Managing user access to Docker environments with Portainer roles

Question

Pulumi · Accepted Answer

Portainer is an open-source tool that simplifies container management. It allows you to manage your Docker environments, Docker Swarm clusters, and Kubernetes clusters. Portainer provides a web UI that allows you to easily manage your containers, images, networks, and volumes.

However, Pulumi does not currently offer direct integration with Portainer as of my last update. Since Portainer roles and access management happen within the Portainer application, managing such configurations through Pulumi would typically involve interacting with Portainer's API.

Instead, with Pulumi, you can manage the underlying infrastructure that Portainer would run on. For instance, you can use Pulumi to deploy Docker containers or manage Kubernetes clusters, which you can then integrate with Portainer manually for access management and UI functionalities.

Below is an example program in TypeScript that shows how to set up a Docker environment using Pulumi. This code will create a simple Docker container on your local machine. Though it doesn't directly interact with Portainer, it sets the stage for where you'd integrate Portainer to manage such Docker resources.

```typescript
import * as pulumi from "@pulumi/pulumi";
import * as docker from "@pulumi/docker";

// Create a Docker network
const network = new docker.Network("network", {
    name: "my-network",
});

// Create a Docker volume
const volume = new docker.Volume("volume", {
    name: "my-volume",
});

// Define custom container options
const containerArgs: docker.ContainerArgs = {
    image: "nginx", // Use any image you need for your environment
    name: "my-nginx",
    networksAdvanced: [{ name: network.name }],
    ports: [{ internal: 80, external: 8080 }], // Map a port to access the container
    volumes: [{ volumeName: volume.name, containerPath: "/data" }],
};

// Create a Docker container
const container = new docker.Container("nginx", containerArgs);

// Export the container's IP address and Ports
export const ipAddress = container.networks.apply(nets => nets[0].ipAddress);
export const port = container.ports.apply(prts => prts[0].external);
```

What the code does:

1. Imports the Pulumi SDK and Docker module.
2. Creates a new Docker network named `my-network`. Networks in Docker allow containers to communicate with each other.
3. Creates a new Docker volume named `my-volume`. Volumes are used to persist data between container restarts.
4. Sets up the arguments for a new container (`image`, `name`, network configuration, port mappings, and volume mounts).
5. Creates an NGINX Docker container with the specified arguments.
6. Exports the IP address and external port of the container, which could be useful if you need to know how to communicate with the container from external systems.

After deploying this with Pulumi, you could set up Portainer manually to manage this Docker environment. For the access control and role management, you would use Portainer’s UI or API to configure users, teams, and permissions within the Portainer application.

This Pulumi program establishes the basics of a Docker environment that you can then manage with Portainer's access control features. If Portainer provides an API, you could potentially create a custom Pulumi provider or use Pulumi's dynamic provider to interact with it, although this would be a more advanced use case beyond the scope of this introduction.