Rails Recommendations

[Angus_Buchanan]

I’m a sysadmin that comes from a Windows background, although I’m fairly
comfortable with Linux, and LAMP stuff. Now I need to deploy a simple
rails application into a dev/test env and also into production. It’s a
very low load site, and it only needs to be available during office hours.
I’m imagining initially that it could run on a single machine, but
splitting it out isn’t a big deal later I guess. I should point out that
I’m ok at Ruby beyond Chef, but I’m not a web developer - I don’t know much
about Rails yet, and I’ve never written an Rails app before, so I’m new to
the ecosystem. The app in question was written by a friend, and is for a
charity, and I’m helping them out. I’m not in any rush, but I’d like to
know the best approach.

What I’d like to know is what the current recommended approach is to
building a server to run and deploy Rails in production, on Linux.
Specifically:

1. I have seen the application and application_rails cookbooks used - this
   seems to take a capistrano-like approach and implement it in Chef. I’m ok
   with this, but I think that I might prefer to deploy it with capistrano or
   mina instead. Is the application cookbook approach recommended?

2. An alternative approach that I’m interested in is using Omnibus to build
   a package that contains everything I need for the application to run, and
   the application itself. If this were the case would I deploy the app using
   Chef’s file or package resource, as cap or mina wouldn’t be used? I think
   this might solve the following question…

3. What’s the recommended way to get Ruby on the system? I am not very
   keen on the idea of using rvm on servers, but system packages tend to lag
   too. What is recommended?

4. What’s the recommended way to actually serve the app? I’ve read about
   Apache and Passenger - this seems like a straightforward approach, and
   simpler than unicorn or puma and so on. Are there good community cookbooks
   that can help here?

5. What about database stuff? I see there’s a database cookbook with some
   powerful tools, and a mysql cookbook, but should I try to seed the database
   with Chef or do that manually?

I think that’s all my questions for now… thanks in advance for your
guidance.

-aob

[Vladimir_Skubriev]

2014-09-01 10:12 GMT+04:00 Angus Buchanan angus.o.buchanan@gmail.com:

I'm a sysadmin that comes from a Windows background, although I'm fairly
comfortable with Linux, and LAMP stuff. Now I need to deploy a simple
rails application into a dev/test env and also into production. It's a
very low load site, and it only needs to be available during office hours.
I'm imagining initially that it could run on a single machine, but
splitting it out isn't a big deal later I guess. I should point out that
I'm ok at Ruby beyond Chef, but I'm not a web developer - I don't know much
about Rails yet, and I've never written an Rails app before, so I'm new to
the ecosystem. The app in question was written by a friend, and is for a
charity, and I'm helping them out. I'm not in any rush, but I'd like to
know the best approach.

What I'd like to know is what the current recommended approach is to
building a server to run and deploy Rails in production, on Linux.
Specifically:

1. I have seen the application and application_rails cookbooks used - this
   seems to take a capistrano-like approach and implement it in Chef. I'm ok
   with this, but I think that I might prefer to deploy it with capistrano or
   mina instead. Is the application cookbook approach recommended?

You can use them. But you need to remember that you will spend a decent
amount of time with testing and learning this cookbooks. Other case - use
chef and write you own recipe based on default HOW_TO to setup rails
application and what you need. Everywhere when you use chef cookbook's -
add time to their study and testing. Automating needed in those places
where it is absolutely necessary and can save a time.

2. An alternative approach that I'm interested in is using Omnibus to build

a package that contains everything I need for the application to run, and
the application itself. If this were the case would I deploy the app using
Chef's file or package resource, as cap or mina wouldn't be used? I think
this might solve the following question...

That's good approach, but you should learn packaging system policy's
documents. This is not easy way. But it's is you right.

3. What's the recommended way to get Ruby on the system? I am not very
   keen on the idea of using rvm on servers, but system packages tend to lag
   too. What is recommended?

