1.
Full-Stack Plone Deployment with Ansible
Fulvio Casali & Steve McMahon
Plone Conference 2015
Budapest, Romania

2.
What do we
mean by full
stack?

3.
Approaches to full-stack deployment
Containers

4.
Approaches to full-stack deployment
Orchestration

5.
Is your unit of automation a component of the stack, or a full
server?
Container or Orchestration?

6.
Server Orchestration Tools
Client-Server (Mostly)Agentless
A bit simpler

7.
Your mileage may vary…
Simplicity Wins!
For our purposes

8.
A Quick Introduction
to Ansible

9.
Ansible
✤ Plays — a state specification
✤ Ideally idempotent
✤ Playbooks — Lists of plays
✤ Roles — Reusable lists of plays

10.
YAML:
Python’s JSON
- List Item One
- List Item Two
- Key One: Value One
Key Two: Value Two
- List Item Four

11.
Playbook Sample
- name: Update host
apt: upgrade=dist update_cache=yes
- name: Ensure optional packages
apt: pkg={{ item }} state=present
with_items: additional_packages

12.
Templates & Variable Interpolation
eggs =
Plone
Pillow
{% if plone_additional_eggs %}
{% for egg in plone_additional_eggs %}
{{ egg }}
{% endfor %}
{% endif %}

13.
Roles:
playbooks for use
inside playbooks.
Write them yourself;
or check them out via
Ansible Galaxy

14.
Using roles
roles:
...
- role: plone.plone_server
tags: plone
- role: haproxy
when: install_loadbalancer
tags: haproxy
- role: varnish
when: install_proxycache
tags: varnish
...

15.
Plone’s Ansible Toolkit
Two parts: the Plone Server Role and the Plone Playbook

16.
Plone
Server Role
✤ Only the Zope/Plone Server
✤ In a ZEO configuration
✤ Includes process management
via Supervisor
✤ And backup, packing cron jobs
✤ Available on Ansible Galaxy

17.
The Plone
Playbook
✤ Incorporates Plone Server Role
✤ Adds:
✤ Load balancer
✤ Proxy cache
✤ Web server / rewrite engine
✤ MTA & Admin
✤ Available via github.com/plone

18.
Choosing your entry point
✤ Choose the Plone Server Role if you wish to pick and
choose your stack components. Incorporate it in your
own Playbook.
✤ Choose the Plone Playbook if you want the full stack
chosen by the Installer Team.

19.
Plone Server Role:
Major Options
✤ Canned or custom buildout
✤ With canned buildout:
✤ ZEO client count
✤ Memory profile
✤ Additional eggs

20.
Plone Ansible
Playbook
Full stack components

21.
Integration Payoff:
Client Restart
✤ Playbook knows its component part and
can do things like install a client restart
script that:
✤ Restarts all ZEO clients
✤ Removes client from haproxy backend
before restart
✤ Fetches homepage of each virtualhost
after restart to load Zope object cache
✤ Adds client back to cluster after page
fetch
✤ Flushes varnish cache

22.
Playbook: Major Options
All Plone Server Role options, plus…

23.
Playbook
Options
✤ Skip installs of haproxy, varnish,
Nginx, Munin …
✤ Set up virtual hosts / SSL
✤ Tune cache
✤ Server packages, MOTD
✤ Postfix relay

24.
But how to customize those variables in a maintainable way?
Customization Strategies
All options are configured via variables

25.
Local Customization File
✤ Create a local-configure.yml file with variable settings
✤ Override any setting
✤ Samples provided for several typical configurations
✤ Just copy the sample to local-configure.yml and edit
✤ Pulls will never overwrite local-configure.yml

26.
sample-medium.yml
admin_email:
plone_initial_password:
timezone: "UTCn"
muninnode_query_ips:
- ip.of.munin.monitor
plone_client_count: 2
plone_zodb_cache_size: 15000
plone_client_max_memory: 750MB

27.
Use this strategy if you don’t like some of the major stack component choices
Alternative Strategy: Fork It
You fork it, you own it…

28.
Testing
Ready to test locally via Vagrant.
vagrant up does a complete
provisioning of a virtualbox using Vagrant’s
Ansible provisioner.

29.
State of the Ansible Kit

30.
Every customization variable documented
Solid Documentation
docs.plone.org

31.
Server Platforms Supported
Currently Ubuntu/Debian and CentOS

32.
Server Platforms … Future
But we’d like to do more — with your help.

33.
✤ Drinking young chimpanzee, CC BY Tambako The Jaguar Follow, https://www.flickr.com/photos/tambako
✤ Chimpanzee with a snack, CC BY NC SA, Dan, https://www.flickr.com/photos/dgermony/
✤ Baboons in a row, CC BY Tambako The Jaguar Follow, https://www.flickr.com/photos/tambako
✤ Portrait of a surprised baboon, CC BY Tambako The Jaguar Follow, https://www.flickr.com/photos/tambako
✤ Chacma Baboon - Papio ursinus, CC BY NC SA, Arno Meintjes, https://www.flickr.com/photos/arnolouise/
✤ Orangutan with baby, CC BY ND, Nathan Rupert, https://www.flickr.com/photos/nathaninsandiego/
✤ Baby orangutan, CC BY, Daniel Kleeman, https://www.flickr.com/photos/75821270@N00/
✤ Bornean Orangutan, CC NY ND, Josh More, https://www.flickr.com/photos/guppiecat/
✤ Mother and baby gibbons eating, CC BY Tambako The Jaguar Follow, https://www.flickr.com/photos/tambako
✤ Portrait of a gibbon, , CC BY Tambako The Jaguar Follow, https://www.flickr.com/photos/tambako
✤ Black and white gibbon, , CC BY Tambako The Jaguar Follow, https://www.flickr.com/photos/tambako
✤ Cute squirrel monkey, CC BY Tambako The Jaguar Follow, https://www.flickr.com/photos/tambako
✤ squirrel-monkeys-at-drusillas-park-zoo-018, CC BY NC ND, Dean Thorpe, https://www.flickr.com/photos/aspexdesign/
✤ Squirrel monkeys in the grass, CC BY Tambako The Jaguar Follow, https://www.flickr.com/photos/tambako
✤ IMG_4986 (do not feed), CC BY NC, Roland Harvey, https://www.flickr.com/photos/rolymo/
✤ Cornered, CC BY NC, Esther Simpson, https://www.flickr.com/photos/estherase/
✤ Howler Monkey WLD_4487, CC BY NC ND, https://www.flickr.com/photos/guppiecat/
✤ Ooooooo, CC BY NC SA, Len Radin, https://www.flickr.com/photos/drurydrama/
✤ Say aaahhhh!, CC BY NC ND, Abid Karamali, https://www.flickr.com/photos/abidk/
✤ Capuchin Monkeys, Manuel Antonio, Costa Rica, CC BY NC SA, Stephen Johnson,
https://www.flickr.com/photos/stephenjjohnson/
✤ Capuchin (tongue), CC BY NC SA, Jim Webber, https://www.flickr.com/photos/wwwebber/
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