Skip to main content

Nomad Job Configuration

Central, Hongkong

How to add Configuration to your Application​

To configure a task you can:

  • Add Commandline Arguments that are passed to your application when you run it.
  • Add Environment Variables that are accessible to Nomad to be passed on.
  • Use Artifacts to download and unzip required files
  • Use Templates to generate variables

Job Arguments​

The http-echo application from is started - this time without Docker - using the Exec Driver with the /bin/http-echo command. The application is then configured using Arguments to run on port 5678 and return a Hello World when receiving an HTTP GET request:

group "example" {
  task "server" {
    driver = "exec"

    config {
      command = "/bin/http-echo"

      args = [
        "-listen",
        ":5678",
        "-text",
        "Hello World",
      ]
    }
  }
}

Environment Variables​

Environment Variables can be passed on to our application inside the task block of our Nomad job file:

job "frontend" {
  group "example" {
    task "server" {
      env {
        DB_HOST = "my-db-host.com"
        DB_USER = "db_user"
        DB_PASS = "dbpassword"
      }
    }
  }
}

Configuration Artifacts​

Download a configuration file from a Git Repository using the Artifacts Stanza:

artifact {
  # The git:: prefix forces go-getter's protocol detection to use the git ssh
  # protocol. It can also automatically detect the protocol from the domain of
  # some git hosting providers (such as GitHub) without the prefix.
  source      = "git::git@bitbucket.org:example/nomad-examples"
  destination = "local/repo"
  options {
    # Make sure that the Nomad user's known hosts file is populated:
    # ssh-keyscan github.com | sudo tee -a /root/.ssh/known_hosts
    # https://github.com/hashicorp/go-getter/issues/55
    sshkey = "${base64encode(file(pathexpand("~/.ssh/id_rsa")))}"
  }
}

To download from a private repo, sshkey needs to be set. The key must be base64-encoded string. On Linux, you can run base64 -w0 <file> to encode the file.

Templates​

The template block instantiates an instance of a template renderer. This creates a convenient way to ship configuration files that are populated from environment variables, Consul data, Vault secrets, or just general configurations within a Nomad task:

job "docs" {
  group "example" {
    task "server" {
      artifact {
        source      = "https://example.com/redis.conf.tpl"
        destination = "local/redis.conf.tpl"
      }
      template {
        source        = "local/redis.conf.tpl"
        destination   = "local/redis.conf"
        change_mode   = "signal"
        change_signal = "SIGINT"
      }
    }
  }
}

You can also utilize inline templates and turn them into environment variables like this:

template {
  data = <<EOH
  ---
    bind_port:   {{ env "NOMAD_PORT_db" }}
    scratch_dir: {{ env "NOMAD_TASK_DIR" }}
    node_id:     {{ env "node.unique.id" }}
    service_key: {{ key "service/my-key" }}
  EOH

  destination = "local/file.env"
  env = true
}