You don't have a another way except using rvm or rbenv. Better to use rvm
and install them for the user. Why better - because rvm more elegant way to
use ruby on the system. There are a good cookbook chef-rvm to do it.

4. What's the recommended way to actually serve the app? I've read about
   Apache and Passenger - this seems like a straightforward approach, and
   simpler than unicorn or puma and so on. Are there good community cookbooks
   that can help here?

Passenger is a default app server (Should be enough).
See passenger cookbook if you wish to install them with chef. But in simple
approach I recommend to install them manually with chef bash scripts. You
can see a redmine cookbook for example.

5. What about database stuff? I see there's a database cookbook with some

powerful tools, and a mysql cookbook, but should I try to seed the database
with Chef or do that manually?

You can use database cookbook, but you pay for that you time. In a simple
production case just create a db manually and connect to it from you
application. If you need to create a test environment then use database
cookbook (recipe) for complete deploy test environment in vagrant machine
with kitchen.ci for example. I think this is a very simple use case.

I think that's all my questions for now... thanks in advance for your

guidance.

-aob

--
Faithfully yours,

CVision Lab System Administrator
Vladimir Skubriev

[Greg_Zapp]

Hi Angus,

I just thought I would throw this out there.. Does this need to go onto
existing infrastructure? Are you open to a PaaS? Even something like
Elastic Beanstalk from Amazon could turn out quite affordable and
flexible...

-Greg

On Mon, Sep 1, 2014 at 10:16 PM, Vladimir Skubriev skubriev@cvisionlab.com
wrote:

2014-09-01 10:12 GMT+04:00 Angus Buchanan angus.o.buchanan@gmail.com:

I'm a sysadmin that comes from a Windows background, although I'm fairly

comfortable with Linux, and LAMP stuff. Now I need to deploy a simple
rails application into a dev/test env and also into production. It's a
very low load site, and it only needs to be available during office hours.
I'm imagining initially that it could run on a single machine, but
splitting it out isn't a big deal later I guess. I should point out that
I'm ok at Ruby beyond Chef, but I'm not a web developer - I don't know much
about Rails yet, and I've never written an Rails app before, so I'm new to
the ecosystem. The app in question was written by a friend, and is for a
charity, and I'm helping them out. I'm not in any rush, but I'd like to
know the best approach.

What I'd like to know is what the current recommended approach is to
building a server to run and deploy Rails in production, on Linux.
Specifically:

1. I have seen the application and application_rails cookbooks used -
   this seems to take a capistrano-like approach and implement it in Chef.
   I'm ok with this, but I think that I might prefer to deploy it with
   capistrano or mina instead. Is the application cookbook approach
   recommended?

You can use them. But you need to remember that you will spend a decent
amount of time with testing and learning this cookbooks. Other case - use
chef and write you own recipe based on default HOW_TO to setup rails
application and what you need. Everywhere when you use chef cookbook's -
add time to their study and testing. Automating needed in those places
where it is absolutely necessary and can save a time.

2. An alternative approach that I'm interested in is using Omnibus to

build a package that contains everything I need for the application to run,
and the application itself. If this were the case would I deploy the app
using Chef's file or package resource, as cap or mina wouldn't be used? I
think this might solve the following question...

That's good approach, but you should learn packaging system policy's
documents. This is not easy way. But it's is you right.

3. What's the recommended way to get Ruby on the system? I am not very
   keen on the idea of using rvm on servers, but system packages tend to lag
   too. What is recommended?

You don't have a another way except using rvm or rbenv. Better to use rvm
and install them for the user. Why better - because rvm more elegant way to
use ruby on the system. There are a good cookbook chef-rvm to do it.

4. What's the recommended way to actually serve the app? I've read about
   Apache and Passenger - this seems like a straightforward approach, and
   simpler than unicorn or puma and so on. Are there good community cookbooks
   that can help here?

