Rundeck is an open source tool for executing jobs and automating operations across multiple servers. It allows users to define jobs that run commands or scripts on nodes, and organize those jobs into workflows. Key features include importing nodes from configuration management databases, running jobs in parallel, monitoring job executions, and integrating with tools like JIRA, PagerDuty, and Jenkins through plugins. Benefits of Rundeck include formalizing IT operations procedures, enabling self-service access for users, and providing visibility and logging of activities.

1. The missing tool
Artur Martins
(@arturmartins)
Devops Dublin Meetup III
8th July 2015

2. WHO AM I?
• Name:Artur Martins (@arturmartins on twitter)
• Senior Systems Engineer at
• Using rundeck since April 2014
• I

3. WHAT IS RUNDECK
• Operations Web Dashboard (and a REST API as well)
• fine-grain access controls
• builtin-job scheduler
• jobs can have multiple sequence steps and corresponde
error handling
• ability to define workflows (coordinated sequences
commands and scripts or jobs)

4. FEATURES
• Import Node info from chef, puppet, amazon ec2, salt or make
your own CMDB/node list.
• Run multiple jobs or workflows in parallel
• Follow job executions running (distributed tail -f)
• Trigger 3rd parties using email or webhook
• Plugins available:
JIRA, PagerDuty, Slack, HipChat, Redmine, Puppet, salt, nexus, jenkins, chef, Nexus,AWS EC2 Nodes, Kerberos, IRC,
Jabber,AWS S3

5. BENEFITS
• Formalisation of your IT Ops procedures
• Safely enable Self-service dashboard
• Visibility,Accountability, Logging

6. INFRASTRUCTURE
source: http://rundeck.org/docs/administration/installation.html

7. DEV / OPS
source: http://rundeck.org/news/2014/01/08/Jenkins-is-for-development-Rundeck-is-for-operations.html

8. source: http://blog.mattcallanan.net/2013_03_01_archive.html

9. OK, I GET IT…

10. TAXONOMY
• Job - sequence of one or more commands or
scripts
• Workflow - sequence of one of more jobs
• Node - a resource accessible through SSH

11. INSTALL / UPGRADE
• Requirements:
Java 1.7+ (Both Open JDK and Sun/Oracle)
JAVA_HOME env var defined
• Debian/Ubuntu scenario:
version='2.5.2'
wget http://dl.bintray.com/rundeck/rundeck-deb/rundeck-$
{version}-1-GA.deb
sudo dpkg -i rundeck-${version}-1-GA.deb

12. INSTALL ADVICE
• Install webserver (apache/nginx) and set a reverse
proxy
• Authentication should always be under HTTPS,
right?

13. REMOTE NODES SETUP
• Create (at least) one SSH account (depends on context)
• Add ssh pub key
• Add whitelist sudo permissions /etc/sudoers.d/$
{user} if administration are needed

14. POST INSTALL CONFIG
• realm.properties (add a rundeck user)
admin:admin,user,admin,architect,deploy,build
user:password,user,role1,role2,role3
• project.properties
project.organization = “Your company"
• framework.properties
general framework configs.
• rundeck-config.properties
grails.serverURL=http://rundeck.yourcompany.com
dataSource.url=jdbc:(set your database jdbc connection string here)

15. NODE DEFINITION
Rundeck also supports resources definition inYML
<node name="app1">
<!-- Rundeck node attributes -->
<attribute name="hostname" value="192.168.50.30"/>
<attribute name="username" value="rundeckops"/>
<attribute name="tags" value="demo,testing"/>
<attribute name="description" value="Ubuntu server"/>
<attribute name="osName" value="Ubuntu"/>
<attribute name="osVersion" value=“14.04 LTS 64bit"/>
<attribute name="osFamily" value="unix"/>
<!-- Rundeck SSH related attributes -->
<attribute name="ssh-key-storage-path" value="path/to/id_rsa"/>
<!-- Custom attributes -->
<attribute name="group" value="other"/>
<attribute name="datacenter" value="CA,USA"/>
<attribute name="osCodename" value="trusty"/>
<attribute name="rdnsName" value="app1.example.com"/>
<attribute name="provider" value="digitalocean"/>
</node>

16. DEMO
Demos always work
if you useVAGRANT
… or maybe not :)

17. CAVEATS
• Some characters in password field might cause authentication to fail (/
etc/rundeck/realm.proprieties)
• Assure no spaces a the end of a value in any /etc/rundeck/* config
files
• Node filter is tricky if you want to select different nodes by multiple
parameters.Workaround: regex all the way.
• Be aware of rundeck rules for quotes escaping for commands:
http://rundeck.org/docs/manual/jobs.html#quoting-arguments-to-steps

18. FURTHER READING
• http://rundeck.org/docs/
• https://github.com/rundeck/rundeck
• http://www.slideshare.net/dev2ops/rundecks-history-and-future
• http://lanyrd.com/2012/chefconf/stkdz/
• http://blog.mattcallanan.net/2013_03_01_archive.html
• http://www.slideshare.net/dev2ops/nexus-live-1
• Mailing-list: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/rundeck-discuss
• IRC: #rundeck at freenode.

19. QUESTIONS?
myself=‘arturmartins’
@{myself}
{myself}@gmail.comie.linkedin.com/in/{myself}
plus.google.com/+{myself}1