This is a set of Ansible scripts to deploy Play 2.2+ web applications and Postgres database in EC2 instances. The EC2 instances for Play should be 'small' or larger; 'micro' instances won't be able to compile the Play app. Play applications are run as a system service.

This project uses EC2 instance IDs to reference EC2 instances, because their IP addresses and DNS names change on every restart unless you have provisioned permanent IP addresses.

WARNING: USE AT YOUR OWN RISK. NO WARRANTY, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED IS PROVIDED.

1. If your git repository is private and therefore requires authentication:

a. Run the following on every EC2 instance as root (not sure how to automate this)

i. GitHub

ssh-keyscan github.com >> /etc/ssh/ssh_known_hosts

 ii. BitBucket

ssh-keyscan bitbucket.org >> /etc/ssh/ssh_known_hosts

b. Add the public key for your EC2 instances to the owner's account of the github or bitbucket repository

2. Edit /etc/ansible/ansible.cfg and change this:

transport=paramiko

to this:

transport=ssh

3. Edit yaml/config/postfix_selections to set domains for email
4. Add the Amazon AWS keys for your EC2 instances to your local ssh repository by running the following:

    ssh-agent && ssh-add ~/path/to/foo.pem

5. Edit hostIds and enter your ec2 instance id(s), one per line. Keep this file up to date as you add and remove EC2 instances.
6. Run bin/makeHostIni to create or update hosts.ini. Do this every time you add an ec2 instance id to hostIds. You also need to do this each time an AWS EC2 instance is restarted unless you have provisioned permanent IP addresses.

Scripts may contain variables that need to be customized for your specific deployments. Commonly modified variables have been factored into bin/custom.sample. Make a copy of that file and save as bin/custom before modifying.

cp bin/custom{.sample,}

The following scripts are available in the yaml directory:

Usage Run individual Ansible scripts on the hosts with IDs listed in hostIds like this (-s causes the script to run as superuser via sudo):

bin/run [options] scriptName

Where scriptName is one of the above Ansible scripts.

Options

This file drives all of the Ansible scripts. It is automatically maintained through the scripts in the bin/ directory.

This file contains 3 sections: a section listing the EC2 instanceIDs of generic EC2 servers, a section listing the EC2 instanceIDs of Play servers, and a section listing the EC2 instanceIDs of Postgres servers.

Note that each entry in the playServers and postgresServers sections should also appear in the ec2Instances section.

[ec2Instances]
i-493cad31
i-493cae73

[playServers]
i-493cad31

[postgresServers]
i-493cae73

The bin/provisionPlay script runs all of the Ansible scripts necessary to provision Play on the EC2 instances with IDs listed in the playServers section in hosts.ini. Options are the same as for the run script above.

The bin/provisionPostgres script runs all of the Ansible scripts necessary to provision Postgres on the EC2 instances with IDs listed in the postgresServers section in hosts.ini. Options are the same as for the run script above.

The bin directory contains EC2 and RDS utility scripts.

If you are logged into the remote server, you can start, restart and stop the Play application system service like this:

sudo service play start
sudo service play restart
sudo service play stop

Database servers should be provisioned before the application servers.

# Create an Ubuntu 13.10 micro instance in the default availability zone with the default security group.
# Define key pair scalaCourses if it does not already exist.
bin/ec2Create scalaCoursesDB scalaCourses t1.micro ami-51274050 postgresServers 
bin/provisionPostgres

# Create an Ubuntu 13.10 micro instance in the default availability zone with the default security group.
# Use the scalaCourses key pair again.
bin/ec2Create scalaCoursesPlay scalaCourses t1.micro ami-51274050 playServers
bin/provisionPlay

• The original source which inspired most of these scripts
• My first 5 minutes on a server
• A blog post that the author of the preceding article wrote

This project is sponsored by Micronautics Research, developer of ScalaCourses.com