Passenger is a default app server (Should be enough).
See passenger cookbook if you wish to install them with chef. But in
simple approach I recommend to install them manually with chef bash
scripts. You can see a redmine cookbook for example.

5. What about database stuff? I see there's a database cookbook with some

powerful tools, and a mysql cookbook, but should I try to seed the database
with Chef or do that manually?

You can use database cookbook, but you pay for that you time. In a simple
production case just create a db manually and connect to it from you
application. If you need to create a test environment then use database
cookbook (recipe) for complete deploy test environment in vagrant machine
with kitchen.ci for example. I think this is a very simple use case.

I think that's all my questions for now... thanks in advance for your

guidance.

-aob

--
Faithfully yours,

CVision Lab System Administrator
Vladimir Skubriev

[Angus_Buchanan]

Hi Greg,

There's already hardware that has been donated... a few Dell servers.
We're going to use that.

-aob

On Mon, Sep 1, 2014 at 12:55 PM, Greg Zapp greg.zapp@gmail.com wrote:

Hi Angus,

I just thought I would throw this out there.. Does this need to go onto
existing infrastructure? Are you open to a PaaS? Even something like
Elastic Beanstalk from Amazon could turn out quite affordable and
flexible...

-Greg

On Mon, Sep 1, 2014 at 10:16 PM, Vladimir Skubriev <
skubriev@cvisionlab.com> wrote:

2014-09-01 10:12 GMT+04:00 Angus Buchanan angus.o.buchanan@gmail.com:

I'm a sysadmin that comes from a Windows background, although I'm fairly

comfortable with Linux, and LAMP stuff. Now I need to deploy a simple
rails application into a dev/test env and also into production. It's a
very low load site, and it only needs to be available during office hours.
I'm imagining initially that it could run on a single machine, but
splitting it out isn't a big deal later I guess. I should point out that
I'm ok at Ruby beyond Chef, but I'm not a web developer - I don't know much
about Rails yet, and I've never written an Rails app before, so I'm new to
the ecosystem. The app in question was written by a friend, and is for a
charity, and I'm helping them out. I'm not in any rush, but I'd like to
know the best approach.

What I'd like to know is what the current recommended approach is to
building a server to run and deploy Rails in production, on Linux.
Specifically:

1. I have seen the application and application_rails cookbooks used -
   this seems to take a capistrano-like approach and implement it in Chef.
   I'm ok with this, but I think that I might prefer to deploy it with
   capistrano or mina instead. Is the application cookbook approach
   recommended?

You can use them. But you need to remember that you will spend a decent
amount of time with testing and learning this cookbooks. Other case - use
chef and write you own recipe based on default HOW_TO to setup rails
application and what you need. Everywhere when you use chef cookbook's -
add time to their study and testing. Automating needed in those places
where it is absolutely necessary and can save a time.

2. An alternative approach that I'm interested in is using Omnibus to

build a package that contains everything I need for the application to run,
and the application itself. If this were the case would I deploy the app
using Chef's file or package resource, as cap or mina wouldn't be used? I
think this might solve the following question...

That's good approach, but you should learn packaging system policy's
documents. This is not easy way. But it's is you right.

3. What's the recommended way to get Ruby on the system? I am not very
   keen on the idea of using rvm on servers, but system packages tend to lag
   too. What is recommended?

You don't have a another way except using rvm or rbenv. Better to use rvm
and install them for the user. Why better - because rvm more elegant way to
use ruby on the system. There are a good cookbook chef-rvm to do it.

4. What's the recommended way to actually serve the app? I've read
   about Apache and Passenger - this seems like a straightforward approach,
   and simpler than unicorn or puma and so on. Are there good community
   cookbooks that can help here?

Passenger is a default app server (Should be enough).
See passenger cookbook if you wish to install them with chef. But in
simple approach I recommend to install them manually with chef bash
scripts. You can see a redmine cookbook for example.

