ElectricSQL-on-Datum

Deploy ElectricSQL on Datum with a simple Kustomize Manifest

Electric builds sync for making apps awesome.

This guide is based upon Electric's quickstart.

Requirements

The following pre-requisites are required to deploy ElectricSQL on Datum:

• Working Datum CLI tools documentation
• A Datum project with compute backed by GCP documentation
• PostgresSQL instance with Logical Replication enabled (consider your own PostgresSQL or Neon).
• The docker container providing the React frontend app has been built to query data from ElectricSQL's sample data in the scores table. Again, see Electric's quickstart for data model and sample data.

Architecture

The Kustomize manifests in this repository deploy the following:

• ElectricSQL backend hosted in GCP with the Datum Gateway (Anycast Proxy) as global ingress.
• ElectricSQL's demo React application as a frontend, also hosted in GCP with the same Datum Gateway as a global ingress service.

Deployment

Prepare Database

• Create a database (in PostgresSQL) or a Project (in Neon).
• Prepare a PostgresSQL instance at a location of your choice. You will need to obtain full credentials including username, password, hostname/IP, and port number. Use of TLS is strongly suggested.
• Postgres must have logical replication enabled. You also need to connect as a database role that has the REPLICATION attribute.
• If using NeonDB, enable Logical Replication in your project settings.

Populate Sample Data

Using standard database tools, create and populate a new table, called scores with Electric's sample data avaialble from their quickstart.

Create the table:

CREATE TABLE scores (
  id SERIAL PRIMARY KEY,
  name VARCHAR(255),
  value FLOAT
);

Populate the table:

INSERT INTO scores (name, value) VALUES
  ('Alice', 3.14),
  ('Bob', 2.71),
  ('Charlie', -1.618),
  ('David', 1.414),
  ('Eve', 0);

Clone Repository

• Clone this repository locally to have Kustomize files available for modification to your environment.

Prepare Kustomize Manifests

• Deploy Locations and Networks: Adjust location-network/locations.yaml to your preferences for a GCP backed compute location. If we decided to alter location city codes, you will need to make corresponding updates to the workload-*/workload.yaml manifests.

• Define your PostgresSQL backend of choice in `workload-electricsql/workload.yaml.

Deploy using Kustomize

• Deploy Networks and Locations with kubectl apply -k location-network
• Deploy ElectricSQL with kubectl apply -k workload-electricsql. You can monitor your deployment with kubectl get instances.
• Deploy the ElectricSQL demo React app with kubectl apply -k workload-frontend. You can monitor your deployment with kubectl get instances.

Update Gateway Endpoints with Backend IPs

• Use kubectl get instances -o wide to locate the External IPs for ElectricSQL and Frontend instances.
• Update gateway/endpoints.yaml with External IPs for ElectricSQL and Frontend EndpointSlices
• Deploy the Datum Gateway using kubectl apply -k gateway.
• Discover your assigned Datum Gateway endpoint using kubectl get gateways -o wide.

Test your ElectricSQL Deployment

• Use a browser to navigate to the FQDN listed in kubectl get gateways -o wide. The ElectricSQL demo React application should load, displaying the sample data from the scores table in JSON format.
• Use a PostgresSQL client to modify the data in the scores table, noting real time updates to the JSON structure in your browser window.

Where to go from here?

• See your deployment in Datum Cloud Portal.
• Enable TLS/SSL on your Datum Gateway with your own domain name via CNAME and a certificate from Let's Encrypt.
• Setup a Telemetry Exporter for your deployment to Grafana Cloud to get metrics from your Datum deployment.

Screenshots