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Infrastructure provisioning for dstl-lighthouse

Description

Code for provision and deployment for various components of the dstl-lighthouse project

Table of Contents

Requirements

  • Vagrant
  • VirtualBox (or VMware if you prefer)
  • Terraform
  • A keypair set up with AWS
  • This repository and submodules pulled down

If you have the above, you can skip past "Getting started" to Provision server in AWS.

Getting started

Ensure SSH keys are set up for GitHub

In order to make changes to this repo you need to create an ssh keypair and add it to your GitHub profile. The easiest way to do this is by following this handy GitHub tutorial.

Clone the lighthouse-builder repo to your machine

git clone git@github.com:dstl/lighthouse-builder.git
cd lighthouse-builder

Pull the lighthouse-secrets repo

The lighthouse-secrets repo is a private repo you should have access to. It's a git submodule of this repo and contains files needed for lighthouse to operate properly. If it has moved or you are using a different one, you can change the .gitmodules file in this repo to point the new place. You need to pull down the repo into the secrets directory, which can be done like so:

git submodule update --init

Provisioning

Using Terraform to provision

Why would I use Terraform? Terraform is used for provisioning cloud servers on Amazon Web Services (AWS). It may at first seem daunting, but it can be a lot easier and more productive than doing it through the AWS UI. All the configuration for Lighthouse's AWS server is done in the terraform directory of this repository.

Create a keypair on AWS

Follow this helpful guide provided by Amazon in order to authenticate with AWS in the future, which is required for using Terraform.

Install Terraform

Terraform makes provisioning of cloud servers easy for AWS.

On a mac:

brew install terraform

For other platforms, you may be able to use the system package manager, but it may be easier to download Terraform from the official website on the Terraform download page. For more info on installing and configuring terraform see the guide to installing Terraform

Provision servers in AWS

All the configuration files are located in terraform, so get your shell into there first:

cd terraform

Then type

terraform apply

Terraform will create the necessary resources in AWS. Check the AWS console and you should see 2 servers provisioned.

How to modify server details

The terraform.tfvars file contains the variables used by Terraform config to change which network locations can access the Terraformed servers.

In preview.tf, each of the IP addresses listed in there are put into the ingress block inside the "aws_security_group" resource.

This security group is used in redhat_preview.tf, in order to indicate which IP addresses are able to access the Lighthouse server and the Lighthouse CI server. redhat_preview.tf is also where these two servers are configured in general, and is a good starting point for configuring new environments.

Deploying

Deployments in Lighthouse are performed by Jenkins using Ansible.

It is important to understand the differences between the environments so you can choose which one to deploy using.

Steps to deploy

Choose an Environment

Has Internet Access No Internet Access
Preconfigured Preview Copper
Site Specific Bronze Silver

Criteria for choosing

Internet access or air-gapped?

Lighthouse is designed to be deployed into multiple different networks, some airgapped and some with internet access. Whether you have internet access in your network decides which environment you should use.

Preconfigured or Site Specific?

When deploying we have provided settings to "out-of-the-box" deploy to either a Internet or Airgapped network. Should you need to deploy to another network you can use Site Specific settings instead by using a Bronze or Silver evironment. Whether you need to configure these settings in your network decides which environment you should use.

Preview

  • Has internet access. Deploys using the internet and pulls all it's packages from public sources.
  • Preconfigured settings. Requires only minimal configuration before use.

Preview has been preconfigured to deploy in AWS. It uses the layout created by Terraform as defined in terraform/preview.tf. You only need to configure a few settings before you can use it.

Copper

Copper has been configured to deploy to AWS. It uses the layout created by terraform as defined in terraform/copper.tf.

Copper requires an Internet enabled environment to have it's dependencies packaged and these dependencies rsynced to the target VM before it can bootstrap without internet access.

Bronze

  • Has internet access. Deploys using the internet and pulls all it's packages from public sources.
  • Site specific settings. Requires configuring before use.

Bronze is more flexible version of Preview. As such it needs some configuration before use.

