Deploying with Docker

Deploying ZenML in a container.

This is an older version of the ZenML documentation. To read and view the latest version please visit this up-to-date URL.

The ZenML server container image is available at zenmldocker/zenml-server and can be used to deploy ZenML with a container management or orchestration tool like docker and docker-compose, or a serverless platform like Cloud Run, Container Apps and more! This guide walks you through the various configuration options that the ZenML server container expects as well as a few deployment use cases.

Using the ZenML CLI

If you're just looking for a quick way to deploy the ZenML server using a container, without going through the hassle of interacting with a container management tool like docker and manually configuring your container, you can use the ZenML CLI to do so. You only need to have Docker installed and running on your machine:

zenml up --docker

This command deploys a ZenML server locally in a Docker container, then connects your client to it. Similar to running plain zenml up, the server and the local ZenML client share the same SQLite database.

The rest of this guide is addressed to advanced users who are looking to manually deploy and manage a containerized ZenML server.

ZenML Server Configuration Options

If you're planning on deploying a custom containerized ZenML server yourself, you probably need to configure some settings for it like the database it should use, the default user details and more. The ZenML server container image uses sensible defaults, so you can simply start a container without worrying too much about the configuration. However, if you're looking to connect the ZenML server to an external MySQL database or secrets management service, or to persist the internal SQLite database, or simply want to control other settings like the default account, you can do so by customizing the container's environment variables.

The following environment variables can be passed to the container:

ZENML_DEFAULT_PROJECT_NAME: The name of the default project created by the server on first deployment, during database initialization. Defaults to default.
ZENML_DEFAULT_USER_NAME: The name of the default admin user account created by the server on first deployment, during database initialization. Defaults to default.
ZENML_DEFAULT_USER_PASSWORD: The password to use for the default admin user account. Defaults to an empty password value, if not set.
ZENML_STORE_URL: This URL should point to a SQLite database file mounted in the container, or to a MySQL compatible database service reachable from the container. It takes one of the forms:
```
  sqlite:////path/to/zenml.db
```
or:
```
  mysql://username:password@host:port/database
```
ZENML_STORE_SSL_CA: This can be set to a custom server CA certificate in use by the MySQL database service. Only valid when ZENML_STORE_URL points to a MySQL database that uses SSL secured connections. The variable can be set either to the path where the certificate file is mounted inside the container or to the certificate contents themselves.
ZENML_STORE_SSL_CERT: This can be set to a the client SSL certificate required to connect to the MySQL database service. Only valid when ZENML_STORE_URL points to a MySQL database that uses SSL secured connections and requires client SSL certificates. The variable can be set either to the path where the certificate file is mounted inside the container or to the certificate contents themselves. This variable also requires ZENML_STORE_SSL_KEY to be set.
ZENML_STORE_SSL_KEY: This can be set to a the client SSL private key required to connect to the MySQL database service. Only valid when ZENML_STORE_URL points to a MySQL database that uses SSL secured connections and requires client SSL certificates. The variable can be set either to the path where the certificate file is mounted inside the container or to the certificate contents themselves. This variable also requires ZENML_STORE_SSL_CERT to be set.
ZENML_STORE_SSL_VERIFY_SERVER_CERT: This boolean variable controls whether the SSL certificate in use by the MySQL server is verified. Only valid when ZENML_STORE_URL points to a MySQL database that uses SSL secured connections. Defaults to False.
ZENML_SECRETS_STORE_TYPE: Set this variable to one of the supported secrets store types:
- none: Use this value to disable the secrets store functionality.
- sql: Use the ZenML SQL database as the secrets store. This is the default value. See the SQL Secrets Store Configuration Options section below for more configuration options.
- aws: Use AWS Secrets Manager as the secrets store backend. See the AWS Secrets Store Configuration Options section below for more configuration options.
- gcp: Use GCP Secrets Manager as the secrets store backend. See the GCP Secrets Store Configuration Options section below for more configuration options.
- azure: Use Azure Key Vault as the secrets store backend. See the Azure Secrets Store Configuration Options section below for more configuration options.
- hashicorp: Use HashiCorp Vault as the secrets store backend. See the HashiCorp Vault Secrets Store Configuration Options
- custom: Use a custom secrets store backend implementation. See the Custom Secrets Store Configuration Options.
ZENML_LOGGING_VERBOSITY: Use this variable to control the verbosity of logs inside the container. It can be set to one of the following values: NOTSET, ERROR, WARN, INFO (default), DEBUG or CRITICAL.

