NetflixOSS Ansible Playbooks

Welcome to the NetflixOSS Cloud Prize award winning playbooks, AMIs and CloudFormation templates.

Ansible is a configuration management system that is very simple to learn and use.

This project is a set of Ansible Playbooks to configure instances to run some of the NetflixOSS projects.

These playbooks are quite low level as they include each step required to configure a service. If you are looking for the easiest way to get started with NetflixOSS projects, launch your desired NetflixOSS CloudFormation template.

Projects

• Archaius (waiting on Netflix/archaius#132)
• Aminator
• Asgard
• Edda
• Eureka
• Genie
• Ice
• Lipstick (coming soon)
• Simian Army

Prerequisites

1. Ansible installed on your laptop
2. The Ansible EC2 Inventory configured
3. Clone this repository

For steps 1 and 2, watch the first 3 minutes of Episode 2 - Ansible and AWS.

Features

These playbooks are built to be run on the following operating systems:

• Ubuntu 12.04 LTS
• Amazon Linux

They have also been written in a way where you can use the same playbook to configure a running server, or build a custom AMI.

Base configuration

The base configuration is gets a system ready for production. You can find the base tasks here, but in summary it:

• installs some packages
• Python with the latest Boto
• AWS CLI
• security packages including fail2ban
• Emacs and Vim (no religion here)
• does some basic system hardening

Projects

Aminator

Aminator is a tool for creating EBS AMIs for AWS. Before running the playbook, there are a few things we need to do:

More detailed instructions for Aminator can be found here

1. Create an Aminator IAM Role with this policy
2. Create an Aminator security group

• Allow port 22 for SSH

1. If you don't already, create a new Key pair, and add it to your keychain or SSH agent so you don't need to specify it later:

$ ssh-add mykey.pem

1. Launch a new EC2 instance using the above IAM Role, Security Group and key pair. Use Ubuntu 12.04 LTS as the AMI.
2. Set the Name tag of the instance to Aminator
3. Confirm you can see the instance using the Ansible EC2 inventory

$ /etc/ansible/hosts | grep 'Aminator'

Now you can run the playbook

$ ansible-playbook playbooks/aminator-ubuntu.yml -l 'tag_Name_Aminator'

If you are using this playbook, there is a decent chance you want to use the Ansible Provisioner for Aminator as well. Since this has not been merge yet (spam mtripoli and kvick if you want this merged), instead of pulling Aminator from their repo, it pulls from here: https://github.com/pas256/aminator.git. You can modify the file in roles/aminator/vars/main.yml and change the repo if you like. Aminator is installed to /usr/local/aminator.

The playbook also checks out this repo as well, so you can start baking your own AMIs based off these playbooks. You can find it here: /usr/local/netflixoss-ansible

One more thing. If you want to pay it forward, this playbook also installs DistAMI. Now there are no excuses for keeping useful AMIs private.

Once the playbook is finished, you can SSH to the instance an start aminating. Example:

ssh ubuntu@ec2.xyz
sudo aminate -e ec2_ansible_linux -B ami-bb2ab88b aminator-ubuntu.yml 

If all of that seems too hard, feel free to use the Aminator CloudFormation template to bring up Aminator in just a few clicks.

Asgard

Asgard is an application deployments and cloud management web interface for AWS. Before running the playbook, there are a few things we need to do:

More detailed instructions for Asgard can be found here

1. Create an Asgard security group

• Allow port 22 for SSH
• Allow port 80 for HTTP

1. If you don't already have one, create a new Key Pair, and add it to your keychain or SSH agent so you don't need to specify it later:

$ ssh-add mykey.pem

1. Launch a new EC2 instance using the above Security Group and key pair. Use Ubuntu 12.04 LTS as the AMI.
2. Set the Name tag of the instance to Asgard
3. Confirm you can see the instance using the Ansible EC2 inventory

$ /etc/ansible/hosts | grep 'Asgard'

Now you can run the playbook

$ ansible-playbook playbooks/asgard-ubuntu.yml -l 'tag_Name_Asgard'

This will configure the instance to be running the latest snapshot build of Asgard. If you prefer to run the stable version of Asgard, you want to build the WAR file yourself, just specify the path to the WAR file:

$ ansible-playbook playbooks/asgard-ubuntu.yml -l 'tag_Name_Asgard' -e "local_war=$HOME/Downloads/asgard.war"

Once the playbook is finished, you will have Asgard running inside Tomcat on your EC2 instance. You can access Asgard via HTTP as the ROOT application (no directory). Example:

http://ec2-12-12-12-12.us-west-2.compute.amazonaws.com/

Eureka

Eureka is a service registry for resilient mid-tier load balancing and failover. Before running the playbook, there are a few things we need to do:

More detailed instructions for Eureka can be found here

1. Create a Eureka security group

• Allow port 22 for SSH
• Allow port 80 for HTTP

1. If you don't already have one, create a new Key Pair, and add it to your keychain or SSH agent so you don't need to specify it later:

$ ssh-add mykey.pem

1. Launch a new EC2 instance using the above Security Group and key pair. This time, we will use Amazon Linux.
2. Set the Name tag of the instance to Eureka
3. Confirm you can see the instance using the Ansible EC2 inventory

$ /etc/ansible/hosts | grep 'Eureka'

Now you can run the playbook

$ ansible-playbook playbooks/eureka-amazon-linux.yml -l 'tag_Name_Eureka'

This will configure the instance to be running the latest snapshot build of Eureka. If you prefer to build your own WAR file yourself, just specify the path to the WAR file:

$ ansible-playbook playbooks/eureka-amazon-linux.yml -l 'tag_Name_Eureka' -e "local_war=$HOME/Downloads/eureka-server.war"

