Setting up Resources on Render

April 24, 2021 • 2 min read

Hey! Thanks for stopping by! Just a word of warning, this post is 5 years old, wow! If there's technical information in here it's more than likely out of date.

Render is pretty neat!

I’m still super early days but I have discovered the render.yml files that is the equivalent to the Amazon CDK (Cloud Development Kit). The Amazon CDK is pretty powerful from what I can glean.

I say that because I have watched several videos on how awesome it is, but my eyes always glaze over when I have to go on a six week training course just so I know how many services Amazon can offer me! Bitter? Maybe, confused? Absolutely.

I’m not going to get all ranty about AWS, all I’ll say is that it’s not the sort of thing you can go ‘quickly’ spin something up without worrying if you’re going to end up with a massive bill at the end of the month.

Preconceptions? Absolutely, and until there’s an AWS light I don’t think they will change for me. There are services that offer the AWS light option though, services like Vercel, Begin, Netlify functions and Render.

Render YML

Render gives you the option to configure your whole stack in one file. So far I’ve only spun up a Strapi web service with accompanying PSQL databases for a staging and production environment.

1services:
2  - type: web
3    name: strapi-production
4    env: node
5    plan: starter
6    buildCommand: yarn install && yarn build
7    startCommand: yarn start
8    healthCheckPath: /_health
9    region: frankfurt
10    envVars:
11      - key: NODE_VERSION
12        value: 12.18.4
13      - key: NODE_ENV
14        value: production
15      - key: CLOUDINARY_NAME
16        sync: false
17      - key: CLOUDINARY_KEY
18        sync: false
19      - key: CLOUDINARY_SECRET
20        sync: false
21      - key: DATABASE_URL
22        fromDatabase:
23          name: database-production
24          property: connectionString
25      - key: JWT_SECRET
26        generateValue: true
27      - key: ADMIN_JWT_SECRET
28        generateValue: true
29  - type: web
30    name: strapi-staging
31    env: node
32    plan: starter
33    buildCommand: yarn install && yarn build
34    startCommand: yarn start
35    healthCheckPath: /_health
36    region: frankfurt
37    envVars:
38      - key: NODE_VERSION
39        value: 12.18.4
40      - key: NODE_ENV
41        value: production
42      - key: CLOUDINARY_NAME
43        sync: false
44      - key: CLOUDINARY_KEY
45        sync: false
46      - key: CLOUDINARY_SECRET
47        sync: false
48      - key: DATABASE_URL
49        fromDatabase:
50          name: database-staging
51          property: connectionString
52      - key: JWT_SECRET
53        generateValue: true
54      - key: ADMIN_JWT_SECRET
55        generateValue: true
56
57databases:
58  - name: database-production
59    plan: starter
60    region: frankfurt
61  - name: database-staging
62    plan: starter
63    region: frankfurt

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