Rasa X Installation Guide

Compatibility

Rasa X version 0.33.0 or higher is only compatible with Rasa Open Source 2.x. If you are on Rasa Open Source 1.x, please check the compatibility matrix for a compatible version.

License Terms

For the use of Rasa X the Rasa X License Terms apply. For the use of Rasa Enterprise the Rasa Enterprise License Terms apply.

This page contains detailed instructions for installing Rasa X in a scalable cluster environment using OpenShift or Kubernetes (K8S).

Rasa X is available as a Helm Chart for a cluster setup. If you are not using Helm in your cluster, you can still use the following instructions to generate the Kubernetes or OpenShift object configurations via the Helm command-line interface and install those configurations manually.

Note

The Rasa X Helm chart is open-source and available in the rasa-x-helm repository. Please create an issue in this repository if you discover bugs or have suggestions for improvements.

Requirements

Note: Rasa X is intended to be installed on a server and not to a personal/local machine. Installing on a server is recommended because Rasa X is designed to stay up continuously, and not to be frequently stopped or restarted.

Cluster Requirements

To install the Rasa X Helm chart, you need an existing Kubernetes cluster or OpenShift cluster. Setting up a Kubernetes / OpenShift cluster can be tedious, hence we recommend getting a managed cluster from a cloud provider like Google Cloud, DigitalOcean, Microsoft Azure, or Amazon EKS.

The requirements of the single pods can vary, especially those of the rasa-production and rasa-worker pods, dependent on the model size and what pipeline is used and the number of users. We recommend providing at least the following resources:

We recommend a size of 10 GiB for the Rasa X volume claim and at least 30 GiB for the database volume claim.

Installation Requirements

1. Please check that you installed the Kubernetes or OpenShift command line interface (CLI). You can check this using the following command:

   kubectl version --short --client
   

   The output should be similar to:

   Client Version: v1.16.3
   

If this command resulted in an error, please install the Kubernetes CLI or the OpenShift CLI depending on the cluster you’re using.

2. Make sure that the Kubernetes / OpenShift CLI is correctly connected to your cluster. You can do so by using the following commands:

   kubectl version --short
   

   The output should be similar to:

   Client Version: v1.16.3
   Server Version: v1.14.8-gke.12
   

If you get an error when executing the command, you are not connected to your cluster. To get the command to connect to the cluster please consult your cluster’s admin or the documentation of your cloud provider.

3. Please make sure you have the Helm CLI installed. To check this, run:

   helm version --short
   

   The output should be similar to:

   v3.0.0+ge29ce2a
   

If this command leads to an error, please install the Helm CLI.

4. In case you are using a version <3 of Helm, please update to Helm version 3.

Supported Browsers

The web interface aims to support browsers that meet the following criteria:

• 0.2% market share

• not Internet Explorer
• not Opera Mini

Subchart Versions

The Rasa X Helm charts by default make use of three Bitnami subcharts, which pull the images in the table below.

If you choose to override the subchart defaults, or use external instances of them, you should verify in the relevant changelogs whether the versions you are using take different values than the ones listed below or on the Helm chart repo.

Installation

1. Create Namespace

We recommend installing Rasa X in a separate namespace to avoid interfering with existing cluster deployments. To create a new namespace run the following command:

kubectl create namespace <your namespace>

2. Create Values File

Prepare an empty file called values.yml which will include all your custom configuration for the installation with Helm.

3. Configure Credentials

To configure the credentials, copy the section below into the values.yml file and replace each <safe credential> marker with a different alphanumeric string. Please use safe credentials to avoid data breaches.

