Automating AWS

Using Octopus, Cloud Formation and Powershell DSC to build immutable phoenix environments in AWS

Transcript

1. Automating
   AWS
   

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2. Part 1
   Automating
   Infrastructure
   

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3. Page
   Birds-eye view
   / Copyright ©2014 by Readify Pty Ltd
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   Step 1: Deploy infrastructure
   Step 2: Bootstrap instances
   Step 3: Deploy software
   

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4. Page
   The infrastructure
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5. Page / Copyright ©2014 by Readify Pty Ltd
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   Deploy Infrastructure
   Bootstrap
   Instances
   Register Tentacle
   Deploy Software
   Fire Project
   Trigger
   Nothing up my sleeve…
   

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6. Page / Copyright ©2014 by Readify Pty Ltd
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   Deploy Infrastructure
   Bootstrap
   Instances
   Register Tentacle
   Deploy Software
   Fire Project
   Trigger
   Nothing up my sleeve…
   

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7. Page
   Step 1: Deploy infrastructure
   › Deploy.ps1
   › Package and upload bootstrapping resources to S3
   › Package and upload configuration variables to S3
   › Do we need to deploy a new stack?
   › Yes - New-CFNStack
   › No - New-CFNChangeSet
   › CloudFormation resource creation based on template
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8. Page / Copyright ©2014 by Readify Pty Ltd
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   Deploy Infrastructure
   Bootstrap
   Instances
   Register Tentacle
   Deploy Software
   Fire Project
   Trigger
   Nothing up my sleeve…
   

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9. Page
   Step 2: Bootstrap instances
   › EC2 userdata
   › cfn-init.exe
   › AWS::CloudFormation::Init
   › Powershell DSC
   › Octopus tentacle
   › tentacle.exe --register-with
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10. Page / Copyright ©2014 by Readify Pty Ltd
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    Deploy Infrastructure
    Bootstrap
    Instances
    Register Tentacle
    Deploy Software
    Fire Project
    Trigger
    Nothing up my sleeve…
    

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11. Page
    Step 3: Deploy software
    › Prior to Octopus 3.4 => DSC
    › Octopus 3.4 => Project Triggers
    › Software is deployed by Octopus via the Project Trigger
    › DSC polls a local health check endpoint
    › ASG waits to be signalled before completion
    › DSC => cfn-signal.exe
    › fin
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12. Page / Copyright ©2014 by Readify Pty Ltd
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    Deploy Infrastructure
    Bootstrap
    Instances
    Register Tentacle
    Deploy Software
    Fire Project
    Trigger
    Nothing up my sleeve…
    

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13. Part 2
    Immutable
    infrastructure
    

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14. Page
    Updating CF stacks
    What updating stacks
    used to be like
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    Are you feeling lucky?
    

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15. Page / Copyright ©2014 by Readify Pty Ltd
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16. Page
    CloudFormation Change Sets
    › Supply your updated template to a Change Set via
    New-CFNChangeSet
    › AWS diffs the updated template against the current
    stack
    › A detailed list of what changes and what doesn’t is
    provided
    › Details the dependency chain and how it is effected
    / Copyright ©2014 by Readify Pty Ltd
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17. Page
    Immutability
    › Rev infrastructure package => refresh instances
    › CI + CloudFormation can do this for us
    › Inject version into Launch configuration userdata
    › Triggers a replacement of the launch configuration
    › How do we stay HA while our infrastructure refreshes?
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18. Page
    AutoScaleGroup Update Policies
    › Allows an ASG to stay HA while undergoing a refresh
    › Keeps a number of instances in service while
    terminating stale and creating fresh instances
    › Works with cfn-signal.exe to ensure updates are
    successful
    › Rolls back on failure
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19. Part 3
    Phoenix
    environments
    The really really cool part!
    

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20. Page
    Deploying feature branches
    › The Dream:
    › Developer checks in code on a feature branch
    › The feature branch is built by our CI service of choice
    › Once complete, our CI service then invokes Octopus and
    triggers an isolated stack of hardware to be deployed for it
    › Once the hardware is ready, the feature branch’s payload is
    automatically deployed to it by Octopus
    › From check-in to our feature running on new, isolated
    compute. Ready to test and destroy when we are done
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21. Page
    Octopus 3.4
    › Introduces new features that allow us to work with a
    tonne more flexibility in elastic environments
    › Multi-tenancy
    › Project Triggers / Auto Deploy Overrides
    › Machine Policies
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22. Page
    Setup
    › We have built a new feature ryan on an isolated feature
    branch! We push the code up to our repository
    › Our CI service notices this and creates a release for our
    feature branch package, with a semver version number
    1.0.0-ryan0001
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23. Page
    Octo 3.4 – Multi-tenancy
    › We created a tenant ryan0001for our feature branch –we are
    using the semver from the built package as a naming
    convention
    › Allows us to isolate and group sets of machines within an
    environment
    › Allows us to configure projects with tenant-specific variables
    › Allows us to control what software gets deployed to what sets
    of machines via triggers within an environment
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24. Page
    Octo 3.4 – Auto Deploy Overrides
    › We created an auto deploy override for our feature
    branch tenant ryan0001 for the feature branch
    package version 1.0.0-ryan0001
    › Part of Project Triggers
    › Auto Deploy Overrides allow us to say ‘when a project
    trigger fires, and the machine that triggered it is for a
    given tenant, deploy an explicit version of the project to
    the machine, not the default’
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25. Page
    Octo 3.4 – Machine Policies
    › When our instances register with Octopus via
    tentacle.exe, they indicate a machine policy
    › When we clean up our CloudFormation, how do we
    ensure Octopus is cleaned up as well?
    › Old way: AWS Lambda
    › New way: Octopus Machine Policies
    › Healthchecks and unavailable machines
    › Cleanup unavailable machines
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26. Page
    Living The Dream
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27. Thank you
    Andrew Best | @_andrewb | andrew.best@readify.net
    

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