Silver

Silver is more flexible version of Copper. As such it needs some configuration before use.

Silver requires an Internet enabled environment to have it's dependencies packaged and these dependencies rsynced to it before it can bootstrap without internet access.

Configure settings

Settings need to be configured before bootstrapping jenkins. What needs configured depends greatly on which environment you've chosen to run.

Configure Preview

  • In secrets/preview.inventory set the internal IP of lighthouse

    Use the Public IP of the lighthouse box created by terraform.

      [lighthouse-app-server]
      <public lighthouse ip> ansible_ssh_private_key_file=../secrets/preview.deploy.pem ansible_ssh_user=ec2-user
    
  • In secrets/preview.site_specific.yml set the lighthouse ip

    Use the Public IP of the lighthouse box created by terraform.

      lighthouse_ip: '<public lighthouse ip>'
    
  • Commit those changes to master

    Update jobs use master to update from so you need to commit these changes otherwise they will be overwritten when you update jenkins.

Configure Copper

  • In secrets/copper.inventory set the internal IP of lighthouse

    Use the Public IP of the lighthouse box created by terraform.

      [lighthouse-app-server]
      <public lighthouse ip> ansible_ssh_private_key_file=../secrets/preview.deploy.pem ansible_ssh_user=ec2-user
    
  • In secrets/copper.site_specific.yml set the lighthouse ip

    Use the Public IP of the lighthouse box created by terraform.

      lighthouse_ip: '<public lighthouse ip>'
    
  • Commit those changes to master

    Update jobs use master to update from so you need to commit these changes otherwise they will be overwritten when you update jenkins.

Configure Bronze

Bronze requires a number of files to be created in /opt/secrets on the VM you intend to bootstrap.

  • If using RHEL Make sure your VM is registered

    Our deployments require unrestricted yum access. So ensuring your VM is fully registered with RHEL guarantees we can install things from yum.

  • Place an ssh private key that has rights to lighthouse

    We put ours in /opt/secrets/ssh.pem. Use that path anywhere you are asked for <ssh key path> in this section.

  • Place a github ssh keypair in /opt/secrets/ssh_rsa

    This ssh keypair is used to clone repos from github. The files need to be placed in /opt/secrets/ssh_rsa and /opt/secrets/ssh_rsa.pub and be owned by the <ssh user> you will use to bootstrap jenkins.

  • Create /opt/secrets/site_specific.yml

      lighthouse_hostname: '<lighthouse url>'
      lighthouse_host: '<lighthouse url>'
      jenkins_url: 'http://<jenkins url>:8080/'
      lighthouse_ci_hostname: '<jenkins url>'
      jenkins_internal_url: 'http://0.0.0.0:8080/'
      github_token: '<github access token>'
      lighthouse_ip: '<lighthouse public ip>'
      lighthouse_secret_key: '<secret key>'
      lighthouse_ssh_key_path: '<ssh key path>'
      lighthouse_ssh_user: '<ssh user>'
    

    where:

    <lighthouse url>: The url you want users to access lighthouse over. Needs to be defined in DNS.

    <jenkins url>: The url you want to use to access jenkins. Needs to be defined in DNS.

    <lighthouse ip>: The IP of lighthouse that jenkins can use to ssh to.

    <github token>: A github personal access token which has access to lighthouse and lighthouse-builder.

    <secret key>: Some long random string used for crypto. Use head -30 /dev/urandom | sha256sum to generate a nice long random string.

    <ssh key path>: Path to the ssh private key that has ssh rights to the lighthouse VM, e.g. /opt/secrets/ssh.pem

    <ssh user>: The user that the <ssh key path> has to ssh in to lighthouse as. In preview this is ec2-user.

  • Create /opt/secrets/bronze.inventory

      [lighthouse-app-server]
      <lighthouse ip> ansible_ssh_private_key_file=<ssh key path> ansible_ssh_user=<ssh user>
    
      [bronze:children]
      lighthouse-app-server
    

    where:

    <lighthouse ip>: The IP of lighthouse that jenkins can use to ssh to.