# rasax specific settings
rasax:
  initialUser:
    password: "<safe credential>"
  # password for the Rasa X user
  passwordSalt: "<safe credential>"
  # passwordSalt Rasa X uses to salt the user passwords
  token: "<safe credential>"
  # token Rasa X accepts as authentication token from other Rasa services
  jwtSecret: "<safe credential>"
# rasa: Settings common for all Rasa containers
rasa:
  token: "<safe credential>"
# RabbitMQ specific settings
rabbitmq:
  rabbitmq:
    password: "<safe credential>"
# global settings of the used subcharts
global:
  postgresql:
    postgresqlPassword: "<safe credential>"
  redis:
    password: "<safe credential>"

4. Specify Rasa X and Rasa Open Source Versions

You can install the latest stable Rasa X version and the latest Rasa Open Source version by specifying the following in your values.yml:

# rasax specific settings
rasax:
  tag: "0.42.6"
# rasa: Settings common for all Rasa containers
rasa:
  tag: "2.8.14-full"

To install the latest edge release of Rasa X instead, set the latest tag for Rasa X:

rasax:
  tag: "latest"
rasa:
  tag: "2.8.14-full"

You can also choose any compatible Rasa X and Rasa Open source versions according to the Compatibility Matrix.

5. Configure Rasa X Image

There’s nothing you need to do for this section.

6. Optional: Configure Custom Action Server

See these instructions to configure a custom action server.

7. Deploy Rasa X

Run the following commands:

# Add the repository which contains the Rasa X Helm chart
helm repo add rasa-x https://rasahq.github.io/rasa-x-helm

# Deploy Rasa X
helm install \
  --generate-name \
  --namespace <your namespace> \
  --values values.yml \
  rasa-x/rasa-x

OpenShift only: If the deployment fails and oc get events returns 1001 is not an allowed group spec.containers[0].securityContext.securityContext.runAsUser, re-run the installation command with an added --set securityContext.fsGroup=null flag.

Then wait until the deployment is ready. If you want to check on its status, the following command will block until the Rasa X deployment is ready:

kubectl --namespace <your namespace> \
wait \
  --for=condition=available \
  --timeout=20m \
  --selector app.kubernetes.io/component=rasa-x \
deployment

Alternatively you can also monitor the pods directly. Note that the deployment process can involve containers restarting until everything is ready (e.g. if the database container is not ready yet).

8. Access Rasa X

By default the Rasa X deployment is exposed via the nginx service. You can get the IP address using this command:

kubectl --namespace <your namespace> \
get service \
  -l app.kubernetes.io/component=nginx \
  -o jsonpath="{.items..status..loadBalancer..ingress[0].ip}"

You can then access the deployment on http://<ip>:8000

Note: Depending on the used cluster / cloud provider this might not work. Please refer to the cloud provider’s documentation / administrator for the recommended way for exposing the nginx service.

Reference

Accessing Secrets

This section describes how to retrieve secrets from your running deployment. You have the option to retrieve the following secrets:

Run the following command, replacing <secret name> with one of the values in the table, and <your namespace> and <your release name> with your namespace and the name of your release:

secret=<secret name>
namespace=<your namespace>
release_name=<your release name>
kubectl --namespace ${namespace} \
get secret ${release_name}-${secret} -o yaml | \
awk -F ': ' '/password/{print $2}' | base64 -d

Accessing Logs

This section describes how to get logs from the running containers.

1. Get the name of the pod which you want to get the logs of.

   kubectl --namespace <your namespace> \
   get pods
   

   To get the logs of the container run:

   kubectl --namespace <your namespace> \
   logs <name of the pod>
   

Using Helm to Generate Object Configurations

If you don’t want or cannot use Helm to install Rasa X in your cluster, you can still use Helm to generate the Kubernetes / OpenShift resource files.

1. Follow the installation instructions until the deployment part.

2. Run the following command to generate the Kubernetes / OpenShift resource files and write them in a file rasa-x-deployment.yml:

   helm repo add rasa-x https://rasahq.github.io/rasa-x-helm
   helm repo update
   helm template \
     --namespace <your namespace> \
     --values values.yml \
     <your release name> \
     rasa-x/rasa-x > rasa-x-deployment.yml
   

3. You can then deploy these manually by running:

   kubectl --namespace <your namespace> \
   create -f rasa-x-deployment.yml
   

Next Steps

• Connect a Custom Action Server if you are using custom actions.
• Set up Integrated Version Control to connect your Rasa X instance to a remote Git repository.
• Deploy your assistant using Rasa X.
• Configure SSL if you’d like to run your Rasa X server on HTTPS.