Neeraj Mendiratta Sr. Director of Devops, A+E Networks at Fastly Altitude 2016 Hosting hundreds of websites and backend services for multiple environments at the Content Delivery Network level presented a challenge for us at A+E. We solved this problem by applying the DevOps concept of “Infrastructure as Code”. First, a VCL templating framework was created to support a multitude of services and environment agnostic configurations. Then we integrated our CI tool with GitHub and Fastly to make a scalable way of managing our many services. This walkthrough is based on our real-world experiences. We discuss: using the template framework; how to handle the workflow between development, QA, and production environments; and the API calls and integrations necessary for automating deployments to Fastly.

1. AETN Digital Media | Confidential and Proprietary
TEMPLATE ABSTRACTION AND
AUTOMATED DEPLOYMENTS TO FASTLY
A Practical Walkthrough on Real Life Experiences

2. AETN Digital Media | Confidential and Proprietary
Then ☹
Manual UI Based Implementation

3. AETN Digital Media | Confidential and Proprietary
30m-1hr x Envs
Manual Process Back Then
• Caching
• Shielding
• Geographical
• Device Detection
• Backends
• Redirects
• Proxies
• Authorization
www.aetv.com
• Caching
• Shielding
• Geographical
• Device Detection
• Backends
• Redirects
• Proxies
• Authorization
www.mylifetime.com
• Caching
• Shielding
• Geographical
• Device Detection
• Backends
• Redirects
• Proxies
• Authorization
www.fyi.tv
• Caching
• Shielding
• Geographical
• Device Detection
• Backends
• Redirects
• Proxies
• Authorization
www.history.com

4. AETN Digital Media | Confidential and Proprietary
And then we have more sites!
30m-1hr x Env
30m-1hr x Env
30m-1hr x Env

5. AETN Digital Media | Confidential and Proprietary
Even more URLS added
30m-1hr x Env
30m-1hr x Env
30m-1hr x Env
30m-1hr x Env
30m-1hr x Env
30m-1hr x Env

6. AETN Digital Media | Confidential and Proprietary
Digging into Legacy Code!

7. AETN Digital Media | Confidential and Proprietary
Manual Process Back Then!

8. AETN Digital Media | Confidential and Proprietary
Update (100)
URLS
3 environments
Weeks of
work=
Manual Process Back Then!

9. AETN Digital Media | Confidential and Proprietary
DevOps Principals
• Collaboration
• Test everything
• Treat Infrastructure as code
• Breakdown the barriers
• Automate everything
• Measure & monitor everything
• Support business and IT agility
• Work as one team end to end

10. AETN Digital Media | Confidential and Proprietary
And Now ☺
Continuous
Integration
Fastly VCL
Templates APIs
Automated
Testing
EQUALS Awesome!

11. AETN Digital Media | Confidential and Proprietary
Continuous Integration
Selenium
Automated Process
CI Tool

12. AETN Digital Media | Confidential and Proprietary
GLOBALFASTLY BOILER PLATE
Sub vcl_recv
Sub vcl_fetch
Sub vcl_hit
Sub vcl_miss
Sub vcl_deliver
Sub vcl_error
Sub vcl_pass
SERVICES
Application URLS
Main.vcl
Backends.vcl
custom.vcl
default.vcl
Fastly Boiler Plate
Sub vcl_recv
call aetn_recv_shield
call aetn_recv_geo
call aetn_recv_cache
aetn.vcl
Template Abstraction
call aetn_recv_device
sub aetn_recv_shield
sub aetn_recv_geo
sub aetn_recv_cache
sub aetn_recv_device

13. AETN Digital Media | Confidential and Proprietary
Environment Agnostic Implementation
• Separate Service for each Env: {env}-abc.com
• Abstract Env Specific Backends in separate VCLs: {env}-backends.vcl
Backend dev_abc_com {
.first_byte_timeout = 3s;
.connect_timeout = 1s;
.dynamic = true;
.max_connections = 200;
.between_bytes_timeout = 3s;
.share_key = ”COMMONBACKEND";
.port = "443";
.host = ”dev.abc.com";
.probe = {
.url = "/aetn-heartbeat.html";
.interval = 30s;
.timeout = 3s;
.window = 5;
.threshold = 2;
}
}
• Use GITFlow guidelines
• CI Tool reads the config file to deploy to correct env
"environments" : {
"dev" : {
"ref" : "refs/heads",
"servers" : [
{
"id" : ”ABC567defgzThQ"
}
]
},

