Remote Desktop, Continuously Delivered

Originally presented at 2019 DevOpsDays Philadelphia.

Traveling with multiple electronic devices can be a chore, especially with constraints on size and the hurdles of security. We can try to solve this problem by using a remote desktop accessible from any of our devices but that can take time to set up! What happens when we need another remote desktop quickly? How can we create a remote desktop as on-demand as a container or virtual machine in our datacenter?

In this talk, we’ll apply infrastructure-as-code to create a continuously delivered remote desktop experience. While there are some limitations to a seamless user experience for a remote desktop, we’ll review tools allow us to automate creation and configuration and techniques to ensure it is built reliably. By applying infrastructure-as-code to remote desktop, we can create an immutable remote desktop image, deploy replicas based on our geographic location, and test if our development environment is ready for use.

Transcript

1. Copyright © 2019 HashiCorp Remote Desktop, Continuously Delivered DevOpsDaysPhilly | October 23, 2019 @joatmon08
2. Warning: This isn’t a Continuous Delivery success story. But it will have elephants. 2
3. #notsponsored
4. Why? ▪ Security – Intellectual Property – Personal Identifying Information ▪ Developer Productivity ▪ I ❤ my development machine
5. “Physical resources are better than logical.” 5
6. Right? 6.4 Mt Of e-waste in US, 2017 ~ 1.2 M Asian elephants, in equivalent weight https://collections.unu.edu/eserv/UNU:6341/Global-E-waste_Monitor_2017__electronic_single_pages_.pdf
7. Right? 6.4 Mt Of e-waste in US, 2017 ~ 1.2 M Asian elephants, in equivalent weight https://www.worldwildlife.org/species/asian-elephant < 50,000 Current population of Asian elephants
8. Physical resources have a cost. 8
9. Let’s try to deliver a virtual development environment. 9
10. Reduce friction with Continuous Delivery ▪ So I can predictably and reliably create a development environment, on-demand. ▪ And run on one tablet.
11. Remote Desktop, Continuously Delivered Immutable image of desktop tools So I’m ready to develop Deploy to region of choice In a reliable way Run it on my tablet Travel lighter and reduce cost 11
12. Immutable image of desktop tools So I’m ready to develop 12
13. Scripts install packages. ▪ Chrome Remote Desktop ▪ Visual Studio Code & Extensions ▪ Golang ▪ Git ▪ Terraform ▪ Docker
14. Before I need the cloud, test with Vagrant. CODE EDITOR Vagrant.configure("2") do |config| config.vm.box = "debian/stretch64" config.vm.provision "shell", path: “../packer/install- desktop.sh" config.vm.provision "shell", path: “../packer/install- devtools.sh", privileged: false config.vm.provision "shell", path: "../packer/test.sh", privileged: false end
15. Continuously Deliver the Image ▪ vagrant up for local test ▪ Commit and push ▪ CircleCI uses Packer to build
16. github.com/joatmon08/chrome-remote-desktop-image
17. Deploy to region of choice In a reliable way 17
18. Successful CD has Tests ▪Unit ▪Contract ▪Integration ▪End-to-end
19. Successful CD has Tests ▪Unit ✅ ▪Contract ✅ ▪Integration # ▪End-to-end $
20. Unit ▪Not exactly a unit test ▪Check if runtime has variables defined ▪Still passes locally
21. Contract ▪Actual outputs match expected inputs ▪e.g., Terraform Cloud variables and outputs
22. Deploy Changes ▪(Manually) Get refresh token ▪Add to CircleCI environment variables ▪Trigger pipeline in CircleCI
23. github.com/joatmon08/chrome-remote-desktop-pipeline
24. Run it on my tablet Travel lighter and reduce cost 24
26. Manual End-to-End Test ▪ I didn’t bring my tablet! ▪ Modifier keys don't work ▪ Would like to automate this
27. Cost Optimization ▪ Schedule weekly shutdown ▪ Simple cron job ▪ Build better development discipline and habits
28. “Tech Debt” ▪ Secrets (PIN, API keys, etc.) ▪ Automate retrieval of refresh token ▪ Security scanning ▪ Lock down networking
29. “Tech Debt” ▪ Auditing log-ins ▪ Better lifecycle management ▪ Cost estimation Similar to developing a product…
30. Frictionless? 30
31. Not quite! ▪ Security – Still need to do auditing steps ▪ Developer Productivity – Pipelines, with some manual steps ▪ I ❤ my development machine – At least I have my IDE
32. Good enough for me! ▪ Distraction-free development environment ▪ Push and forget ▪ Reduced cost*
33. DevOps is about
 trying to do better. 33
34. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_elephant#/media/File:Elephas_maximus_(Bandipur).jpg
35. Useful Links ▪ Remote Desktop Image & Pipeline ▪ Chrome Remote Desktop ▪ Packer Builder for GCE ▪ Terraform Cloud ▪ VS Code CLI Extension Management
36. github.com/joatmon08/chrome-remote-desktop-pipeline Rosemary Wang (she/her) Developer Advocate at HashiCorp @joatmon08 joatmon08 linkedin.com/in/rosemarywang/ 36