Feature request #1694: Migrate to Amazon Linux AMI

Comments

1. Greg Hurrell 2011-01-31T00:52:57Z

   See also ticket #1720, which is about moving to Unicorn 2.0.x after the Amazon Linux AMI switch is done.

2. Greg Hurrell 2011-01-31T01:01:43Z

   Just gonna start collecting notes on this one:

   • http://3engineers.clariondoor.com/installing-mysql-on-ec2s-amazon-linux-ami

3. Greg Hurrell 2011-01-31T22:47:04Z

   Notes on initial instance set-up via CloudInit:

   • https://help.ubuntu.com/community/CloudInit
   • http://alestic.com/

4. Greg Hurrell 2011-02-01T02:55:37Z

   This migration is by necessity going to be fairly manual in nature, despite the fact that I have tried to structure my instances in an eminently "clonable" fashion.

   At the moment I have the base image, easily clonable from an EBS snapshot, and a data snapshot.

   As things currently stand, even though most of the important data "lives" on the data snapshot and can be cloned at will and attached to any instance, there is still some custom configuration that must be done on the host image.

   I'm looking at some configuration tools to see if I can make at least some of that initial host image set-up repeatable in an automated fashion. Things like installing packages and building other stuff (eg. nginx) from source.

   It may turn out that full-blown configuration management tools like Chef and Puppet are overkill for this task, and a simple shell script maybe superior (think how a simple shell script can be infinitely superior to Capistrano for single-server deployments, and possibly multi-server ones too). But in any case I am going to look at them.

   There are at least a couple of things, however, that I haven't been able to shift over to the data partitions. For example, things like actual user accounts. These are defined in /etc/passwd and I need to think about a way in which I can set them up on the fly in a newly-created instance, while preserving the same UIDs and GIDs (I don't want the numbers to be mismatched when I mount my data volume).

   In the meantime, some reading on Chef and Puppet:

   • "Puppet vs Chef": http://bhuga.net/node/46
   • "Puppet versus Chef: 10 reasons why Puppet wins": http://bitfieldconsulting.com/puppet-vs-chef

5. Greg Hurrell 2011-02-01T11:38:32Z

   See also ticket #1667 ("Update to memcached 1.4.5"). Will probably end up doing that update at the same time.

6. Greg Hurrell 2011-02-01T11:42:37Z

   See also ticket #1496 ("Update to OpenSSH 5.7/5.7p1 on server"). Again will evaluate that ticket when the time for the migration arrives.

7. Greg Hurrell 2011-05-09T00:32:59Z

   Not specifically about the Amazon Linux AMI, but a useful overview of Puppet on EC2:

   • http://blog.controlgroup.com/2010/07/29/automated-linux-server-deployment-with-amazon-ec2-and-puppet/

   Installation kick-start notes:

   • http://www.developly.com/installing-puppet-on-ec2s-amazon-linux-ami

8. Greg Hurrell 2011-05-09T00:41:03Z

   Using Puppet on a single machine, "standalone":

   • http://www.unixdaemon.net/tools/puppet/stand-alone-puppet.html

9. Greg Hurrell 2011-05-09T00:42:12Z

   Possible pitfall of using "standalone" mode and how to get around it:

   • http://www.rustyrazorblade.com/2010/04/puppet-stand-alone-templates-configs/

10. Greg Hurrell 2011-05-09T00:42:40Z

    Official docs on standalone use:

    • http://www.puppetlabs.com/blog/deploying-puppet-in-client-server-standalone-and-massively-scaled-environments/

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