5. What about database stuff? I see there's a database cookbook with

some powerful tools, and a mysql cookbook, but should I try to seed the
database with Chef or do that manually?

You can use database cookbook, but you pay for that you time. In a
simple production case just create a db manually and connect to it from
you application. If you need to create a test environment then use database
cookbook (recipe) for complete deploy test environment in vagrant machine
with kitchen.ci for example. I think this is a very simple use case.

I think that's all my questions for now... thanks in advance for your

guidance.

-aob

--
Faithfully yours,

CVision Lab System Administrator
Vladimir Skubriev

[Angus_Buchanan]

Hi Vladimir,

On Mon, Sep 1, 2014 at 11:16 AM, Vladimir Skubriev skubriev@cvisionlab.com
wrote:

You can use them. But you need to remember that you will spend a decent

amount of time with testing and learning this cookbooks. Other case - use
chef and write you own recipe based on default HOW_TO to setup rails
application and what you need. Everywhere when you use chef cookbook's -
add time to their study and testing. Automating needed in those places
where it is absolutely necessary and can save a time.

Most of the how-to docs I see are very much focussed on a development
setup, rather than something in production. But it seems pretty
straightforward. One question would be whether to have a deploy user if
using capistrano, or just to deploy as the user created for running the
app. Any suggestions?

That's good approach, but you should learn packaging system policy's
documents. This is not easy way. But it's is you right.

I think with Omnibus I can just shove everything in /opt, and update the
vhost... this also solves Ruby problems. I'm quite convinced this is a
good idea, but I couldn't find any article or example of packaging Ruby,
and some Gems, and the app itself. I guess I could try to make Jenkins
build the package too.... this seems quite a nice approach. What do you
think?

3. What's the recommended way to get Ruby on the system? I am not very

keen on the idea of using rvm on servers, but system packages tend to lag
too. What is recommended?

You don't have a another way except using rvm or rbenv. Better to use rvm
and install them for the user. Why better - because rvm more elegant way to
use ruby on the system. There are a good cookbook chef-rvm to do it.

Well... in Omnibus the Ruby is built for me... problem solved!

Passenger is a default app server (Should be enough).

See passenger cookbook if you wish to install them with chef. But in
simple approach I recommend to install them manually with chef bash
scripts. You can see a redmine cookbook for example.

OK cool. What about unicorn and puma? Why are these so popular if
passenger is so simple? I prefer the simple approach, I think.

5. What about database stuff? I see there's a database cookbook with some

powerful tools, and a mysql cookbook, but should I try to seed the database
with Chef or do that manually?

You can use database cookbook, but you pay for that you time. In a simple
production case just create a db manually and connect to it from you
application. If you need to create a test environment then use database
cookbook (recipe) for complete deploy test environment in vagrant machine
with kitchen.ci for example. I think this is a very simple use case.

I don't really understand this... but never mind.

-aob

[Vladimir_Skubriev]

2014-09-01 19:03 GMT+04:00 Angus Buchanan angus.o.buchanan@gmail.com:

Hi Vladimir,

On Mon, Sep 1, 2014 at 11:16 AM, Vladimir Skubriev <
skubriev@cvisionlab.com> wrote:

You can use them. But you need to remember that you will spend a decent

amount of time with testing and learning this cookbooks. Other case - use
chef and write you own recipe based on default HOW_TO to setup rails
application and what you need. Everywhere when you use chef cookbook's -
add time to their study and testing. Automating needed in those places
where it is absolutely necessary and can save a time.

Most of the how-to docs I see are very much focussed on a development
setup, rather than something in production. But it seems pretty
straightforward. One question would be whether to have a deploy user if
using capistrano, or just to deploy as the user created for running the
app. Any suggestions?

I would choose the second method(just deploy as the user), because I think
capistrano is the next high level abstraction, which involves additional
time. I think you dont't know what use case is choose, then lakely
capistrano not necessar at this time.

