The document describes the use of Docker, Ansible, and Consul in the backend infrastructure of Stuffle, a mobile marketplace founded in 2012. Robin Brandt details how these tools facilitate environment provisioning, service discovery, and configuration management for application deployment and management. The setup allows for running consistent code across development, staging, and production, enhancing efficiency and debugging capabilities.

1. DOCKER @ STUFFLE
Robin Brandt / @rob_b

2. ABOUT ME
lead developer @ Stuffle since fall 2012
mostly working on the backend

3. ABOUT STUFFLE
mobile marketplace for classifieds
founded 2012 in Hamburg
since 2014 part of Immobilienscout24 Group

4. PLATFORMS
iOS, Android, Web (in order of appearance)

6. THE STUFFLE BACKEND
Rails app
hosted on AWS
using PostgreSQL (RDS), Elasticsearch (self-hosted), Redis
(ElastiCache), Elastic Load Balancer

7. MANAGING THE INFRASTRUCTURE
provisioning must be scripted, no manual installations
scripts are executable documentation, can be versioned
use the exact same scripts to setup development, staging
and production

8. AND DOCKER?
discovered Docker in late 2013
loved the idea of containerization
especially cool: running the exact same code in tests,
staging and production
running in production since 09/2014

9. COREOS / KUBERNETES / SWARM /
MESOS / ...?
haven't looked at it in depth, yet
interesting ecosystem growing around containerization
wanted to start somewhere simple
would love to have the problems some of these tools are
solving

10. TOOLS WE'RE USING
ansible sets up and provisions the environment
consul runs on every server and does service discovery
and stores application configuration
the application code is run in docker containers via a 40
line ruby script creatively called run-stuffle

12. ANSIBLE
no special "agent" needed on nodes
provisioning is described in playbooks (YAML files)
- hosts: application_servers:worker_servers
roles:
- docker
- td_agent
- stuffle-api
- monit
A task file:
- name: configure log rotation
template: src=stuffle.logrotate dest=/etc/logrotate.d/stuffle
- name: copy run script
template: src=run-stuffle.j2 dest=/usr/local/bin/run-stuffle mode=0755

13. ANSIBLE (2)
can specify different inventories (static or dynamic)
support for AWS out of the box
lots of available modules, see ansible docs

15. CONSUL
for service discovery and configuration management
one binary (thx Go!)
offers DNS and HTTP interfaces (we're using the HTTP
interface)

16. CONSUL (2)
Supports registering services via config file:
{
"service": {
"name": "elasticsearch",
"tags": [],
"port": 9200,
"check": {
"script": "nc -z -w2 localhost 9200 || exit 2",
"interval": "30s"
}
}
}
We use this for our self-hosted services (Elasticsearch).

17. CONSUL (3)
and via REST api:
curl -X PUT -d '{
"Datacenter": "dc1",
"Node": "psql-production.cz123xt6fab.eu-west-1.rds.amazonaws.com",
"Address": "10.11.12.13",
"Service": {"Service": "postgres", "Port": 5432}'
http://127.0.0.1:8500/v1/catalog/register"
We use this for the AWS-hosted services (PostgreSQL, Redis).

18. RUN-STUFFLE
simple ruby script to make starting containers more
convenient
$ run-stuffle -i
deploy@cb338f9f93f0:/app$ rails c
Loading development environment (Rails 4.2.0)
irb(main):001:0>

19. RUN-STUFFLE (2) - CONFIG FILE
{"default_docker_args": "-e FQDN=stuffle.it -w /app -e RAILS_ENV=production",
"commands":
{"api_server":
{"command": "service/api_server/run",
"docker_args": "-p 8081:8080",
"name": "api_server",
"logdir": "/var/log/stuffle/api_server"},
...
"workers":
{"command": "service/workers/run",
"logdir": "/var/log/stuffle/workers",
"name": "workers",
"docker_args": "-e WORKER_COUNT=5"}}}

20. RUN-STUFFLE (3)
fetch application config from consul
fetch service hosts from consul
starts the docker container with parameters (e.g. port
mapping, env settings)

21. INSIDE THE DOCKER CONTAINER
not aware of consul (at the moment)
read the configuration and services from environment
variables
write /app/config/database.yml, etc.
run the configured start command (we don't use a full-
blown init)
webserver
resque worker
resque scheduler

22. DEV ENVIRONMENT
using
source directory is synced to VM via synced folders and
bind-mounted to the docker container
vagrant

23. DEMO
service discovery via consul
run-stuffle

24. TESTING
test runs on our CI server (jenkins) are triggered by git
push or pull-request
builds new container
starts dependent service containers (PostgreSQL,
Redis, chromedriver)
uses port ranges for parallel builds
runs tests
shuts down containers
pushes image to our registry

25. DEPLOYMENT
done via ansible and a deployment playbook
- hosts: application_servers:worker_servers
tasks:
- name: login to docker registry
command: sudo su deploy -c "docker login -e ... -u registry -p {{docker
- name: pull the current container
command: sudo su deploy -c "docker pull {{docker_api_container}}"
- hosts: application_servers[0]
tasks:
- name: execute database migrations
command: sudo su deploy -c "run-stuffle -c {{docker_api_container}} bun
- include: restart_containers.yml

26. DEPLOYMENT (2)
for workers:
- hosts: worker_servers
tasks:
- service: name=stuffle_workers state=restarted
upstart file:
...
post-stop script
docker kill -s QUIT $CONTAINER
sleep 15 # wait for jobs to finish
docker stop $CONTAINER
docker rm $CONTAINER || true
end script

27. DEPLOYMENT (3)
for web servers:
start a second container with the new code
make warm up request
shut down old container
haproxy balances in front of the two containers

28. EXPERIENCE SO FAR
very happy with docker, ansible and consul
took some time to setup dev environment that doesn't
get into your way (avoid docker builds)
running different versions of the application in parallel is
great for debugging

29. QUESTIONS?

30. THANK YOU!