    <ssh key path>: Path to the ssh private key that has ssh rights to the lighthouse VM, e.g. /opt/secrets/ssh.pem

    <ssh user>: The user that the <ssh key path> has to ssh in to lighthouse as. In preview this is ec2-user.

Configure Silver

Silver requires a number of files to be created in /opt/secrets on the VM you intend to bootstrap.

  • If using RHEL Make sure your VM is registered

    Our deployments require unrestricted yum access. So ensuring your VM is fully registered with RHEL guarantees we can install things from yum.

  • Place an ssh private key that has rights to lighthouse

    We put ours in /opt/secrets/ssh.pem. Use that path anywhere you are asked for <ssh key path> in this section.

  • Create /opt/secrets/site_specific.yml

      lighthouse_hostname: '<lighthouse url>'
      lighthouse_host: '<lighthouse url>'
      jenkins_url: 'http://<jenkins url>:8080/'
      lighthouse_ci_hostname: '<jenkins url>'
      jenkins_internal_url: 'http://0.0.0.0:8080/'
      github_token: '<github access token>'
      lighthouse_ip: '<lighthouse public ip>'
      lighthouse_secret_key: '<secret key>'
      lighthouse_ssh_key_path: '<ssh key path>'
      lighthouse_ssh_user: '<ssh user>'
    

    where:

    <lighthouse url>: The url you want users to access lighthouse over. Needs to be defined in DNS.

    <jenkins url>: The url you want to use to access jenkins. Needs to be defined in DNS.

    <lighthouse ip>: The IP of lighthouse that jenkins can use to ssh to.

    <github token>: A github personal access token which has access to lighthouse and lighthouse-builder.

    <secret key>: Some long random string used for crypto. Use head -30 /dev/urandom | sha256sum to generate a nice long random string.

    <ssh key path>: Path to the ssh private key that has ssh rights to the lighthouse VM, e.g. /opt/secrets/ssh.pem

    <ssh user>: The user that the <ssh key path> has to ssh in to lighthouse as. In preview this is ec2-user.

  • Create /opt/secrets/silver.inventory

      [lighthouse-app-server]
      <lighthouse ip> ansible_ssh_private_key_file=<ssh key path> ansible_ssh_user=<ssh user>
    
      [silver:children]
      lighthouse-app-server
    

    where:

    <lighthouse ip>: The IP of lighthouse that jenkins can use to ssh to.

    <ssh key path>: Path to the ssh private key that has ssh rights to the lighthouse VM, e.g. /opt/secrets/ssh.pem

    <ssh user>: The user that the <ssh key path> has to ssh in to lighthouse as. In preview this is ec2-user.

Rsync dependencies

Dependencies for Internet bootstrap

Preview and Bronze both pull dependencies from the public internet. As such the only thing they need to start the bootstrap is the lighthouse-builder repo.

  • Clone the lighthouse-builder repo to your machine

      ~ > git clone git@github.com:dstl/lighthouse-builder.git
    
  • Ensure lighthouse-secrets repo is checked out

      ~ > cd lighthouse-builder
      ~/lighthouse-builder > git submodule update --init
    
  • Rsync the lighthouse-builder repo to the jenkins VM

      ~ > rsync -Pav -e 'ssh -i <ssh key path>' ~/lighthouse-builder/ /tmp/boostrap/
    

    where:

    <ssh key path> is the path to an ssh private key that can ssh in to the jenkins VM. For preview we use secrets/preview.deploy.pem.

    we assume you have checked out lighthouse-builder to ~/lighthouse-builder.

Dependencies for Airgapped bootstrap

Copper and Silver both require full dependencies to be packaged on an existing Internet enabled network.

  • Perform a full deploy to a Preview or Bronze environment

    This is a full deploy, so it may take a while.

  • Package the dependencies on your Preview or Bronze

    Follow the guide to package dependencies.

