Cloud Deployment

[splitice]

I know there is probably software out there for this, but does anyone have any recommendations for software to automate the deployment & destruction of cloud VPS's on demand. Preferably some script I can just call which creates the VPS via the DO api, and stores its details into a database. Another script which handles cleanup when called.

I find myself in the situation where it is possible that the workload for certain time sensitive jobs can sometimes increase and would hence benefit from some burstable CPU capacity

DigitalOcean support is a must, that where we deploy.

Thoughts?

 

[DomainBop]

You can use these as a start. 

1. Salt.  https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/automated-provisioning-of-digitalocean-cloud-servers-with-salt-cloud-on-ubuntu-12-04  Automated Provisioning of DigitalOcean Cloud Servers with Salt

or

2. Puppet.   This may or may not do what you're looking for.
 

Puppet module for managing droplets on DigitalOcean.

Under the hood this module uses Barge and the V2 API.

https://forge.puppetlabs.com/garethr/digitalocean

 

[splitice]

Interesting.

Wasn't aware of that Puppet module.

 

[Roger]

Have you tried Chef solo and Knife for the machine provisioning?

 

[William]

What about http://www.asyd.eu/

 

[splitice]

Asyd looks interesting, they could however do with more in-depth information on their homepage - it all seems pretty high level and generic.

In the end I ended up just doing using some bash scripting & some simple php for tracking it all in a database. Fortunately Zabbix our montoring system already has support for auto-registration so no problems there

So far all good with only minor work, no dynamic scaling or anything implemented yet. Currently using it to make scaling up easy & manually spinning up as needed. But ill probably just look for a DigitalOcean composer package at that time, and fire it off via a Zabbix Action (trigger for high load). That side of things shouldnt be too hard either I hope.

 

[William]

Hm, how would you define more information? We have the docu on Github (the link is a bit hard visible, yea): https://github.com/AsydSolutions/asyd/blob/master/views/doc/en/README.md

 

[drmike]

The DO API has curl support... so easy enough in theory to perfect some homebrewed scripts around the examples.

Should be easy enough to string together a create and destroy script with variables and some simple means of tracking what you have deployed with DO.  API has "get" resources for containers too...

Curl examples on the right column within the page as it scrolls:

https://developers.digitalocean.com/

 

[Choms]

Hi, ASYD dev here, I saw this post and I find really interesting the feedback, in which sense would you improve the homepage? I was going to add some simple examples on the documentation section and split the screenshots to their own section, that should help on the general overiew, but I really appreciate any suggestion.

In general the system is quite simple and focused to sysadmins, is mainly bash scripting with variables, conditionals and some other nice features, so it's definitely not "high level", even though it's really flexible so you -can- use it as high level. For example if in your deploy you want to install nginx, you can just write a line "install: nginx" and works on any kind of system, or for example if, let's say, in CentOS the package were called "nginx-weird", you could do something like:

install if <%dist%> != centos: nginx

install if <%dist%> == centos: nginx-weird

Same goes for the configuration files, you can upload a config file by doing "config file: nginx.conf, /etc/nginx/nginx.conf" and then in the config file itself you can use any variable (see http://git.io/XPah6Q) or even conditionals, so you can just put in any config file something like:

--

<%if <%DIST%> == debian and <%DIST_VER%> == 6%>

some configuration that applies -only- to Debian 6

<%endif%>

<%if <%DIST%> == debian and <%DIST_VER%> >= 7%>

some configuration that applies -only- to Debian 7 or newer

<%endif%>

common configuration that applies to all systems

--

But I really appreciate the feedback and if anyone has any suggestions on how I could be more clear on the website, it helps a lot

Cheers!

 

[splitice]

Basically, more in-depth information - less high level sales. Sure - keep that but supplement it with more information, or links to where you can find more information. I do understand that its open source software and you aren't getting paid (probably), so feel free to do none of this

Primarily what I see missing is the "what". Since I was looking for something to assist primarily with the create/deploy, install/setup, configure, manage, de-install cycle I was a bit thrown when nothing seems to be mentioned about what cloud providers (if any) are supported, nor any mention of the create / deploy step in the material. At a glance seems to focused on the automation of software installation etc.

Secondly, "no programming required". Certainly some examples would be recommended - what is used instead? Purely graphical interface? Contemplating language? Something I haven't even thought of?

 

[Choms]

Hehe, yes, for now I'm not getting paid at all for this, but on a future I would like to offer a hosted version of it as a SAAS with support and more stuff, so of course I always consider all the feedbacks

On this point I understand you mean to expand the documentation, maybe with a quick review of the deploy options/commands (i.e. "install, uninstall, config file, config dir, exec, monitor, deploy and reboot") and a link there to the full documentation (you can see in depth all the commands here http://git.io/nYpe-A). And also some snippets on how the configuration files works, linking also to the full documentation ( http://git.io/6j8Pcw ), am I right?

Regarding the cloud providers, there's none supported as now it just works as an automation system, you can just add any host from any provider (add host dialog on the screenshots), but it is planned to implement this feature so in a future you could also create instances on VPS/cloud providers.

With the "no programming -knowledge- required" we mean you don't need to be a developer (like for Chef or Puppet, even on Ansible you need to know YAML) but a sysadmin, it refers at what I said on my previous message that is mainly bash scripting on steroids (any sysadmin SHOULD know bash ). Sure you need to write the deploys, but apart from the bash commands, everything else is mainly plain english, and you don't take more than 10 minutes to read the entire documentation.

I will work on a way to make this point a bit more clear

 

[splitice]

Definitely sounds interesting. I've bookmarked it to keep an eye on it.

Even outside of what I was looking for in this thread, my servers are updated & installed by an ever increasing collection of bash scripts (each update being a bash script to be applied in sequence), and occasionally a full update to streamline. While it has worked for years, its certainly something I recognize as needing improvement (Chef, Puppet etc), perhaps I will explore Asyd since bash is indeed simple. Looking at some of the documentation it looks like you provide alot of the functionality I have already implemented over the years

 

[Choms]

Glad you like it

I just updated the website with some basic examples and linking to the full documentation, I think this way gives a better overview on how to use it (still keeping the website simple and giving you the option of reading more).