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The Nebari "Stages" Directory

The Nebari CLI generates Terraform manifests and saves them on disk in directories stages/[stage-name] relative to the location of your configuration file. Knowing how and when these directories are used will allow you to better track changes that the Nebari CLI makes to your running Nebari deployment when you upgrade or modify the configuration file.

Nebari CLI Steps​

The following three Nebari CLI commands trigger different steps in the Nebari deployment process.

nebari validate will check whether your configuration file is valid for the Nebari schema of the Nebari CLI version that you are using. It will NOT render new stages directories.

nebari render will validate your configuration file AND generate new Terraform manifests in the stages directories but will NOT deploy those changes.

nebari deploy will validate your configuration file, generate new Terraform manifests UNLESS you use the --disable-render, AND deploy those changes. If --disable-render is set, the Nebari CLI will instead use whatever code is present in the existing stages directory. This is useful to ensure that only Terraform code changes that you have seen are present with the deploy (see Tip below).

tip

You can also use nebari info to generate a view a list of 'Runtime Stage Ordering' which will include all of the default stages included in your Nebari version along with any additionally installed extensions.

tip

If you are using a git repo to maintain your Nebari configuration, you can preview the effects that a Nebari version upgrades and/or config file change will make to your running Nebari deployment. First perform the Nebari upgrade command or modify your nebari-config.yaml file, then run nebari render. After the new /stages/ directories are generated, use git diff to see any Terraform changes that will be made with the next nebari deploy.

Please note that some changes (e.g. container image tags) are injected as Terraform variable values at runtime by nebari deploy, this technique will not capture every possible change the way a basic terraform plan would.

Overview of Nebari Stages​

When you run nebari deploy, you will see several log entries indicating Terraform initializing anew. This is because every Nebari stage is an independent Terraform deployment. This modular architecture allows for the greatest flexibility when customizing your platform, such as using different cloud providers in the Infrastructure stage, overriding or skipping entire stages, or adding extensions to your deployment. As the deploy runs, the deployer will track the Terraform outputs of each stage's Terraform deployment and append them to a stage_outputs object so that subsequent stages can access the data as Terraform inputs.

  • 01-terraform-state/[provider-name] - Creates the infrastructure for Terraform backend, such as Google Cloud Storage bucket or AWS S3 bucket. If you are using a local or existing provider, this stage is skipped and Terraform instead keeps a local .tfstate file in each stage folder.
  • 02-infrastructure/[provider-name] - Deploys the underlying infrastructure, notably the networking components and Kubernetes cluster (unless using the existing provider). This is the last core Nebari stage which directly interacts with the Terraform cloud provider.
  • 03-kubernetes-initialize - Sets up fundamental Kubernetes objects (namespaces, autoscalers, etc.)
  • 04-kubernetes-ingress - Deploys the Traefik ingress. Note that after this stage, your Nebari CLI deployer will attempt to connect with your cluster. After this stage your Nebari CLI deployer will attempt to communicate with your cluster, so DNS must be provisioned.
  • 05-kubernetes-keycloak - Deploys Keyclaok for authentication.
  • 06-kubernetes-keycloak-configuration - Applies Nebari-specific configurations to Keycloak.
  • 07-kubernetes-services - Deploys all of the core Nebari components that rely on Keycloak, notably JupyterHub and Conda Store. The vast majority of the end-user Nebari functionality is deployed in this stage.
  • 08-nebari-extensions - This is an experimental stage that can be used to deploy custom Helm charts or define new Kubernetes services to inject into Nebari directly from your configuration file. This is NOT related to the Nebari Extension System.

If you have installed any Nebari Python extensions, they will also be rendered as folders in the stages directory.