  • Rsync dependencies from the Preview or Bronze jenkins VM

      ~ > rsync -Pav -e 'ssh -i <ssh key path>' \
                <ssh user>@<jenkins ip>:/opt/dist/ \
                /tmp/dist/
    

    where:

    <ssh key path> is the path to an ssh private key that can ssh in to the jenkins VM. For preview we use secrets/preview.deploy.pem.

    <ssh user> is the user that <ssh key path> has to login as on jenkins.

    <jenkins ip> is the public IP of the jenkins VM.

  • Create the folder /opt/dist in the Copper or Silver jenkins VM

      ~ > ssh -i <ssh key path>' <ssh user>@<target ip>
      <ssh user>@<target ip> > sudo mkdir /opt/dist/
      <ssh user>@<target ip> > sudo chmod <ssh user>:<ssh user> /opt/dist/
      <ssh user>@<target ip> > exit
      ~ >
    

    where:

    <ssh key path> is the path to an ssh private key that can ssh in to the jenkins VM. For preview we use secrets/preview.deploy.pem.

    <ssh user> is the user that <ssh key path> has to login as on jenkins.

    <target ip> is the public IP of the Copper or Silver jenkins VM.

  • Rsync dependencies to the Copper or Silver jenkins VM

      ~ > rsync -Pav -e 'ssh -i <ssh key path>' \
                /tmp/dist/ \
                <ssh user>@<jenkins ip>:/opt/dist/
    

    where:

    <ssh key path> is the path to an ssh private key that can ssh in to the jenkins VM. For preview we use secrets/preview.deploy.pem.

    <ssh user> is the user that <ssh key path> has to login as on jenkins.

    <jenkins ip> is the public IP of the jenkins VM.

Bootstrap Jenkins

Bootstrap an Internet enabled deploy

Prerequisites for internet deploy

Before doing this be sure you have:

Bootstrap from /tmp/bootstrap

We assume you have this repo rsynced to /tmp/bootstrap in the target VM. If not follow the guide to rsync dependencies for Internet deploy.

Run the following commands to ssh in to the target VM and perform the bootstrap.

~ > ssh -i <ssh key path> <ssh user>@<target ip>
# You should now be in the Jenkins VM through SSH
(<ssh user>@<target ip>) > cd /tmp/bootstrap/ansible
(<ssh user>@<target ip>) > ./bootstrap.sh --<environment>

where:

<environment> is the environment you have chosen to deploy, either of preview or bronze. Read the guide on choosing an environment to decide which to use.

<target ip> is the IP of the target VM you want to bootstrap in to a Jenkins VM.

<ssh key path> is the path on your local machine to an ssh private key with ssh rights to the target VM.

<ssh user> is the user that has rights to ssh in to the target VM

The bootstrap takes a few minutes. Once complete you will have a fully built jenkins instance available at <jenkins ip>. Next you should update jenkins and restart jenkins before trying any deploys.

Bootstrap an Airgapped deploy

Prerequisites for Airgapped deploy

Before doing this be sure you have:

Bootstrap from /opt/dist/bootstrap

We assume you have all dependencies rsynced to /opt/dist in the target VM. If not follow the guide to rsync dependencies for Airgapped deploy.

Run the following commands to ssh in to the target VM and perform the bootstrap.

~ > ssh -i <ssh key path> <ssh user>@<target ip>
# You should now be in the Jenkins VM through SSH
(<ssh user>@<target ip>) > cd /opt/dist/bootstrap/ansible
(<ssh user>@<target ip>) > ./bootstrap.sh --<environment>

where:

<environment> is the environment you have chosen to deploy, either of copper or silver. Read the guide on choosing an environment to decide which to use.

<target ip> is the IP of the target VM you want to bootstrap in to a Jenkins VM.

<ssh key path> is the path on your local machine to an ssh private key with ssh rights to the target VM.

<ssh user> is the user that has rights to ssh in to the target VM

The bootstrap takes a few minutes. Once complete you will have a fully built jenkins instance available at <jenkins ip>. Next you should update jenkins and restart jenkins before trying any deploys.

