I have little experience using chef for managing the DevOps. I was using AWS opsworks, there you can create a stack with layers and can configure it to create a new server instance for each layer or use existing instance. Now I'm trying to make my hands dirty with Docker. From my reading about Docker so far you have to spin off a new server instance, ssh to it and then run a Docker image on it. Is there a way I can create new server instances and install images on them using scripts?
If you're just concerned with playing around in a development environment, look at docker-machine, and docker-compose. These are tools for orchestrating docker images and containers from your primary machine on a local VM running docker.
If you're interested in orchestrating containers and images with multiple servers on a production level, you will still need a configuration management tool like chef. However you will be doing less application environment setup in chef, just the basic docker configuration and container management.
If you aren't too attached to chef. I'd look at ansible. It has some configuration management modules specifically for docker that are great for starting out.
Related
I am trying to deploy my microservice in EC2 machine. I already launched my EC2 machine with Ubuntu 16.04 LTS AMI. And also I found that we can install Docker and run containers through Docker installation. Also I tried sample service deployment using Docker in my Ubuntu. I successfully run commands using -d option for running image in background also.
Can I choose this EC2 + Docker for deployment of my microservice for actual production environment? Then I can deploy all my Spring Boot microservice in this option.
I know that ECS is another option for me.To be frank trying to avoid ECR, ECS optimized AMI and its burdens, Looking for machine with full control that only belongs to me.
But still I need to know about the feasibility of choosing EC2 + Docker through my Ubuntu machine. Also I am planning to deploy my Angular 2 app. I don't need to install, deploy and manage any application server for both Spring Boot and Angular, since it will gives me about a serverless production environment.
What you are describing is a "traditional" single server environment and does not have much in common with a microservices deployment. However keep in mind that this may be OK if it is only you, or a small team working on the whole application. The microservices architectural style was introduced to be able to handle huge, complex applications with large development teams that require to scale out immensely due to fast business growth. Here an example story from Uber.
Please read this for more information about how and why the microservices architectural style was introduced as well as the benefits/drawbacks. Now about your question:
"Can I choose this EC2 + Docker for deployment of my microservice for actual production environment? "
Your question can be simply answered: You can, but it is probably not a good idea assuming you have a large enough project to require a microservices architecture.
You would have to implement all of the following deployment aspects yourself, which is typically covered by an orchestration system, like kubernetes:
Service Discovery and Load Balancing
Horizontal Scaling
Multi-Container Application Deployment
Container Health-Management / Self-Healing
Virtual Networking
Rolling Updates
Storage Orchestration
"Since It will gives me about a serverless production environment to
me."
EC2 is by definition not serverless, of course. You will have to maintain your EC2 instances, including OS updates, security patches etc. And if you only have a single server you will have service outages because of it.
You can do it. I have had Docker on standard EC2 instances running without problem. By "my microservice" you mean a single microservice, right?
You don't need service discovery or routing rules?
Can I choose this EC2 + Docker for deployment of my microservice for actual production environment?
Yes, this is totally possible, although I suggest using kubernetes as the container-orchestrator as it manages the lifecycle of the containers for you:
Running Kubernetes on AWS EC2
Amazon Elastic Container Service for Kubernetes
Manage Kubernetes Clusters on AWS Using Kops
Amazon EKS
How should applications be scripted/automatically deployed when in LXD containers?
For example is best way to deploy applications in LXD containers to use a bash script (which deploys an application)? How to execute this bash script inside the container by executing a command on the host?
Are there any tools/methods of doing this in a similar way to Docker recipes?
In my case, I use Ansible to:
build the LXD containers (web, database, redis for example).
connect to the containers and deploy the services and code needed.
you can build your own images for example with the services and/or code already deployed and build specific containers from this images.
I was doing this from before LXD had Ansible support (Ansible 2.2) i prefer to use ssh instead of lxd connection, when i connect to the containers to deploy services/code. they comes with a profile where i had setup my ssh public key (to have direct ssh connection by keys ... no passwords)
Take a look at my open source project on bitbucket devops_lxd_containers It includes:
Scripts to build lxd image templates including Apache, tomcat, haproxy.
Scripts to demonstrate custom application image builds such as Apache hosting and key/value content and haproxy configured as a router.
Code to launch the containers and map ports so they are accessible to the larger network
Code to configure haproxy as layer 7 proxy to route http requests between boxes and containers based on uri prefix routing. Based on where it previously deployed and mapped ports.
