dbtr

Run and schedule dbt jobs on a self hosted dbt remote server.

Dbtr is an for the dbt CLI that adds the remote subcommand. It lets you deploy a cloud server where you can schedule and execute dbt jobs.

This is a low-cost and practical alternative to dbt Cloud.

Features

• Deploy a dbt server in one command locally, on GCP, or Azure. (AWS coming soon)
• Run dbt commands on a remote server rather than your machine
• Schedule dbt jobs
• Explore run logs, scheduled jobs, dbt docs, and Elementary reports in a web UI

Installation

Install dbtr with the right extras depending on where your server is (or will be):

pip install 'dbtr[local]'

Available extras:

• local
• google
• azure

Usage

The dbtr CLI is a drop-in replacement for dbt so you can just use it exactly as you would have otherwise (dbt docs):

dbtr debug

[...]

All checks passed!

Use the remote subcommand to deploy a dbt server locally:

dbtr remote deploy --cloud-provider local

[...]

Uvicorn running on http://0.0.0.0:8080 (Press CTRL+C to quit)

You can now submit jobs to the server rather than executing them locally:

dbtr remote debug --cloud-provider local --server-url http://localhost:8080

To see the full list of available commands that you can run remotely:

dbtr remote --help

Moving to the cloud

For GCP, this will deploy the server on a Cloud Run instance:

dbtr remote deploy google

Other available options for deployment are local, azure, and soon, aws.

You can now run jobs on this instance:

dbtr remote debug --cloud-provider google --server-url https://my-dbt-server-abcdefghij-ew.a.run.app

Scheduling jobs

If you want to schedule a dbt build every morning at 8 UTC:

dbtr remote build --cloud-provider google --server-url https://my-dbt-server-abcdefghij-ew.a.run.app --schedule-cron '0 8 * * *'

You can also schedule from a configuration file (schedules.yaml):

job-1:
   command: dbtr remote build --server-url https://my-dbt-server-abcdefghij-ew.a.run.app --cloud-provider google
   schedule_cron: "0 8 * * 1"
   description: "Build all the models every Monday at 8 UTC"

job-2:
   command: dbtr remote build --select +customers+ --server-url https://my-dbt-server-abcdefghij-ew.a.run.app --cloud-provider google
   schedule_cron: "0 6 * * *"
   description: "Build all the customer models at 6 UTC"

Then deploy the schedules:

dbtr remote schedule set --schedule-file schedules.yaml --server-url https://my-dbt-server-abcdefghij-ew.a.run.app --cloud-provider google

Frontend

Dbtr comes with a UI where you can take a look at logs, schedules, docs, etc...

dbtr remote frontend --server-url https://my-dbt-server-abcdefghij-ew.a.run.app  --cloud-provider google