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Installation

Flow can either be hosted in a cloud environment managed by Studo or self-hosted on university infrastructure.

Managed hosting​

With Studo-managed hosting, Studo provisions and operates the Flow environment. The university does not need to install or operate the Flow application on its own infrastructure, but can still extend it with additional workflows and integrations.

Self-hosting Flow​

Universities can also install and operate Flow on their own infrastructure. The following instructions describe the requirements and provide example configurations for a self-hosted installation.

note

To pull the Flow image from the GitHub Container Registry, you need to authenticate to our container registry. You can do this by running docker login studo-echbgrb4a3evh7gg.azurecr.io. Contact the Studo team to get your credentials.

Requirements​

  • Docker and Docker Compose installed on your server (swarm mode or kubernetes is recommended for production)
  • A domain name for the Flow instance (can be a subdomain)
  • A valid SSL certificate for the domain name (can be a self-signed certificate for testing purposes)
  • A reverse proxy (e.g. Traefik) to handle SSL termination and routing for said domain
  • A MongoDB replica set (3 nodes recommended for production)
  • A GitHub account

Example compose file​

services:
  studo-flow:
    image: studo-echbgrb4a3evh7gg.azurecr.io/studo/flow:latest
    container_name: flow
    environment:
      DEBUG_LOG: false
      ALLOWED_IMPORTERS: DEMO,API,STUDO_LABS,STUDO_SERVICES
      ENABLE_KTOR_METRICS: false
      ENABLE_POSTGRES_STATS_DATABASE: false
      ENABLE_TASK_SCHEDULER: true

      CONTAINER: web-1 # For horizontal scaling increase number for each instance - starting by 1 (there must be a container with "web-1" for proper functionality)
      MONGO_URI: mongodb://mongodb1:27017,mongodb2:27017,mongodb3:27017/flow # Use your MongoDB replica set URI here, SSL is recommended
      PORT: 8080 # The (internal) port Flow is listening on
      MAX_REQUEST_BODY_SIZE_MB: 50 # optional, see "Request body size limit" below
      ENABLE_SENTRY_LOG: false
      SENTRY_DSN: "https://key@your.sentry.org/projectId" # optional (only when ENABLE_SENTRY_LOG = true)
      SENTRY_DSN_FRONTEND: "https://key@your.sentry.org/projectId" # optional (only when ENABLE_SENTRY_LOG = true)
      baseUrl: https://demo.studoflow.com/admin
      rootUserPassword: s3cure # Initial password for "admin" user

      APP: flow-XXXXXX # replace with value provided
      flowLicenceKey: XXXXXXXX # replace with key provided
    ports:
      - 8080:8080 # Expose the Flow webUI port, adjust your reverse proxy configuration accordingly.

Example reverse proxy configuration (Traefik) in swarm mode​

services:
  studo-flow:
    image: studo-echbgrb4a3evh7gg.azurecr.io/studo/flow:latest
    environment:
      DEBUG_LOG: false
      ALLOWED_IMPORTERS: DEMO,API,STUDO_LABS,STUDO_SERVICES
      ENABLE_KTOR_METRICS: false
      ENABLE_POSTGRES_STATS_DATABASE: false
      ENABLE_TASK_SCHEDULER: true

      # Swarm substitutes {{.Task.Slot}} with the replica number (1, 2, 3...)
      CONTAINER: web-{{.Task.Slot}}
      MONGO_URI: mongodb://mongodb1:27017,mongodb2:27017,mongodb3:27017/flow # Use your MongoDB replica set URI here, SSL is recommended
      PORT: 8080 # The (internal) port Flow is listening on
      MAX_REQUEST_BODY_SIZE_MB: 50 # optional, see "Request body size limit" below
      ENABLE_SENTRY_LOG: false
      SENTRY_DSN: "https://key@your.sentry.org/projectId" # optional (only when ENABLE_SENTRY_LOG = true)
      SENTRY_DSN_FRONTEND: "https://key@your.sentry.org/projectId" # optional (only when ENABLE_SENTRY_LOG = true)
      baseUrl: https://demo.studoflow.com/admin
      rootUserPassword: s3cure # Initial password for "admin" user

      APP: flow-XXXXXX # replace with value provided
      flowLicenceKey: XXXXXXXX # replace with key provided
    deploy:
      mode: replicated
      replicas: 2 # For high availability, adjust as needed
      update_config:
        parallelism: 1
        delay: 10s
      restart_policy:
        condition: any
        delay: 2s
      labels:
        - traefik.enable=true # No need for any auth middleware, configure OIDC or SAML login providers in Flow
        - traefik.http.services.flow.loadbalancer.server.port=8080 # The internal port Flow is listening on
        - traefik.http.routers.flow.rule=Host(`demo.studoflow.com`) # Needs to match the domain of the baseUrl environment variable
        - traefik.http.routers.flow.tls=true
        - traefik.http.routers.flow.tls.certresolver=cfresolver # or your own cert resolver

Request body size limit​

Flow rejects requests whose body exceeds a configured size and responds with HTTP status 413 Payload Too Large. The limit protects the server against excessively large requests and is not intended to restrict regular uploads.

The limit defaults to 50 MB and can be changed with the MAX_REQUEST_BODY_SIZE_MB environment variable. The value must be a whole number of megabytes between 1 and 1024. Flow does not start if the value is not a whole number or lies outside this range. Keep the limit well above the largest file your users upload to Flow.

If your reverse proxy also limits request body sizes, make sure its limit is not lower than the one configured in Flow.