This document summarizes how to deploy a Rails application on Amazon EC2. It recommends using the "EC2 on Rails" Ruby gem which provides a pre-configured Amazon Machine Image (AMI) with Rails, MySQL, and tools for backup to S3. The steps include launching an EC2 instance from the EC2 on Rails AMI, configuring security groups, connecting via SSH, modifying deployment scripts, and using Capistrano tasks to deploy the application, migrate the database, and backup/restore from S3. Additional tips are provided on getting the public IP address, terminating instances, and using RightScale for online instance management.

1. Deploying Rails app on Amazon EC2 By: Manik Juneja Akhil Bansal

2. Introduction Manik Juneja [email_address] http://fromdelhi.com Akhil Bansal [email_address] http://webonrails.com

3. Intended audience We assume that you are aware of: Amazon Simple Storage System(S3) Basic Ruby and Rails Deployment tool “Capistrano” Rails deployment with Apache and Mongrel Clusters

4. What is Amazon EC2? EC2 stands for Elastic Compute Cloud A Beta web service from Amazon Provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud Makes on-demand web computing easier

5. What Amazon Gives? Hardware CPU capacity of 1.0-1.2 GHz 2007 Opteron Instances with 1.7, 7.5 and 15 GB memory. Internet & Intranet Power Public Amazon Machine Images(AMIs)

6. No Backup and Restore Services But

7. Deploying Rails app on EC2

8. Deploying Rails app on EC2 Run your instance and: Install Ruby and Rubygems Install Rails and other required gems Install Webserver Install DBMS and create DB Write Capistrano Script

9. OR

10. Use a rubyforge project “ec2onrails”

11. Deploying Rails app on EC2 We'll use ruby gem “EC2 on Rails” Developed by a Canadian developer Paul Dowman http://pauldowman.com/ EC2 on Rails's AMI

12. Features of the EC2onrails AMI: Ubuntu 7.10 “Gutsy” MySQL 5 Ruby 1.8.6 Ruby on Rails 1.2.5 Automatic backup of MySQL database to S3. Amazon AMI tools installed 32-bit and 64-bit images available

13. Lets Deploy gem install ec2onrails Put Capfile in the RAILS_ROOT Put deploy.rb and s3.yml in the config export JAVA_HOME= <PATH> Signup for S3 and Amazon EC2 mkdir /home/akhil/.ec2 Put X.509 certificate and private key in .ec2

14. Cont... Download the Amazon EC2 Command-Line Tools export EC2_HOME= <path-to-tools> export PATH=$PATH:$EC2_HOME/bin export EC2_PRIVATE_KEY=~/.ec2/ private_key export EC2_CERT=~/.ec2/ certificate

15. Cont... Generate a Keypair: ec2-add-keypair gsg-keypair The private key returned needs to be saved in a local file so that you can use it later

16. Cont... Running an Instance: ec2-run-instances ami-86c025ef -k gsg-keypair RESERVATION r-64f61f0d 110620076136 default INSTANCE i-b1b740d8 ami-86c025ef pending gsg-keypair 0 m1.small 2007-12-05T06:15:38+0000

17. Cont... ec2-describe-instances i-b1b740d8 RESERVATION r-64f61f0d 110620076136 default INSTANCE i-b1b740d8 ami-86c025ef ec2-67-202-1-178.z-2.compute-1.amazonaws.com domU-12-31-35-00-49-A2.z-2.compute-1.internal running gsg-keypair 0 m1.small 2007-12-05T06:15:38+0000

18. Cont... Authorizing Network Access to Your Instances ec2-authorize default -p 22 ec2-authorize default -p 80

19. Cont... Connecting to your Instance ssh -i id_rsa-gsg-keypair [email_address] passwd admin passwd app

20. Cont... Modify s3.yml Modify deploy.rb cap ec2onrails:setup cap deploy:migration s

21. Cont... Other capistrano tasks ec2onrails:db:archive ec2onrails:db:restore ec2onrails:db:create ec2onrails:db:drop ec2onrails:db:recreate ec2onrails:db:set_root_password ec2onrails:ami_ids - Shows the AMI id’s of the images that match the current version of the gem. ec2onrails:setup - This is a convenience task to get a new instance completely set up in one step, everything except deploying the app. ec2onrails:restore_db_and_deploy - Another convenience task to recreate the db, restore data to it from an s3 bucket and deploy the app, useful to set up a staging server.

22. Public IP Your Instances wget http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/public-ipv4 from your Instance

23. Terminating Your Instances ec2-terminate-instances i-b1b740d8 RESERVATION r-64f61f0d 110620076136 default INSTANCE i-b1b740d8 ami-86c025ef ec2-67-202-1-178.z-2.compute-1.amazonaws.com domU-12-31-35-00-49-A2.z-2.compute-1.internal shutting-down gsg-keypair 0 m1.small 2007-12-05T06:15:38+0000

24. Check status of instances ec2-describe-instances RESERVATION r-64f61f0d 110620076136 default INSTANCE i-b1b740d8 ami-86c025ef terminated gsg-keypair 0 m1.small 2007-12-05T06:15:38+0000

25. Run and Manage Instances online We know this one service which let us mange instances online: RightScale.com

26. Benefits Ability to Start, terminate, and monitor instances, using the web service APIs. Free Data transferred within the Amazon EC2 environment, or between Amazon EC2 and Amazon S3 Pay for the instance-hours and bandwidth that you actually consume.

27. Points to consider: Data loss when instance is terminated Instance gets a new public IP when started again Need to use third party Dynamic DNS service, like “easydns.com”.

28. Thanks