That's good approach, but you should learn packaging system policy's

documents. This is not easy way. But it's is you right.

I think with Omnibus I can just shove everything in /opt, and update the
vhost... this also solves Ruby problems. I'm quite convinced this is a
good idea, but I couldn't find any article or example of packaging Ruby,
and some Gems, and the app itself. I guess I could try to make Jenkins
build the package too.... this seems quite a nice approach. What do you
think?

Jenkins for package building/updating is cool idea. I cannot advice in
package building in you use case. But I can suggest you. I think that you
myst start from simple application cookbook, that includes very minimal of
community cookbooks as much as possible in the beginning. Write deploy as
you see it for yourself. If you want to use community cookbooks you is
always free in this. But ensure, that complexity level is will grow. Best
of all, when it happens gradually. As required. So you can control the
workflow and conduct normal work planning. The work should be gradual.The
main thing to consider the process of updating a running system. It must be
the most transparent to you as a professional who serves the application.

3. What's the recommended way to get Ruby on the system? I am not very

keen on the idea of using rvm on servers, but system packages tend to lag
too. What is recommended?

You don't have a another way except using rvm or rbenv. Better to use rvm
and install them for the user. Why better - because rvm more elegant way to
use ruby on the system. There are a good cookbook chef-rvm to do it.

Well... in Omnibus the Ruby is built for me... problem solved!

If you already used this approach - then that's right for you.

Passenger is a default app server (Should be enough).

See passenger cookbook if you wish to install them with chef. But in
simple approach I recommend to install them manually with chef bash
scripts. You can see a redmine cookbook for example.

OK cool. What about unicorn and puma? Why are these so popular if
passenger is so simple? I prefer the simple approach, I think.

As far as I've heard - Unicorn faster and very simple.
Passenger (Firefox), Unicorn (Chrome)

5. What about database stuff? I see there's a database cookbook with

some powerful tools, and a mysql cookbook, but should I try to seed the
database with Chef or do that manually?

You can use database cookbook, but you pay for that you time. In a
simple production case just create a db manually and connect to it from
you application. If you need to create a test environment then use database
cookbook (recipe) for complete deploy test environment in vagrant machine
with kitchen.ci for example. I think this is a very simple use case.

I don't really understand this... but never mind.

-aob

--
Faithfully yours,

CVision Lab System Administrator
Vladimir Skubriev

[Tensibai]

From phone, so I'll be brief: I would start from another rails app cookbook as exemple (like gitlab IIRC). Typically they're deployed from a git repo, easing the release process, they also usually include a dB part (even if it sounds more a rake task in my memory).

I'll be happy to provide a more complete view if needed.

---- Angus Buchanan a écrit ----

I'm a sysadmin that comes from a Windows background, although I'm fairly comfortable with Linux, and LAMP stuff. Now I need to deploy a simple rails application into a dev/test env and also into production. It's a very low load site, and it only needs to be available during office hours. I'm imagining initially that it could run on a single machine, but splitting it out isn't a big deal later I guess. I should point out that I'm ok at Ruby beyond Chef, but I'm not a web developer - I don't know much about Rails yet, and I've never written an Rails app before, so I'm new to the ecosystem. The app in question was written by a friend, and is for a charity, and I'm helping them out. I'm not in any rush, but I'd like to know the best approach.

What I'd like to know is what the current recommended approach is to building a server to run and deploy Rails in production, on Linux. Specifically:

1. I have seen the application and application_rails cookbooks used - this seems to take a capistrano-like approach and implement it in Chef. I'm ok with this, but I think that I might prefer to deploy it with capistrano or mina instead. Is the application cookbook approach recommended?

2. An alternative approach that I'm interested in is using Omnibus to build a package that contains everything I need for the application to run, and the application itself. If this were the case would I deploy the app using Chef's file or package resource, as cap or mina wouldn't be used? I think this might solve the following question...

