Rapid generation of BOSH releases

Generators for creating, updating, and sharing BOSH releases.

The https://bosh.io documentation includes a long guide to explaining BOSH releases and how to create them. The bosh-gen project boosts your speed and guides you towards some newer best practises (e.g. BPM for jobs).

Install

bosh-gen is distributed as a RubyGem:

gem install bosh-gen

Requirements

When you run bosh-gen new to create a new BOSH release it will attempt to create an AWS S3 bucket to store your blobs, vendored packages (language packs), and final releases. You will need a AWS account and appropriate AWS keys.

If you'd like, contact Dr Nic for credentials to the CF Community AWS account.

Creating a new BOSH release

The bosh-gen new [name] subcommand is where you get started. It will create a name-boshrelease folder in your local directory filled with everything to make a working BOSH release (that doesn't do anything):

bosh-gen new my-system

You will be prompted for your AWS credentials. If you have a ~/.fog file, then it will allow you to pick on of those credential pairs. Yes, I should add support for ~/.aws/credentials too. Yes, I should add support for GCP bucket stores too.

A new AWS S3 bucket will be created for you called my-system-boshrelease, and am S3 policy will be attached to make its contents publicly readable to your BOSH release users.

An initial BOSH deployment manifest will be provided that "just works". Try it out:

export BOSH_DEPLOYMENT=my-system
bosh deploy manifests/my-system.yml

This will create/package your BOSH release, upload it to your BOSH environment, and deploy an VM that does nothing.

Task 4525 | 10:56:28 | Creating missing vms: mything/27f862a1-a51b-468d-b3c5-35750eac483a (0) (00:00:15)

You're up and running and can now iterate towards your final BOSH release.

Your initial BOSH release scaffold includes:

• An initial README.md for your users (please keep this updated with any instructions specific to your release and deployment manifests)
• 0 packages
• 1 job called my-system with an empty monit file
• 1 deployment manifest manifests/my-system.yml with version: create set so that every bosh deploy will always create/upload a new version of your release during initial development
• Some sample operator files that you or your users might use to deploy your BOSH release
• config/final.yml describes your public S3 bucket
• config/private.yml is your local-only private AWS API credentials
• config/blobs.yml will be updated when you run bosh add-blob to add 3rd-party blobs into your project

BPM

It is assumed that you will be using BOSH Process Manager (BPM) to describe your BOSH jobs, so it has already been included in your deployment manifest. You will have seen it compiled during your initial bosh deploy above:

Task 4525 | 10:55:33 | Compiling packages: bpm-runc/c0b41921c5063378870a7c8867c6dc1aa84e7d85
Task 4525 | 10:55:33 | Compiling packages: golang/65c792cb5cb0ba6526742b1a36e57d1b195fe8be
Task 4525 | 10:55:51 | Compiling packages: bpm-runc/c0b41921c5063378870a7c8867c6dc1aa84e7d85 (00:00:18)
Task 4525 | 10:56:16 | Compiling packages: golang/65c792cb5cb0ba6526742b1a36e57d1b195fe8be (00:00:43)
Task 4525 | 10:56:16 | Compiling packages: bpm/b5e1678ac76dd5653bfa65cb237c0282e083894a (00:00:11)

You can see it included within your manifest's addons: section:

addons:
- name: bpm
  jobs: [{name: bpm, release: bpm}]

It is possible that BPM will become a first-class built-in feature of BOSH environments in the future, and then this addons section can be removed. For now, it is an addon for your deployment manifest. BPM will make your life as a BOSH release developer easier.

Jobs and packages

When you're finished and have a working BOSH release, base deployment manifest (manifests/my-system.yml), and optional operator files (manifests/operators) your BOSH release will include one or more jobs, and one or more packages.

I personally tend to iterate by writing packages first, getting them to compile, and then writing jobs to configure and run the packaged software. So I'll suggest this approach to you.

