So You Still Cowboy Code Your Infrastructure...

We all know not to cowboy code our applications, yet it’s the Wild West when working on building and maintaining your servers. In my talk, I will discuss provisioning, deployment, and development setup for infrastructure. By working through a case study of rebuilding my company’s infrastructure, I will demonstrate the advantages of building servers in a development environment. Using this workflow, you will be able to see how easy it is to build and maintain infrastructure through sane and logical development practices.

Transcript

1. So You Still
   Cowboy Code
   Your Infrastructure…
   Zack Tollman | The Theme Foundry | @tollmanz
   

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2. !
   Cowboy Coding
   

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3. No testing
   

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4. Live edits
   

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5. No process
   

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6. Jack Bauer Coding
   

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7. Crass
   Unpredictable
   Collateral Damage
   

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8. “Sir, I have a way to _______,
   but it might involve _______.”
   

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9. It started 18 months ago
   

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10. Manage the servers they said
    

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11. My history of live edits
    is not good
    

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12. ssh this-guy@your-server.com
    

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13. > top
    Brain wants
    

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14. > service nginx stop
    Fingers type
    

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15. rewrite
    ^/punchcut/?$
    /wordpress-themes/paperpunch/ permanent
    

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16. rm /srv/www/wp-config.php
    

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17. How can I build something that
    saves me from myself?
    

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18. Peace of mind with
    Local Development
    

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19. Develop in a non-remote
    environment
    

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20. Mistakes only hurt my ego
    

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21. Vagrant
    

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22. Reproducible development
    environment
    

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23. Test server locally
    

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24. ssh this-guy@local-server.com
    

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25. Best approximation
    

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26. Allows me to see what likely
    happens when I do something
    

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27. Keeping me off the command line with
    Provisioning
    

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28. Set of actions
    to prepare a server
    

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29. Idempotence
    Apply the same procedure;
    get the same result
    

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30. Guarantees a server’s state
    

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36. Documents your server
    

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37. Allows for versioning
    

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38. I can still mess this up so let’s talk about
    Deployment
    

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39. Process of making
    software available
    

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40. Clone/pull
    Move files
    Handle permissions
    Run build tasks
    

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41. Automate the headaches away
    

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42. Fabric
    Vlad the!
    Deployer
    

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44. That’s neat, but how do we
    Integrate These Tools
    

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45. Let’s add Fail2Ban to our site
    

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46. Server software
    New logs
    New configs
    Application changes
    * Bad config blocks everyone
    

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47. WordPress, plugins,
    and theme code
    App
    

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48. Salt state files that describe
    the state of the server
    App States
    

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49. Data for specific servers
    (e.g., more Memcached RAM
    for production)
    App States Pillar
    

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50. Fabric commands for
    deployment tasks
    App States Pillar Fab
    

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51. Server environments
    App States Pillar Fab
    Local/Vagrant Staging Production
    

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52. App States Pillar Fab
    

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53. App States Pillar Fab
    Write state
    

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54. Add config to Pillar
    App States Pillar Fab
    

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55. App States Pillar Fab
    Local Staging Production
    Deploy server updates locally
    fab local server.update
    

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56. App States Pillar Fab
    Local Staging Production
    

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57. App States Pillar Fab
    Test that changes
    were applied
    Local Staging Production
    

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58. App States Pillar Fab
    Local Staging Production
    Install and modify
    WP Fail2Ban plugin
    

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59. App States Pillar Fab
    Local Staging Production
    fab local app.deploy
    Deploy app updates locally
    

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60. App States Pillar Fab
    Local Staging Production
    Test, test, test, test,
    take a break,
    test, test, test, test
    

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61. App States Pillar Fab
    Local Staging Production
    Changes made to 3 repos
    and applied locally
    

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62. App States Pillar Fab
    Local Staging Production
    Apply changes to staging
    environment
    

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63. App States Pillar Fab
    Local Staging Production
    fab staging server.update
    fab staging app.deploy
    

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64. App States Pillar Fab
    Local Staging Production
    Verify changes in real environment
    Verify deployment procedure
    

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65. App States Pillar Fab
    Local Staging Production
    Apply changes to production
    

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66. App States Pillar Fab
    Local Staging Production
    fab production server.update
    fab production app.deploy
    

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67. Adopt procedures that
    improve stability
    

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68. Use the tools that
    work for you and your team
    

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69. speakerdeck.com/tollmanz/so-you-still-cowboy-
    code-your-infrastructure-dot-dot-dot
    

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