If none of the ZENML_STORE_* variables are set, the container will default to creating and using a SQLite database file stored at /zenml/.zenconfig/local_stores/default_zen_store/zenml.db inside the container. The /zenml/.zenconfig/local_stores base path where the default SQLite database is located can optionally be overridden by setting the ZENML_LOCAL_STORES_PATH environment variable to point to a different path (e.g. a persistent volume or directory that is mounted from the host).

SQL Secrets Store Configuration Options

These configuration options are only relevant if you're using the SQL database as the secrets store backend. The SQL database is used by default, so you only need to configure these options if you want to change the default behavior.

ZENML_SECRETS_STORE_ENCRYPTION_KEY: This is a secret key used to encrypt all secrets stored in the SQL secrets store. If not set, encryption will not be used and passwords will be stored unencrypted in the database. This should be set to a random string with a recommended length of at least 32 characters, e.g.:
```
from secrets import token_hex
token_hex(32)
```
or:
```
openssl rand -hex 32
```

Important If you configure encryption for your SQL database secrets store, you should keep the ZENML_SECRETS_STORE_ENCRYPTION_KEY value somewhere safe and secure, as it will be required to decrypt the secrets in the database. If you lose the encryption key, you will not be able to decrypt the secrets in the database and will have to reset them.

AWS Secrets Store Configuration Options

These configuration options are only relevant if you're using the AWS Secrets Manager as the secrets store backend.

ZENML_SECRETS_STORE_REGION_NAME: The AWS region to use. This must be set to the region where the AWS Secrets Manager service that you want to use is located.
ZENML_SECRETS_STORE_AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID: The AWS access key ID to use for authentication. This must be set to a valid AWS access key ID that has access to the AWS Secrets Manager service that you want to use. If you are using an IAM role attached to an EKS cluster to authenticate, you can omit this variable. NOTE: this is the same as setting the AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID environment variable.
ZENML_SECRETS_STORE_AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY: The AWS secret access key to use for authentication. This must be set to a valid AWS secret access key that has access to the AWS Secrets Manager service that you want to use. If you are using an IAM role attached to an EKS cluster to authenticate, you can omit this variable. NOTE: this is the same as setting the AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY environment variable.
ZENML_SECRETS_STORE_AWS_SESSION_TOKEN: Optional AWS session token to use for authentication. NOTE: this is the same as setting the AWS_SESSION_TOKEN environment variable.
ZENML_SECRETS_STORE_SECRET_LIST_REFRESH_TIMEOUT: AWS' Secrets Manager has a known issue where it does not immediately reflect new and updated secrets in the list_secrets results. To work around this issue, you can set this refresh timeout value to a non-zero value to get the ZenML server to wait after creating or updating an AWS secret until the changes are reflected in the secrets returned by list_secrets or the number of seconds specified by this value has elapsed. Defaults to 0 (disabled). Should not be set to a high value as it may cause thread starvation in the ZenML server on high load.

GCP Secrets Store Configuration Options

These configuration options are only relevant if you're using the GCP Secrets Manager as the secrets store backend.

ZENML_SECRETS_STORE_PROJECT_ID: The GCP project ID to use. This must be set to the project ID where the GCP Secrets Manager service that you want to use is located.
GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS: The path to the GCP service account credentials file to use for authentication. This must be set to a valid GCP service account credentials file that has access to the GCP Secrets Manager service that you want to use. If you are using a GCP service account attached to a GKE cluster to authenticate, you can omit this variable. NOTE: the path to the credentials file must be mounted into the container.

