Retool lets you build custom internal tools in minutes.

Deploying Retool on-premise

Deploying Retool on-premise ensures that all access to internal data is managed within your own cloud environment. You also have the flexibility to control how Retool is setup within your infrastructure, configure logging, and enable custom SAML SSO using providers like Okta and Active Directory.

Table of contents

• Simple deployments
  • EC2 and Docker
  • Heroku
  • Aptible
  • Render
• Managed deployments
  • ECS
  • ECS + Fargate
  • Kubernetes
  • Kubernetes + Helm
• Additional features
  • Health check endpoint
  • Environment variables
• Troubleshooting
• Releases
• Docker cheatsheet

Simple Deployments

Get set up in 15 minutes by deploying Retool on a single machine.

Deploying on EC2

Spin up a new EC2 instance. If using AWS, use the following steps: 1. Click Launch Instance from the EC2 dashboard. 1. Click Select for an instance of Ubuntu

16.04

t2.medium

60

app = retool

80

443

22

3000

0.0.0.0/0

::/0

80

443

22

3000

git clone https://github.com/tryretool/retool-onpremise.git

cd retool-onpremise

./install.sh

docker.env

./install.sh

# This is necessary if you plan on logging in before setting up https
COOKIE_INSECURE=true 
```

1. Run

   docker-compose up -d

   to start the Retool server.
2. Run

   sudo docker-compose ps

   to make sure all the containers are up and running.
3. Navigate to your server's IP address in a web browser. Retool should now be running on port

   3000

   .
4. Click Sign Up, since we're starting from a clean slate. The first user to into an instance becomes the administrator.

Deploying on Heroku

Just use the Deploy to Heroku button below!

Updating a Heroku deployment

To update a Heroku deployment that was created with the button above, you may first set up a

git

$ heroku login
$ git clone https://github.com/tryretool/retool-onpremise
$ cd retool-onpremise
$ heroku git:remote -a YOUR_HEROKU_APP_NAME

To update Retool (this will automatically fetch the latest version of Retool)

$ git commit --allow-empty -m 'Redeploying'
$ git push heroku master

Manually setting up Retool on Heroku

Alternatively, you may follow the following steps to deploy to Heroku

1. Install the Heroku CLI, and login. Documentation for this can be found here: https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/getting-started-with-nodejs#set-up
2. Clone this repo

   git clone https://github.com/tryretool/retool-onpremise

3. Change the working directory to the newly cloned repository

   cd ./retool-onpremise

4. Create a new Heroku app with the stack set to

   container

   with

   heroku create your-app-name --stack=container

5. Add a free database:

   heroku addons:create heroku-postgresql:hobby-dev

6. In the

   Settings

   page of your Heroku app, add the following environment variables:

   1. NODE_ENV

      - set to

      production

   2. HEROKU_HOSTED

      set to

      true

   3. JWT_SECRET

      - set to a long secure random string used to sign JSON Web Tokens

   4. ENCRYPTION_KEY

      - a long secure random string used to encrypt database credentials
7. Push the code:

   git push heroku master

To lockdown the version of Retool used, just edit the first line under

./heroku/Dockerfile

FROM tryretool/backend:X.XX.X

Running Retool using Aptible

1. Add your public SSH key to your Aptible account through the Aptible dashboard
2. Install the Aptible CLI, and login. Documentation for this can be found here: https://www.aptible.com/documentation/deploy/cli.html
3. Clone this repo

   git clone https://github.com/tryretool/retool-onpremise

4. Change the working directory to the newly cloned repository

   cd ./retool-onpremise

5. Create a new Aptible app with

   aptible apps:create your-app-name

6. Add a database:

   aptible db:create your-database-name --type postgresql

7. Set your config variables (your database connection string will be in your Aptible Dashboard and you can parse out the individual values by following these instructions). Be sure to rename

   EXPIRED-LICENSE-KEY-TRIAL

   to the license key provided to you.

   aptible config:set --app your-app-name \
       POSTGRES_DB=your-db \
       POSTGRES_HOST=your-db-host \
       POSTGRES_USER=your-user \
       POSTGRES_PASSWORD=your-db-password \
