidal says
Hi, this topic worked well for my Centos8 install:
https://github.com/docker/for-linux/issues/957
Jayesh Pandey says
Hi Sandro,
Glad you liked our blog.
Stay tuned for more informative blogs.
Thanks and Regards
Jayesh Pandey
Team K21 Academy
Jean-Yves says
Hi Sumit,
– I don’t think that it’s a good security practice to open “All protocols” on the Security List on the Public Subnet : – Only TCP 80 Port is necessary to access OKI from your instance.
– The URL is not connect : the right is http:///okit/designer (no https)
Why you choose to install an older version (the most recent is 0.70) ?
Thanks
Jean-Yves