At the higher level it accepts a data drive spec and will deploy an entire environment compose of many containers spread across many hosts and hook them all up to act as a cohesive whole via a layer 7 proxy.
Extensive documentation showing how I accomplished each major step using code snippets before automating.
Code to support zero-outage upgrades using the layer7 ability to gracefully bleed off old connections while accepting new connections at the new layer.
The entire system is built on the premise that image building is best done in layers. We build a updated Ubuntu image. From it we build a hardened Ubuntu image. From it we build a basic Apache image. From it we build an application specific image like our apacheKV sample. The goal is to never rebuild any more than once and to re-use the common functionality such as the basicJDK as the source for all JDK dependent images so we can avoid having duplicate code in any location. I have strived to keep Image or template creation completely separate from deployment and port mapping. The exception is that I could not complete creation of the layer 7 routing image until we knew everything about how other images would be mapped.
I've been using Hashicorp Packer with the ansible provisioner using ansible_connection = lxd
Some notes here for constructing a template
When iterating through local files on your host system you may need to be using ansible_connection = local (e.g for stat & friends)
Using local_action in ansible with the lxd connection is still
action inside the container when using stat (but not with include_vars & lookup function for files)
Using lots of debug messages in Ansible is helpful to know which local environment ansible is actually operating in.
I'm surprised no one here mentioned Canonicals own tool for managing LXD.
https://juju.is
it is super simple, well supported, and the only caveat is it requires you turn off ipv6 at the LXD/LXC side of things (in the network bridge)
snap install juju --classic
juju bootstrap localhost
from there you can learn about juju models, deploy machines or prebaked images like ubuntuOS
juju deploy ubuntu
I am wondering how do we make machines that host docker to be easily replaceable. I would like something like a Dockerfile that contains instructions on how to set-up the machine that will host docker. Is there a way to do that?
The naive solution would be to create an official "docker host" binary image to install on new machines, but I would like to have something that is reproducible and transparent like the dockerfile?
It seems like tools like Vagrant, Puppet, or Chef may be useful but they appear to be for virtual machine procurement and they seem to all require set-up of some sort of "master node" server. I am not going to be spinning up and tearing down regularly so a master server is a waste of a server, I just want something that is reproducible in the event i need to set-up or replace a new machine.
this is basically what docker-machine does for you https://docs.docker.com/machine/overview/
and other "orchestration" systems will make this automated and easier, as well
There are lots of solutions to this with no real one size fits all answer.
Chef and Puppet are the popular configuration management tools that typically use a centralized server. Ansible is another option that typically runs without a server and just connects with ssh to configure the host. All three of these works very similarly, so if your concern is simply managing the CM server, Ansible may be the best option for you.
For VM's Vagrant is the typical solution and it can be combined with other tools like Ansible to provision the VM after creating it.
In the cloud space, there's tools like Terraform or vendor specific tools like CloudFormation.
Docker is working on a project called Infrakit to deploy infrastructure the way compose deploys containers. It includes hooks for several of the above tools, including Terraform and Vagrant. For your own requirements, this may be overkill.
Lastly, for designing VM images, Docker recently open sourced their Moby project which creates the VM image containing a minimal container OS, the same one used under the covers in Docker for Windows, Docker for Mac, and possibly some of the cloud hosing providers.
We automate Docker installation on hosts using Ansible + Jenkins. Given the propper SSH access, provisioning new Docker hosts is a matter of triggering a Jenkins job.
Good day
We have a development environment that consists of 6 virtual machines. Currently we are using Vagrant and Ansible with VirtualBox.
As you can imagine, hosting this environment is a maintenance nightmare particularly as versions of software/OS change. Not too mention resource load for developer machines.
We have started migrating some virtual machines to docker. But this itself poses problems around orchestration, correct configurations, communication etc. This led me to Kubernetes.
Would someone be so kind as to provide some reasoning as to whether Kubernetes would or wouldn't be the right tool for the job? That is managing and orchestrating 'development' docker containers.
Thanks
This is quite complex topic and many things have to be considered if it's worth to use k8s as local dev environment. Especially I used it when I wanted to have my local developer environment very close to production one which was running on Kubernetes. This helped to avoid many configuration bugs.
In my opinion Kubernetes(k8s) will provide you all you need for a development environment.
It gives you much flexibility and does much configuration itself. Few examples:
An easy way to deploy new version into local kubernetes stack
You prepare k8s replication controller files for each of your application module (keep in mind that they need to be stateless modules)
In replication controller you specify the docker image and that's it.