       POSTGRES_PORT=your-db-port \
       POSTGRES_SSL_ENABLED=true \
       FORCE_SSL=true \
       NODE_ENV=production \
       JWT_SECRET=$(cat /dev/urandom | base64 | head -c 256) \
       ENCRYPTION_KEY=$(cat /dev/urandom | base64 | head -c 64) \
       LICENSE_KEY=EXPIRED-LICENSE-KEY-TRIAL
   

8. Set your git remote which you can find in the Aptible dashboard:

   git remote add aptible your-git-url

9. Push the code:

   git push aptible master

10. Create a default Aptible endpoint
11. Navigate to your endpoint and sign up as a new user in your Retool instance

Deploying to Render

Just use the Deploy to Render button below! Here are some docs on deploying Retool with Render.

Managed deployments

Deploy Retool on a managed service. We've provided some starter template files for Cloudformation setups (ECS + Fargate), Kubernetes, and Helm.

Deploying on ECS

We provide a template file for you to get started deploying on ECS.

1. In the ECS Dashboard, click Create Cluster
2. Select

   EC2 Linux + Networking

   as the cluster template.
3. In your instance configuration, enter the following:
   • Select On-demand instance
   • Select t2.medium as the instance type
   • (Optional) Choose how many instances you want to spin up
   • (Optional) Add key pair
   • Choose your existing VPC (or create a new one)
   • (Optional) Add tags
   • Enable CloudWatch container insights
4. Select the VPC in which you’d like to launch the ECS cluster; make sure that you select a public subnet.
5. Download the retool.yaml file, and add your license key and other relevant variables.
6. Go to the AWS Cloudformation dashboard, and click Create Stack with new resources → Upload a template file. Upload your edited

   retool.yaml

   file.
7. Then, enter the following parameters:
   • Cluster: the name of the ECS cluster you created earlier
   • DesiredCount: 2
   • Environment: staging
   • Force: false
   • Image:

     tryretool/backend:latest

   • MaximumPercent: 250
   • MinimumPercent: 50
   • SubnetId: Select 2 subnets in your VPC - make sure these subnets are public (have an internet gateway in their route table)
   • VPC ID: select the VPC you want to use
8. Click through to create the stack; this could take up to 15 minutes; you can monitor the progress of the stack being created in the

   Events

   tab in Cloudformation
9. After everything is complete, you should see all the resources with a

   CREATE_COMPLETE

   status.
10. In the Outputs section within the CloudFormation dashboard, you should be able to find the ALB DNS URL. This is where Retool should be running.

Deploying on ECS with Fargate

We provide Fargate template files supporting public and private subnets.

1. In the ECS Dashboard, click Create Cluster
2. In Step 1: Select a cluster template, select

   Networking Only (Powered by AWS Fargate)

   as the cluster template.
3. In Step 2: Configure cluster, be sure to enable CloudWatch Container Insights. This will help us monitor logs and the health of our deployment through CloudWatch.
4. Download the public or private template file, and add your license key and other relevant variables.
5. Go to the AWS Cloudformation dashboard, and click Create Stack with new resources → Upload a template file. Upload your edited

   .yaml

   file.
6. Enter the following parameters:
   • Cluster: the name of the ECS cluster you created earlier
   • DesiredCount: 2
   • Environment: staging
   • Force: false
   • Image:

     tryretool/backend:latest

   • MaximumPercent: 250
   • MinimumPercent: 50
   • SubnetId: Select 2 subnets in your VPC - make sure these subnets are public (have an internet gateway in their route table)
   • VPC ID: select the VPC you want to use
     
7. Click through to create the stack; this could take up to 15 minutes; you can monitor the progress of the stack being created in the

   Events

   tab in Cloudformation
8. In the Outputs section, you should be able to find the ALB DNS URL.
9. Currently the load balancer is listening on port 3000; to make it available on port 80 we have to go to the EC2 dashboard → Load Balancers → Listeners and click Edit to to change the port to 80.
   • If you get an error that your security group does not allow traffic on this listener port, you must add an inbound rule allowing HTTP on port 80.
