Puppet and AWS is easy right.....? - Scott Coulton and Cara Crawford, Healthdirect Australia

1. Puppet and AWS is easy …… ?
Cara Crawford and Scott Coulton

2. Who are we?
DevOps/Infrastructure Manager
2
Cara Crawford
• 8 + years development experience
• 6 + years operational sysadmin experience
• Extensive experience across website solutions in both datacentre
and cloud solutions across Linux and Windows environments
@cara_p

3. Who are we?
DevOps Solution Architect
3
Scott Coulton
• 10 + years hosting solutions experience
• Extensive experience in architecture across AWS, Puppet, Linux,
Docker and all things open source
Sc
h#ps://github.com/sco#y-­‐c
h#ps://
registry.hub.docker.com
/repos/sco#yc/
h#ps://forge.puppetlabs.com/
sco#yc
@sco#coulton

4. Who are we?
4
Healthdirect Australia manages the following healthcare
service:
• Healthdirect nurse helpline and health information
• After hours GP helpline
• Pregnancy, Birth and Baby
• Mindhealthconnect
• National Health Service Directory
• My Aged Care
• Video Call Consulting

5. What we were trying to solve
August 2013
5
• Majority of servers located in AWS
• Manual deployments
• Cloning for provisioning
• Inconsistent environments
• No CD
• No CI
• No Infrastructure as code
• No Automated testing
• Very limited automation
Deployments would take weeks or months with a high level of
developer input onto cloned servers

6. How did we solve it
6
First Iteration – Nov 2013
• Basic Combination approach of Boto and Python for AWS scripting
• Basic Opensource Puppet for configuration, server management
Third Iteration – Jan 2015
• AWS Puppet module with cloud formation
• Advanced puppet coding standards with testing
• Container services and schedulers
Second Iteration – Feb 2014
• Improvements to scripts
• Additional Puppet coding standards including upgrading to Enterprise
• Heading towards 100% Puppet coverage

7. Our Environment
7
5 development environments
3 Puppet masters
Dynamically controlling the
VPC environments they are
responsible for
Each environment the access
level reducing towards Stage
and Prod being automated
environments

8. So it all looks easy, Right !!!!!
8

9. What have we learnt ?
9
A solid foundation
- Development … Where to start ???
- Unit and acceptance testing frameworks
- CD with Puppet
Deploying to AWS with Puppet
- Tips and tricks
What we are working on now to take Puppet to the next level

10. Development, Where to start ?
10

11. If you have never written a module start here !!!
11
h#ps://forge.puppetlabs.com/

12. Start with a solid development foundation !!!
12
h#ps://github.com/mitchellh/vagrant
A
must
have
for
any
Puppet
development
• Quick
deployments
• A
massive
community
• Supports
any
OS
you
do
• You
can
deploy
a
single
machine
or
100
• It
is
as
complex
or
simple
as
you
need
it
to
be
• Its
all
Ruby

13. If you have not developed Vagrant framework , Here are is a good one
13
h#ps://github.com/adrienthebo/oscar

14. What we have done with Vagrant
14
• Re
useable
VagrantFile
with
variables
• Yaml
box
configuraMon
• MulM-­‐node
test
environments
with
both
open
source
and
Puppet
Enterprise
• Full
Hiera
integraMon
• We
have
a
full
replicaMon
of
producMon
on
our
laptops

15. VagrantFile
15

16. Yaml backend
16

17. Unit testing is a must !!!
17
• Picks
up
human
error
• Tests
module
dependancies
• EssenMal
for
the
CD/CI
process
Tools for the job
h#p://rspec-­‐puppet.com/
h#ps://github.com/rodjek/rspec-­‐puppet

18. What do tests look like ?
18
A
simple
example
A
complex
example
execute
the
test
• rake
spec_prep
&&
rspec

19. But wait what don't test cover ?
19
• Package
versions,
If
a
file
exists
etc
So we need acceptance testing
• This
where
Vagrant
comes
back
in
Run the module !!!!
Puppetlabs
have
a
very
good
framework
for
this
h#ps://github.com/puppetlabs/beaker

20. So now we have our working modules …
How do we integrate them with CD ?
20
• r10k
h#ps://github.com/puppetlabs/r10k
is
a
good
place
to
start.
This
will
give
you
a
great
transport
mechanism
from
source
control
to
the
Puppet
master.
But what if we are using a CD tool (ie Jenkins etc) ?

21. Puppet code deployment flow
21

22. So some CD tricks and tips we use
22
Every
module
has
its
own
repo

23. So some CD tricks and tips we use
23
Each
pipeline
runs
different
test
before
it
can
move
to
the
next

24. AWS Deployment Tools
24
…
And
because
we
are
not
big
fans
of
JSON
h#ps://github.com/bazaarvoice/cloudformaMon-­‐ruby-­‐dsl

25. Example of the AWS Puppet module
25

26. Benefits of the AWS Puppet module
26
• Anyone
on
the
team
can
develop
a
new
AWS
instance,
elb
etc
• Out
of
the
box
we
have
great
unit
tesMng
coverage
• On
every
Puppet
run
reverts
the
environment
to
the
desired
state
Number
1
2p
for
AWS
h#ps://docs.puppetlabs.com/guides/rest_api.html
The
HTTP
API
AWS
SQS
+
Puppetlabs
HTTP
API
=
Happy
engineers

27. 27
What we are working on to take Puppet and
AWS to the next level

28. 28

29. 29
require => Class['docker']
docker-compose.yml.erb

30. What we are working on now to take Puppet to the next level
30
Docker
scheduling
with
Puppet
Dynamic
Hiera
backend
and
service
discovery

31. So that was easy right ????
31

32. Questions
http://www.healthdirect.gov.au