Update Jenkins

It's vitally important to update jenkins through the internal update job before trying to run any other jobs. Run the Update Jenkins job from the dashboard.

Restart Jenkins

Go to hit http://<jenkins-public-ip>:8080/restart to restart Jenkins. If and when this doesn't work, try sshing onto the server (as described in "Run the bootstrap command") and run:

(centos@ci) > sudo service jenkins restart

Deploy Lighthouse

Once you have a fully working jenkins deploy, either Internet enabled or Airgapped, the last step is to actually deploy the Lighthouse app.

To do this simply trigger a Build Lighthouse job from the Jenkins job list. This will, if it completes cleanly, trigger a full deploy to the VM you defined when configuring jenkins.

Package dependencies

To bootstrap Jenkins in a network that is airgapped we first need to collect all the dependencies needed in bootstrapping and deploying.

Overview of /opt/dist

Once dependencies are collected are ready you will have them all collected in /opt/dist on the Jenkins VM:

  • /opt/dist/bootstrap

    The lighthouse-builder repo fully checked out and ready to be used to bootstrap Jenkins on your airgapped VM.

  • /opt/dist/git

    The lighthouse and lighthouse-builder repos bare cloned so you can develop in the airgapped network.

  • /opt/dist/jpi

    The Jenkins plugins that are installed by the digi2al.jenkins ansible role.

  • /opt/dist/pypi

    The Python libraries that are installed either by lighthouse or the ansible roles. This includes Python 3 and Python 2.7 libraries.

  • /opt/dist/tars

    The digi2al.phantomjs role installs phantomjs from a tarball. This tarball is packaged in /opt/dist/tars.

  • /opt/dist/workspaces

    Workspaces precreated for each of the Jenkins jobs. By checking out the workspaces we avoid the problems of checking out submodules and ensuring those submodules checkout from /opt/dist.

  • /opt/dist/yum

    The numerous RPMs that are required to provision and configure both Jenkins and lighthouse.

Steps to collecting dependencies

The steps to this are:

  • Deploy a full Internet enabled environment

    To collect the dependencies that are required to deploy the full environment we need a complete deployed environment. This environment will have all the dependencies already installed and so we can easily collect them.

    Follow the guide to Bootstrap an Internet enabled deploy.

  • Run the Package Dependencies job

    To collect dependencies from a fully deployed environment trigger the jenkins job "Package Dependencies". This job will:

    • SSH in to Lighthouse VM and collect installed RPMs and PyPi Python libraries to a folder in /opt/dist on the VM
    • Rsync the dependencies from the Lighthouse VM to /opt/dist on the Jenkins VM
    • Collect all installed RPMs, PyPi libraries, Git repos and Jenkins plugins to /opt/dist on the Jenkins VM
    • Pull a copy of this repo to /opt/dist/bootstrap so you can bootstrap Jenkins in the airgapped environment
  • Move the dependencies to the Airgapped Jenkins VM

    In bootstrapping an airgapped environment we need to get the /opt/dist folder on to the target Jenkins VM. Our preferred transport mechanism is Rsync using a developer laptop as the bridge. Rsyncing between two environments using a laptop as the bridge is covered in the guide to dependencies for an Airgapped bootstrap.

Configuring your servers with servers.yml

The servers.yml file can be found in the ansible directory. It is responsible for describing how Vagrant and Ansible should be provisioning and setting up a new VM locally. It looks something like this:

---
- name: lighthouse-dev
  box: box-cutter/centos72
  host: lighthouse.dev
  ip: 10.1.1.10
  ram: 1024
  playbook: playbook.yml
  mounts:
    - envvar: DSTL_LIGHTHOUSE
      target: /opt/lighthouse
  groups:
    - vagrant
    - development

Most of those yaml items are self-explanatory, but the important part is the groups key. This contains a list of Ansible groups which this VM will fall under, and thus determines which "plays" to run from the playbook.yml file specified above.