3. What's the recommended way to get Ruby on the system? I am not very keen on the idea of using rvm on servers, but system packages tend to lag too. What is recommended?

4. What's the recommended way to actually serve the app? I've read about Apache and Passenger - this seems like a straightforward approach, and simpler than unicorn or puma and so on. Are there good community cookbooks that can help here?

5. What about database stuff? I see there's a database cookbook with some powerful tools, and a mysql cookbook, but should I try to seed the database with Chef or do that manually?

I think that's all my questions for now... thanks in advance for your guidance.

-aob

[Nathan_L_Smith]

On Mon, Sep 1, 2014 at 1:12 AM, Angus Buchanan angus.o.buchanan@gmail.com
wrote:

I'm a sysadmin that comes from a Windows background, although I'm fairly
comfortable with Linux, and LAMP stuff. Now I need to deploy a simple
rails application into a dev/test env and also into production. It's a
very low load site, and it only needs to be available during office hours.
I'm imagining initially that it could run on a single machine, but
splitting it out isn't a big deal later I guess. I should point out that
I'm ok at Ruby beyond Chef, but I'm not a web developer - I don't know much
about Rails yet, and I've never written an Rails app before, so I'm new to
the ecosystem. The app in question was written by a friend, and is for a
charity, and I'm helping them out. I'm not in any rush, but I'd like to
know the best approach.

What I'd like to know is what the current recommended approach is to
building a server to run and deploy Rails in production, on Linux.
Specifically:

1. I have seen the application and application_rails cookbooks used - this
   seems to take a capistrano-like approach and implement it in Chef. I'm ok
   with this, but I think that I might prefer to deploy it with capistrano or
   mina instead. Is the application cookbook approach recommended?

Capistrano uses only a "push" model of deployment, where you type a command
to deploy. When you deploy with Chef it's usually more of a "pull" model,
where the chef-client runs ensure your application is running the revision
that you tell it to. Both the application_rails cookbook and the
deploy_revision built-in resource model their directory structures and
callbacks based on how capistrano works, where the "current" directory is
linked to a specific release.

2. An alternative approach that I'm interested in is using Omnibus to
   build a package that contains everything I need for the application to run,
   and the application itself. If this were the case would I deploy the app
   using Chef's file or package resource, as cap or mina wouldn't be used? I
   think this might solve the following question...

That's also a good model, though you need to build a new package every time
you deploy. If you have automated builds and Git caching with Omnibus this
isn't so bad, but there is some overhead compared to just pulling down the
latest release of your app from a Git repository.

3. What's the recommended way to get Ruby on the system? I am not very
   keen on the idea of using rvm on servers, but system packages tend to lag
   too. What is recommended?

If you're running on Ubuntu, this cookbook
GitHub - Sutto/chef-brightbox: Brightbox Next Gen Ruby + Passenger / Nginx recipes for Chef. uses Brightbox's apt repo (
Brightbox Ruby NG Experimental : “Brightbox” team) and
has pre-built packages for the latest Ruby and includes some other nice
packages.

There are a few places with RPM specs for building Ruby on CentOS/Red Hat.

GitHub - danielsdeleo/omnibus-rubies: Matrix of Ruby/Rubygems Versions in Omnibus Form has omnibus definitions for
building Rubies.

4. What's the recommended way to actually serve the app? I've read about
   Apache and Passenger - this seems like a straightforward approach, and
   simpler than unicorn or puma and so on. Are there good community cookbooks
   that can help here?

Either one will work fine, I prefer Unicorn+Nginx.

5. What about database stuff? I see there's a database cookbook with some
   powerful tools, and a mysql cookbook, but should I try to seed the database
   with Chef or do that manually?

The deploy_revision resource (
All Infra Resources) with the default
settings will run the migrations for you. The community database cookbook
have some good resources for creating databases and users.

I think that's all my questions for now... thanks in advance for your
guidance.

-aob

--
Nathan L Smith
smith@getchef.com