Azure Secrets Store Configuration Options

These configuration options are only relevant if you're using Azure Key Vault as the secrets store backend.

ZENML_SECRETS_STORE_KEY_VAULT_NAME: The name of the Azure Key Vault. This must be set to point to the Azure Key Vault instance that you want to use.
ZENML_SECRETS_STORE_AZURE_CLIENT_ID: The Azure application service principal client ID to use to authenticate with the Azure Key Vault API. If you are running the ZenML server hosted in Azure and are using a managed identity to access the Azure Key Vault service, you can omit this variable. NOTE: this is the same as setting the AZURE_CLIENT_ID environment variable.
ZENML_SECRETS_STORE_AZURE_CLIENT_SECRET: The Azure application service principal client secret to use to authenticate with the Azure Key Vault API. If you are running the ZenML server hosted in Azure and are using a managed identity to access the Azure Key Vault service, you can omit this variable. NOTE: this is the same as setting the AZURE_CLIENT_SECRET environment variable.
ZENML_SECRETS_STORE_AZURE_TENANT_ID: The Azure application service principal tenant ID to use to authenticate with the Azure Key Vault API. If you are running the ZenML server hosted in Azure and are using a managed identity to access the Azure Key Vault service, you can omit this variable. NOTE: this is the same as setting the AZURE_TENANT_ID environment variable.

Hashicorp Vault Secrets Store Configuration Options

These configuration options are only relevant if you're using Hashicorp Vault as the secrets store backend.

ZENML_SECRETS_STORE_VAULT_ADDR: The url of the HashiCorp Vault server to connect to. NOTE: this is the same as setting the VAULT_ADDR environment variable.
ZENML_SECRETS_STORE_VAULT_TOKEN: The token to use to authenticate with the HashiCorp Vault server. NOTE: this is the same as setting the VAULT_TOKEN environment variable.
ZENML_SECRETS_STORE_VAULT_NAMESPACE: The Vault Enterprise namespace. Not required for Vault OSS. NOTE: this is the same as setting the VAULT_NAMESPACE environment variable.
ZENML_SECRETS_STORE_MAX_VERSIONS: The maximum number of secret versions to keep for each Vault secret. If not set, the default value of 1 will be used (only the latest version will be kept).

Custom Secrets Store Configuration Options

These configuration options are only relevant if you're using a custom secrets store backend implementation. For this to work, you must have a custom implementation of the secrets store API in the form of a class derived from zenml.zen_stores.secrets_stores.base_secrets_store.BaseSecretsStore. This class must be importable from within the ZenML server container, which means you most likely need to mount the directory containing the class into the container or build a custom container image that contains the class.

The following configuration option is required:

ZENML_SECRETS_STORE_CLASS_PATH: The fully qualified path to the class that implements the custom secrets store API (e.g. my_package.my_module.MySecretsStore).

If your custom secrets store implementation requires additional configuration options, you can pass them as environment variables using the following naming convention:

ZENML_SECRETS_STORE_<OPTION_NAME>: The name of the option to pass to the custom secrets store class. The option name must be in uppercase and any hyphens (-) must be replaced with underscores (_). ZenML will automatically convert the environment variable name to the corresponding option name by removing the prefix and converting the remaining characters to lowercase. For example, the environment variable ZENML_SECRETS_STORE_MY_OPTION will be converted to the option name my_option and passed to the custom secrets store class configuration.