10. In the Outputs section within the CloudFormation dashboard, you should be able to find the ALB DNS URL. This is where Retool should be running.

Deploying on Kubernetes

1. Navigate into the

   kubernetes

   directory
2. Copy the

   retool-secrets.template.yaml

   file to

   retool-secrets.yaml

   and inside the

   {{ ... }}

   sections, replace with a suitable base64 encoded string.
   1. To base64 encode your license key, run

      echo -n  | base64

      in the command line. Be sure to add the

      -n

      character, as it removes the trailing newline character from the encoding.
   2. If you do not wish to add google authentication, replace the templates with an empty string.
   3. You will need a license key in order to proceed.
3. Run

   kubectl apply -f ./retool-secrets.yaml

4. Run

   kubectl apply -f ./retool-postgres.yaml

5. Run

   kubectl apply -f ./retool-container.yaml

For ease of use, this will create a postgres container with a persistent volume for the storage of Retool data. We recommend that you use a managed database service like RDS as a long-term solution. The application will be exposed on a public ip address on port 3000 - we leave it to the user to handle DNS and SSL.

Please note that by default Retool is configured to use Secure Cookies - that means that you will be unable to login unless https has been correctly setup.

To force Retool to send the auth cookies over HTTP, please set the

COOKIE_INSECURE

'true'

./retool-container.yaml

env

        - name: COOKIE_INSECURE
          value: 'true'

Then, to update the running deployment, run

$ kubectl apply -f ./retool-container.yaml

Updating Retool on Kubernetes

To update Retool on Kubernetes, you can use the following command:

$ kubectl set image deploy/api api=tryretool/backend:X.XX.X

The list of available version numbers for X.XX.X are available here: https://updates.tryretool.com/

Deploying on Kubernetes with Helm

helm repo add retool https://charts.retool.com
helm install my-retool retool/retool

See https://github.com/tryretool/retool-helm for full Helm chart documentation and instructions.

Additional features

For details on additional features like SAML SSO, gRPC, custom certs, and more, visit our docs.

Environment Variables

You can set environment variables to enable custom functionality like managing secrets, customizing logs, and much more. For a list of all environment variables visit our docs.

Health check endpoint

Retool also has a health check endpoint that you can set up to monitor liveliness of Retool. You can configure your probe to make a

GET

/api/checkHealth

Troubleshooting

• On Kubernetes, I get the error

  SequelizeConnectionError: password authentication failed for user "..."

  • Make sure that the secrets that you encoded in base64 don't have trailing whitespace! You can use

    kubectl exec printenv

    to help debug this issue.
  • Run

    echo -n  | base64

    in the command line. The

    -n

    character removes the trailing newline character from the encoding.
• I can't seem to login? I keep getting redirected to the login page after signing in.
  • If you have not enabled SSL yet, you will need to add the line

    COOKIE_INSECURE=true

    to your

    docker.env

    file / environment configuration so that the authentication cookies can be sent over http. Make sure to run

    sudo docker-compose up -d

    after modifying the

    docker.env

    file.

• TypeError: Cannot read property 'licenseVerification' of null

  or

  TypeError: Cannot read property 'name' of null

  • There is an issue with your license key. Double check that the license key is correct and that it has no trailing whitespaces.

Releases

Releases notes can be found on updates.retool.com.

Docker cheatsheet

Below is a cheatsheet for useful Docker commands. Note that you may need to prefix them with

sudo

| Command | Description | | ----------------------------|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| |

docker-compose up -d

-d

docker-compose down

docker-compose stop

docker ps -a

docker-compose ps -a

docker-compose

docker logs -f 

docker exec -it  psql -U  -W  

psql

docker kill $(docker ps -q)

docker rm $(docker ps -a -q)

docker rmi -f $(docker images -q)

docker volume rm $(docker volume ls -q)