Writing a package

Helpful commands from bosh-gen:

• bosh-gen package name - create a packages/name folder with initial spec and packaging file
• bosh-gen extract-pkg /path/to/release/packages/name - import a package folder from other BOSH release on your local machine, and its blobs and src files.

The bosh CLI also has helpful commands to create/borrow packages:

• bosh generate-package name - create a packages/name folder with initial spec and packaging file
• bosh vendor-package name /path/to/release - import the final release of a package from other BOSH release (see blog post), not the source of the package and its blobs.

The bosh CLI also has commands for adding/removing blobs:

• bosh add-blob
• bosh remove-blob

Let's create a redis package a few different ways to see the differences.

Vendoring a package from another release

If there is another BOSH release that has a package that you want, consider vendoring it.

There is already a redis-boshrelease with a redis-4 package.

mkdir ~/workspace
git clone https://github.com/cloudfoundry-community/redis-boshrelease ~/workspace/redis-boshrelease

bosh vendor-package redis-4 ~/workspace/redis-boshrelease

This command will download the final release version of the redis-4 package from the redis-boshrelease S3 bucket, and then upload it to your own BOSH release's S3 bucket:

-- Finished downloading 'redis-4/5c3e41...'
Adding package 'redis-4/5c3e41...'...
-- Started uploading 'redis-4/5c3e41...'
2018/04/18 08:18:25 Successfully uploaded file to https://s3.amazonaws.com/my-system-boshrelease/108682c9...
-- Finished uploading 'redis-4/5c3e41...'
Added package 'redis-4/5c3e41...'

It will then reference this uploaded blob with the packages/redis-4/spec.lock file in your BOSH release project folder.

To include the redis-4 package in your deployment, it needs to be referenced by a job.

Change jobs/my-system/spec YAML file's packages section to reference your redis-4 package:

---
name: my-system
packages: [redis-4]
templates:
  ignoreme: ignoreme
properties: {}

Now re-deploy to see your redis-4 package compiled:

bosh deploy manifests/my-system.yml

The output will include:

Task 4550 | 12:24:46 | Compiling packages: redis-4/5c3e41... (00:00:57)

We can bosh ssh into our running my-system instance to confirm that redis-server and redis-cli binaries are available to us:

bosh ssh

Inside the VM, list the binaries that have been installed with our package:

$ ls /var/vcap/packages/redis-4/bin
redis-benchmark  redis-check-aof  redis-check-rdb  redis-cli  redis-sentinel  redis-server

A note in advance for writing our BOSH job, these binaries are not in the normal $PATH location. They are in /var/vcap/packages/redis-4 folder.

Upgrading a vendored package

If you're vendoring another release's package, you will need to keep an eye on updates and to re-vendor them into your release.

Essentially, you will re-clone or update the upstream release locally, and re-run bosh vendor-package:

mkdir ~/workspace
git clone https://github.com/cloudfoundry-community/redis-boshrelease ~/workspace/redis-boshrelease

bosh vendor-package redis-4 ~/workspace/redis-boshrelease

Hard-forking another package

You might like to start with other BOSH release's package and make changes (for example, change the upstream blobs or modify the compilation flags).

The bosh-gen extract-pkg command is very helpful here. It will copy not just the packaging script, but also any blobs or source files from the target BOSH release.

Let's replace our vendored package with a hard fork using bosh-gen extract-pkg:

pushd ~/workspace/redis-boshrelease
bosh sync-blobs
popd

rm -rf packages/redis-4/spec.lock
bosh-gen extract-pkg ~/workspace/redis-boshrelease/packages/redis-4

The output will show that your BOSH release now has its own redis.tgz blob:

       exist  packages/redis-4
      create  packages/redis-4/packaging
       chmod  packages/redis-4/packaging
      create  packages/redis-4/spec
       chmod  packages/redis-4/spec
    add-blob  redis/redis-4.0.9.tar.gz
      readme  Upload blobs with 'bosh upload-blobs'

Your BOSH release now has a packages/redis-4/packaging script to describe how to convert the redis/redis-4.0.9.tar.gz file into the compiled redis-server, redis-cli binaries we saw earlier.

