Introduction

This is based on the work that brandonhilkert initally carried to automate EC2 instance provision with YAML and SHELL script. It tries to bring the good spirit: SIMPLE, and JUST WORK to the world of every remote machine.

I used to use this to do all the provision of Redis, Postgres, Nginx, Unicorn, Cron, etc before. These days I just use this to provision docker on the server and then use crane to orchestrate the rest.

Let's rock.

Recipes repo

Don't forget to also checkout the recipes collection https://github.com/phuongnd08/simple_provision_recipes

How it works

This gem carries the provision by uploading a set of scripts and files to the server and execute there.

It's up to you to choose the language you want. I often use a mix of SHELL and RUBY scripts to accomplish the task. SHELL for some simple stuff like install a package on the server and RUBY when I need to complete some tricky part of the configuration.

Just remember that you need to use a shell script to install ruby/python first, and then you can start use ruby/python. The install of ruby and python can be as simple as create a bash contains "yum install ruby(python) -y" and include it in the top of the scripts section in your server definition file.

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'simple_provision'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install simple_provision

Project Structure

The provision profile need to be defined inside /provision directory. Since it's just scripting, feel free to use ERB, HAML, or any kind of templates that you want, assume you install the necessary library before you do that.

./provision
├── files
│   ├── keys
│   │   └── deploy_key
│   └── rails_config
│       └── database.yml
├── scripts
│   ├── apt.sh
│   ├── deploy_key.sh
│   ├── git.sh
│   ├── redis.rb
│   ├── ruby2.sh
│   ├── rubygems.sh
│   ├── install_tornado.py
│   ├── search_service_code.sh
│   └── search_service_env.sh
└── servers
    ├── webapp.yml
    ├── docker.yml
    └── search-service.yml

In /provision/servers/docker, search-service.yml, you define your server defintion (read below).

Server Definition

To define a server type, create a yaml file in the ./provision/servers directory with the following format:

files:
  - files/credentials.yml
scripts:
  - scripts/git.sh
  - scripts/ruby.sh
  - scripts/rubygems.sh
  - scripts/redis.sh
env:
  DBNAME: my_db_name
  REDISNAME: <%= ENV["REDIS_NAME"] %>
  WEBROOT: /var/www/app

File declared in files and scripts can point to anywhere in the machine from which you make the provision. The file path is calculated relative to ./provision directory. These files/scripts will then be uploaded to provisioned server at ~/files and ~/scripts

Passing variables to scripts

Variables defined in env will be exposed to scripts during execution. That way you can re-use the same scripts for different type of servers. You can pass environment variables (available through the use of bash export ENVNAME=value or passing to simpro command such as ENVNAME=value simpro) to the env section using the ERB syntax (<%= ENV['ENVNAME'] %>).

Provision your server

bundle exec simpro my-awesome-server root@my-host

Contributing

Fork it
Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
Create new Pull Request