Jenkins jobs

Build Lighthouse job

The Build Lighthouse job is used to ensure the correctness of the latest deployable code of Lighthouse. It checks out the lighthouse repo and runs Python unit tests using the script in bin/jenkins.sh.

With internet access this job will download all dependencies from PyPi and use them in running the tests. This is controlled by the ansible variable lighthouse_internet_access: yes, which is the default.

Without internet access this job will use /opt/dist/pypi to fetch dependencies from. This is controlled by the ansible variable lighthouse_internet_access: no, which is defined in the digi2al.dependencies role.

It will trigger the Deploy Lighthouse job if it passes.

Build Lighthouse PRs job

The Build Lighthouse PRs job is identical to the Build Lighthouse job except it will build branches other than master. This way we have the Build Lighthouse job to guarantee master is green while this job flicks depending on the success of the different pull requests.

It will not trigger the Deploy Lighthouse job if it passes.

Deploy Lighthouse job

The Deploy Lighthouse job checks out the lighthouse-builder repo and runs an ansible playbook to deploy lighthouse. It uses the lighthouse-app-server group defined in ansible/playbook.yml to perform the deploy.

In Preview or Bronze this job will download dependencies from the public internet. This is controlled using the distribute_dependencies: no ansible var, which is the default value.

In Copper or Silver this job will rsync dependencies from /opt/dist on the Jenkins VM to /opt/dist on the Lighthouse VM. All dependencies will then be consumed from /opt/dist.

It will trigger the Acceptance Test Lighthouse job if it passes.

Acceptance Test Lighthouse job

The Acceptance Test job checks out the lighthouse repo and runs the splinter tests from lighthouse/acceptancetests against the deployed instance of lighthouse. This will prove that deployment was successful.

Package Dependencies job

The Package Dependencies job runs two ansible plays, package-lighthouse and package-dependencies, defined in ansible/playbook.yml by checking out the lighthouse-builder repo and running ansible/package-dependencies.sh.

Running this job will collect all dependencies needed to deploy lighthouse to an airgapped network. See the guide on Packaging for more about how this works.

Update Jenkins job

The Update Jenkins job checks out the lighthouse-builder repo and runs an ansible play, jenkins, defined in ansible/playbook.yml.

Running this play will update Jenkins to the latest settings as defined by the jenkins play.

How does logging work?

Logging is done via uWSGI, and is configured in the Jinja2 template ansible/roles/dstl.lighthouse/templates/wsgi.ini.j2. You should see this line:

daemonize={{ uwsgi_log_dir }}/lighthouse.log

When Ansible sets up uWSGI (using ansible/roles/digi2al.python/tasks/uwsgi.yml), it'll use the uwsgi_log_dir variable to point the logs at a specified location. The default, which is configured in ansible/roles/digi2al.python/defaults/main.yml, is '/var/log/uwsgi'

If you need to change the log location, your best bet is to do it on an environmental level by changing the appropriate environment .site_specific.yml file in the secrets folder.

How is the Lighthouse server typically configured?

Development

The Lighthouse application is written using Python+Django, and is executed manually by using Django's usual management tools, python manage.py runserver 0.0.0.0:3000. Outside of the VM, that means the app will be available on the VM's IP address (normally 10.1.1.10) at port 3000.

Where is this configured/where does it happen? In the ansible directory, find roles/digi2al.python/tasks. Three tasks in there, main.yml, nginx.yml and uswsgi.yml specify how the app is to be run.

Production

The Lighthouse application is written using Python+Django, and is loaded using an application server container called uWSGI. uWSGI loads the Django app and serves it locally on an HTTP port (normally 8080).

Where is this configured/where does it happen? In the ansible directory, find roles/dstl.lighthouse/tasks and roles/digi2al.python/tasks.

The tasks listed in digi2al.python/tasks will install nginx and uWSGI.

In dstl.lighthouse/tasks, users are set up, and config files are generated for nginx and uWSGI from templates in the digital.lighthouse/templates folder. The task which actually runs nginx and uWSGI using these new settings is service.yml.

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Code for provision and deployment for various components of the dstl-lighthouse project

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