Advanced Server Configuration Options

These configuration options are not required for most use cases, but can be useful in certain scenarios that require mirroring the same ZenML server configuration across multiple container instances (e.g. a Kubernetes deployment with multiple replicas):

ZENML_JWT_SECRET_KEY: This is a secret key used to sign JWT tokens used for authentication. If not explicitly set, a random key is generated automatically by the server on startup and stored in the server's global configuration. This should be set to a random string with a recommended length of at least 32 characters, e.g.:
```
from secrets import token_hex
token_hex(32)
```
or:
```
openssl rand -hex 32
```

Run the ZenML server with Docker

As previously mentioned, the ZenML server container image uses sensible defaults for most configuration options. This means that you can simply run the container with Docker without any additional configuration and it will work out of the box for most use cases:

docker run -it -d -p 8080:8080 --name zenml zenmldocker/zenml-server

Note It is recommended to use a ZenML container image version that matches the version of your client, to avoid any potential API incompatibilities (e.g. zenmldocker/zenml-server:0.21.1 instead of zenmldocker/zenml-server).

The above command will start a containerized ZenML server running on your machine that uses a temporary SQLite database file stored in the container. Temporary means that the database and all its contents (stacks, pipelines, pipeline runs etc.) will be lost when the container is removed with docker rm.

You can visit the ZenML dashboard at http://localhost:8080 or connect your client to the server with the default username and empty password:

$ zenml connect --url http://localhost:8080
Connecting to: 'http://localhost:8080'...
Username: default
Password for user default (press ENTER for empty password) []: 
Updated the global store configuration.

The localhost URL will work, even if you are using Docker-backed ZenML orchestrators in your stack, like the local Docker orchestrator or a locally deployed Kubeflow orchestrator.

ZenML makes use of specialized DNS entries such as host.docker.internal and host.k3d.internal to make the ZenML server accessible from the pipeline steps running inside other Docker containers on the same machine.

You can manage the container with the usual Docker commands:

docker logs zenml to view the server logs
docker stop zenml to stop the server
docker start zenml to start the server again
docker rm zenml to remove the container

If you are looking for a customized ZenML server Docker deployment, you can configure one or more of the supported environment variables and then pass them to the container using the docker run --env or --env-file arguments (see the Docker documentation for more details). For example:

docker run -it -d -p 8080:8080 --name zenml \
    --env ZENML_STORE_URL=mysql://username:password@host:port/database \
    zenmldocker/zenml-server

If you're looking for a quick way to run both the ZenML server and a MySQL database with Docker, you can deploy the ZenML server with Docker Compose.

The rest of this guide covers various advanced use cases for running the ZenML server with Docker.

Persisting the SQLite database

Depending on your use case, you may also want to mount a persistent volume or directory from the host into the container to store the ZenML SQLite database file. This can be done using the --mount flag (see the Docker documentation for more details). For example:

mkdir zenml-server
docker run -it -d -p 8080:8080 --name zenml \
    --mount type=bind,source=$PWD/zenml-server,target=/zenml/.zenconfig/local_stores/default_zen_store \
    zenmldocker/zenml-server

This deployment has the advantage that the SQLite database file is persisted even when the container is removed with docker rm.

Docker MySQL database

As a recommended alternative to the SQLite database, you can run a MySQL database service as another Docker container and connect the ZenML server container to it.

A command like the following can be run to start the containerized MySQL database service:

docker run --name mysql -d -p 3306:3306 -e MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=password mysql:8.0

If you also wish to persist the MySQL database data, you can mount a persistent volume or directory from the host into the container using the --mount flag, e.g.:

mkdir mysql-data
docker run --name mysql -d -p 3306:3306 -e MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=password \
    --mount type=bind,source=$PWD/mysql-data,target=/var/lib/mysql \
    mysql:8.0

Configuring the ZenML server container to connect to the MySQL database is just a matter of setting the ZENML_STORE_URL environment variable. We use the special host.docker.internal DNS name resolved from within the Docker containers to the gateway IP address used by the Docker network (see the Docker documentation for more details). On Linux, this needs to be explicitly enabled in the docker run command with the --add-host argument:

docker run -it -d -p 8080:8080 --name zenml \
    --add-host host.docker.internal:host-gateway \
    --env ZENML_STORE_URL=mysql://root:password@host.docker.internal/zenml \
    zenmldocker/zenml-server

Connecting your client to the ZenML server is the same as before:

zenml connect --url http://localhost:8080 --username default --password ''

Direct MySQL database connection

This scenario is similar to the previous one, but instead of running a ZenML server, the client is configured to connect directly to a MySQL database running in a Docker container.