Using this approach you can push new docker images to local docker_registry and then using kubectl control the lifecycle of your application.
Easy way to scale your application modules
For example:
kubectl scale rc your_application_service --replicas=3
This way k8s will check how many pods you have running for your service and if it recognises that the number is smaller then the replicas value it will create new to satisfy the replicas number.
It's endless topic and many other things come to my mind, but I would suggest you to try it out.
There is a https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/blob/master/docs/devel/developer-guides/vagrant.md project for running the k8s cluster in vagrant.
Of course you have to remember that if you have many services all of them have to be pushed to local repository and run by k8s. This will require some time but if you automate local deploy with some custom scripts you won't regret.
As wsl mentioned before, it is a quite complex topic. But i'm doing this as well at the moment. So let me summaries some things for you:
With Kubernetes (k8s) you're going to orchestrate your SaaS Application. In best case, it is a Cloud-native Application. The properties/requirements for a Cloud-native Application are formulated by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), which basically were formed around k8s, after Google donates it to the Linux Foundation.
So the properties/requirements for a Cloud-native Application are: Container packaged, Dynamically managed and Micro-services oriented (cncf.io/about/charter). You will benefit mostly from k8s, if your applications are micro-service based and every service has a separate container.
With micro-service based applications, every service can be developed independently. The developer only needs to follow the 12Factor Method (12factor.net) for example (use env var instead of hard coded IP addresses, etc).
In the next step the developer build the container for a service and pushes it the a container registry. For a local develop environment, you may need to run a container registry inside the cluster as well, so the developer can push and test his code locally.
Then you're able to define your k8s replication-controllers, services, PetSets, etc. with Ports, Port-mapping, env vars, Container Images... and create and run it inside the cluster.
The k8s-documentation recommend Minikube for running k8s locally (kubernetes.io/docs/getting-started-guides/minikube/). With Minikube you got features like DNS, NodePorts, ConfigMaps and Secrets
Dashboards.
But I choose the multi node CoreOS Kubernetes with Vagrant Cluster for my Development Environment as Puja Abbassi mentioned in the Blog "Finding The Right Local Kubernetes Development Environment" (https://deis.com/blog/2016/local-kubernetes-development-environment/), it is closer to the my production environment (12Factor: 10 - Dev/prod parity).
With the Vagrant Environment you got features like:
Networking with flannel
Service Discovery with etcd
DNS names for a set of containers with SkyDNS
internal load balancing
If you want to know, how everything works look inside this Github repo github.com/coreos/coreos-kubernetes/tree/master/multi-node (vagrant and generic folder).
So you have to ask yourself, if you or your developers really need to run a complete "cloud environment" locally. In many cases a developer can develop a service (based on micro-services and containers) independently.
But sometimes it is necessary to have multiple or all services run on your local machine as a dev-environment.
I want to migrate my current deploy to docker, it counts on a mongodb service, a redis service, a pg server and a rails app, I have created already a docker container for each but i have doubts when it comes to start and linking them. Under development I'm using fig but I think it was not meant to be used on production. In order to take my deployment to production level, what mechanism should I use to auto-start and link containers together? my deploy uses a single docker host that already runs Ubuntu so i can't use CoreOS.
Linknig containers in production is a tricky thing. It will hardwire the IP addresses of the dependent containers so if you ever need to restart a container or launch a replacement (like upgrading the version of mongodb) your rails app will not work out of the box with the new container and its new IP address.
This other answer explains some available alternatives to linking.
Regarding starting the containers, you can use any deployment tool to run the required docker commands (Capistrano can easily do that). After that, docker will restart running the containers after a reboot.
You might need a watcher process to restart containers if they die, just as you would have one for a normal rails app.
Services like Tutum and Dockerize.it can make this simpler. As far as I know, Tutum will not deploy to your servers. Dockerize.it will, but is very rough (disclaimer: I'm part of the team building it).
You can convert your fig configuration to CoreOS formatted systemd configuration files with fig2coreos. Google App Engine supports CoreOS, or you can run CoreOS on AWS or your cloud provider of choice. fig2coreos also supports deploying to CoreOS in Vagrant for local development.
CenturyLink (fig2coreos authors) have an example blog post here:
This blog post will show you how to bridge the gap between building
complex multi-container apps using Fig and deploying those
applications into a production CoreOS system.
EDIT: If you are constrained to an existing host OS you can use QEMU ("a generic and open source machine emulator and virtualizer") to host a CoreOS instance. Instructions are available from the CoreOS team.