14. AETN Digital Media | Confidential and Proprietary
CIDataFlowforManagingEnvAgnostic
CI ToolGitHUB
Config File
(Env to Service Mapping)
Process
qa-backend.vcl
Process
dev-backend.vcl
Process all common files
Process
prod-backend.vcl
Event Payload
Notification to
CI Tool
Process Payload
and identify Event Type
Identify
ENV and
Service ID
QA
FASTLY
Deploy Files and Activate
DEV PROD
Commit VCL

15. AETN Digital Media | Confidential and Proprietary
DeploymentWorkFlowUsingFastlyAPI
List of Files Modified
Service/
Common
Retrieve the list of Services
Parse the list of services
Retrieve the service and
common files
Fastly Dev Version
(/service/search?name)
Clone New Version
(/service/service_id/version/number/clone)
Deploy Files
(/service/service_id/version/version/vcl/{main})
Activate
(/service/service_id/version/number/activate)
Create Dev Version
(/service/service_id/version/number/clone)
GITHUB
Deployment
Object
Common
Service
No
Yes

16. AETN Digital Media | Confidential and Proprietary
Update (100)
URLS
3 environments
Weeks of
work=
Automated Process Now!
From
To
Update (100)
URLS
3 environments a few Minutes
=
To

17. AETN Digital Media | Confidential and Proprietary
Workflow in Action
Update TTL for all sites

18. AETN Digital Media | Confidential and Proprietary
• Create a feature branch
• GIT Clone Repo
$ git clone https://USERNAME:TOKEN_OR_PASSWORD@github.com/aenetworks/
REPO_NAME.git fastly
Cloning into 'fastly'...
remote: Counting objects: 11441, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (127/127), done.
remote: Total 11441 (delta 71), reused 0 (delta 0), pack-reused 11313
Receiving objects: 100% (11441/11441), 1.67 MiB | 1.17 MiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (7939/7939), done.
Checking connectivity... done.
=================================================================================
====================================
WorkflowinAction
$ git checkout -b sd-increase-ttl
Switched to a new branch 'sd-increase-ttl'
=================================================================================
=====================================
if ((beresp.status == 200) && req.url ~ ".(aif|aiff|au|avi|bin|bmp|cab|carb|cct|
cdf|class|css|doc|dcr|dtd|eot|exe|flv|gcf|gff|gif|grv|html|hqx|ico|ini|jpeg|jpg|
js|json|mov|mp3|nc|otf|pct|png|ppc|pws|svg|swa|swf|ttf|txt|vbs|w32|wav|wbmp|wml|
wmlc|wmls|wmlsc|xsd|zip|webp|jxr|hdp|wdp)($|?)" ) {
set beresp.ttl = 36h;
}
=================================================================================
========================================

19. AETN Digital Media | Confidential and Proprietary
WorkflowinAction
if ((beresp.status == 200) && req.url ~ ".(aif|aiff|au|avi|bin|bmp|cab|carb|cct|
cdf|class|css|doc|dcr|dtd|eot|exe|flv|gcf|gff|gif|grv|html|hqx|ico|ini|jpeg|jpg|
js|json|mov|mp3|nc|otf|pct|png|ppc|pws|svg|swa|swf|ttf|txt|vbs|w32|wav|wbmp|wml|
wmlc|wmls|wmlsc|xsd|zip|webp|jxr|hdp|wdp)($|?)" ) {
set beresp.ttl = 36h;
}
• Modify TTL in any editor
• Dev:
• GIT Commit and Push to Feature Branch
$ git commit -m "Increased the TTL" -a
[sd-increase-ttl f5d4bff] Increased the TTL
1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)
$ git push origin sd-increase-ttl
Counting objects: 6, done.
Delta compression using up to 4 threads.
Compressing objects: 100% (6/6), done.
Writing objects: 100% (6/6), 716 bytes | 0 bytes/s, done.
Total 6 (delta 2), reused 0 (delta 0)
To https://USERNAME:TOKEN_OR_PASSWORD@github.com/aenetworks/REPO_NAME.git
* [new branch] sd-increase-ttl -> sd-increase-ttl
wrap
Today at 4:16 PM • 2KB Plain Text snippet • Private snippet shared with you
shift+enter to add a new line
• QA and Prod
• Follow GIT Flow to Create Pull request and release to appropriate Env

20. AETN Digital Media | Confidential and Proprietary
Thanks!