You can now edit packages/redis-4/packaging to modify the make install flags etc if you want.

The redis/redis-4.0.9.tar.gz blob has been copied into the blobs folder:

$ tree blobs
blobs
└── redis
    └── redis-4.0.9.tar.gz

Or you can change the redis/redis-4.0.9.tar.gz blob. Visit http://download.redis.io/releases/ and find a newer release (or older release) and download it.

First, remove the current blob:

bosh remove-blob redis/redis-4.0.9.tar.gz

Next, add the new blob:

bosh add-blob ~/Downloads/redis-4.0.8.tar.gz redis/redis-4.0.8.tar.gz

As early, to create/upload/deploy your new package:

bosh deploy manifests/my-system.yml

So that other developers can access your BOSH releases you need to upload your blobs to your S3 bucket:

bosh upload-blobs

Your uploaded blobs are referenced in config/blobs.yml:

redis/redis-4.0.8.tar.gz:
  size: 1729973
  object_id: 9c954728-d998-459f-7be5-27b8de003b29
  sha: f723b327022cef981b4e1d69c37a8db2faeb0622

Create package from scratch

There is something unique and special about your BOSH release. Probably you have some bespoke software you want to deploy.

There are some core components to a bespoke package:

• blobs - yet-to-be-compiled or precompiled assets that are cached within your S3 blobstore, rather than inside your BOSH release
• src - git submodules to your bespoke code repositories
• packages/name/packaging - bash script to compile and prepare the package for runtime environments; this script is run within a BOSH compilation VM during bosh deploy

If your bespoke software is already being compiled from an internal team, then you can use the bosh remove-blob and bosh add-blob combo discussed in the preceding section.

More commonly, you will include your bespoke project via a git submodule in the src folder, and then delegate the compilation and preparation to your BOSH package's packaging script.

I've written up a blob article/tutorial for submoduling bespoke projects, using language packs (bosh vendor-package), and packaging your bespoke app at https://www.starkandwayne.com/blog/build-bosh-releases-faster-with-language-packs/.

Running things with Jobs

The ultimate goal of your deployment manifest is to describe a set of VMs that have installed software that is configured and running.

A deployment manifest describes a common groups of VMs as an "instance group", which includes one or more jobs from BOSH releases. When you ran bosh-gen new an initial deployment manifest was generated that references a single job:

instance_groups:
- name: my-system
  instances: 1
  jobs:
  - name: my-system
    release: my-system
    properties: {}
  ...

The release: my-system references an uploaded BOSH release that is described at the bottom of the manifest:

releases:
- name: bpm
  version: 0.5.0
  url: git+https://github.com/cloudfoundry-incubator/bpm-release
- name: my-system
  version: create
  url: file://.

Later, when you've created your first final BOSH release, you will update this releases: section from version: create to version: 1.0.0 to reference your final release version.

The jobs: [{name: my-system, release: my-system}] reference in the manifest describes the jobs/my-system folder in our BOSH release.

In the initial bosh-gen new scaffold, a relatively empty jobs/my-system folder was provided so that bosh deploy initially works.

The jobs/my-system/monit file describes all running processes for a job. In the initial scaffold generated this file is empty.

We want to add a redis process to our VM, so let's create a redis job.

bosh-gen job redis -d redis-4

The output shows that a config/bpm.yml file is created.

The monit file is now updated to create/monitor a Linux process using BPM:

check process my-system
  with pidfile /var/vcap/sys/run/bpm/my-system/my-system.pid
  start program "/var/vcap/jobs/bpm/bin/bpm start my-system"
  stop program "/var/vcap/jobs/bpm/bin/bpm stop my-system"
  group vcap