As previously covered, the containerized MySQL database service can be started with a command like the following:

docker run --name mysql -d -p 3306:3306 -e MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=password mysql:8.0

The ZenML client on the host machine can then be configured to connect directly to the database with a slightly different zenml connect command:

zenml connect --url mysql://127.0.0.1/zenml --username root --password password

Note The localhost hostname will not work with MySQL databases. You need to use the 127.0.0.1 IP address instead.

ZenML server with Docker Compose

Docker compose offers a simpler way of managing multi-container setups on your local machine, which is the case for instance if you are looking to deploy the ZenML server container and connect it to a MySQL database service also running in a Docker container.

To use Docker Compose, you need to install the docker-compose plugin on your machine first.

A docker-compose.yml file like the one below can be used to start and manage the ZenML server container and the MySQL database service all at once:

version: "3.9"

services:
  mysql:
    image: mysql:8.0
    ports:
      - 3306:3306
    environment:
      - MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=password
  zenml:
    image: zenmldocker/zenml-server
    ports:
      - "8080:8080"
    environment:
      - ZENML_STORE_URL=mysql://root:password@host.docker.internal/zenml
      - ZENML_DEFAULT_USER_NAME=admin
      - ZENML_DEFAULT_USER_PASSWORD=zenml
    links:
      - mysql
    depends_on:
      - mysql
    extra_hosts:
      - "host.docker.internal:host-gateway"
    restart: on-failure

Note the following:

ZENML_STORE_URL is set to the special Docker host.docker.internal hostname to instruct the server to connect to the database over the Docker network.
The extra_hosts section is needed on Linux to make the host.docker.internal hostname resolvable from the ZenML server container.
This example also uses the ZENML_DEFAULT_USER_NAME and ZENML_DEFAULT_USER_PASSWORD environment variables to customize the default account credentials.

To start the containers, run the following command from the directory where the docker-compose.yml file is located:

docker-compose -p zenml up  -d

or, if you need to use a different filename or path:

docker-compose -f /path/to/docker-compose.yml -p zenml up -d

Connecting your client to the ZenML server is the same as before:

zenml connect --url http://localhost:8080 --username admin --password zenml

Tearing down the installation is as simple as running:

docker-compose -p zenml down

Troubleshooting

You can check the logs of the container to verify if the server is up and, depending on where you have deployed it, you can also access the dashboard at a localhost port (if running locally) or through some other service that exposes your container to the internet.

CLI Docker Deployments

If you used the zenml up --docker CLI command to deploy the Docker ZenML server, you can check the logs with the command:

zenml logs -f

Manual Docker Deployments

If you used the docker run command to manually deploy the Docker ZenML server, you can check the logs with the command:

docker logs zenml -f

If you used the docker compose command to manually deploy the Docker ZenML server, you can check the logs with the command:

docker compose -p zenml logs -f

Upgrading your ZenML server

To upgrade to a new version with docker, you would have to delete the existing container and then execute the docker run command again with the version of the zenml-server image that you want to use.

Delete the existing ZenML container:

# find your container ID
docker ps

# stop the container
docker stop <CONTAINER_ID>

# remove the container
docker rm <CONTAINER_ID>

Deploy the version of the zenml-server image that you want to use. Find all versions here.

docker run -it -d -p 8080:8080 --name <CONTAINER_NAME> zenmldocker/zenml-server:<VERSION>

If you wish to keep your data after the upgrade, you should choose to deploy the container either with a persistent storage or with an external MySQL instance. In all other cases, your data will be lost once the container is deleted and a new one is spun up.

Warning If you wish to downgrade a server, make sure that the version of ZenML that you’re moving to has the same database schema. This is because reverse migration of the schema is not supported.

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