Once the playbook is finished, you will have Eureka Server running inside Tomcat on your EC2 instance. You can access it via HTTP. Example:

http://ec2-12-23-34-45.us-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com/eureka/

Edda

Edda is a service to track changes in an AWS region, multiple regions and/or multiple accounts. Before running the playbook, there are a few things we need to do:

More detailed instructions for Edda can be found here

1. Create an Edda security group

• Allow port 22 for SSH
• Allow port 80 for HTTP

1. If you don't already have one, create a new Key Pair, and add it to your keychain or SSH agent so you don't need to specify it later:

$ ssh-add mykey.pem

1. Create an IAM Role called 'edda' with this policy
2. Launch a new EC2 instance using the above Security Group, key pair and IAM Role. You can use with Ubuntu or Amazon Linux for the OS.
3. Set the Name tag of the instance to Edda
4. Confirm you can see the instance using the Ansible EC2 inventory

$ /etc/ansible/hosts --refresh-cache | grep 'Edda'

Now you can run the playbook

$ ansible-playbook playbooks/edda-amazon-linux.yml -l 'tag_Name_Edda'
 or
$ ansible-playbook playbooks/edda-ubuntu.yml -l 'tag_Name_Edda'

This will configure the instance to be running the latest snapshot build of Edda. If you prefer to build your own WAR file yourself, just specify the path to the WAR file:

$ ansible-playbook playbooks/edda-amazon-linux.yml -l 'tag_Name_Edda' -e "local_war=$HOME/Downloads/edda.war"

Once the playbook is finished, you will have Edda running inside Tomcat with MongoDB on your EC2 instance. You can access then make queries to it via HTTP. Example:

http://ec2-12-212-12-121.us-west-2.compute.amazonaws.com/edda/api/v2/view/instances;_pp

If all of that seems too hard, feel free to use the Edda CloudFormation template to bring it up in just a few clicks.

NOTES:

1. This is not production quality. If the instance dies, you loose your history. This is meant as a quick way to get Edda up and running and see if you like it. Have a look at this wiki page for running Edda in production.

Genie

Genie is the NetflixOSS Hadoop Platform as a Service. It provides REST-ful APIs to run Hadoop, Hive and Pig jobs, and to manage multiple Hadoop resources and perform job submissions across them.

More detailed instructions for Genie can be found here

1. If you don't already have one, create a new Key Pair, and add it to your keychain or SSH agent so you don't need to specify it later:

   $ ssh-add mykey.pem
   

2. Launch an Elastic MapReduce (EMR) Cluster using the above Key Pair

   • Use the 2.4.2 AMI
   • Make sure the master node is at least an m1.medium so that Tomcat has enough RAM to run
   • Get EMR to install Hive 0.11
   • Get EMR to Install Pig 0.11.1

3. Either:

   • modify the ElasticMapReduce-master security group and allow port 7001 access from your IP address only
   • OR, set up a proxy to the Elastic MapReduce master and access it that way

4. Go to the EC2 page, and set the Name tag of the master node to Genie

5. Confirm you can see the instance using the Ansible EC2 inventory

   $ /etc/ansible/hosts | grep 'Genie'
   

OK, you are now ready to install Genie on the master node of the EMR JobFlow.

$ ansible-playbook playbooks/genie-hadoop-emr.yml -l 'tag_Name_Genie'

This will configure the master node to be running the latest snapshot build of Genie. If you prefer to build your own WAR file yourself, just specify the path to the WAR file:

$ ansible-playbook playbooks/genie-hadoop-emr.yml -l 'tag_Name_Genie' -e "local_war=/path/to/genie.war"

Once the playbook is finished, you will have Genie running inside Tomcat on your EMR master node. You can access it via HTTP. Example:

http://ec2-123-123-123-123.compute.amazonaws.com:7001/

Ice

Ice provides a birds-eye view of your AWS usage and costs. Before running the playbook, there are a few things we need to do:

More detailed instructions for Ice can be found here

1. Create an Ice security group

• Allow port 22 for SSH
• Allow port 80 for HTTP

1. If you don't already have one, create a new Key Pair, and add it to your keychain or SSH agent so you don't need to specify it later:

$ ssh-add mykey.pem

1. Enable programmatic billing access on your AWS account, and take note of the bucket name
2. Create another S3 bucket that will be used as a workspace for Ice.
3. Create an Ice IAM Role that allows S3 read access to your billing bucket, and read and write access to the S3 working space bucket. It will also need read-only access to EC2 for things like describing reserved instance offerings. A samply policy (that probably gives more access than necessary) is available in this repository.
4. Launch a new EC2 instance using the above Security Group, key pair and IAM role. You can use either Ubuntu or Amazon Linux.
5. Set the Name tag of the instance to Ice
6. Confirm you can see the instance using the Ansible EC2 inventory

$ /etc/ansible/hosts | grep 'Ice'

1. OK, the instance is now ready. Before running the playbook, edit the variables file and fill in the values for bucket names and the like. The file is documented.

Now you can run the playbook

$ ansible-playbook playbooks/ice-amazon-linux.yml -l 'tag_Name_Ice'

This will configure the instance to be running the latest snapshot build of Ice. If you prefer to build your own WAR file yourself, just specify the path to the WAR file:

$ ansible-playbook playbooks/ice-amazon-linux.yml -l 'tag_Name_Ice' -e "local_war=$HOME/Downloads/ice.war"

Once the playbook is finished, you will have Ice running inside Tomcat on your EC2 instance. You can access it via HTTP. Example:

http://ec2-123-123-123-123.compute.amazonaws.com/dashboard/summary

Simian Army

The Simian Army are tools for keeping your cloud operating in top form. For example, Chaos Monkey is a resiliency tool that helps applications tolerate random instance failures. Before running the playbook, there are a few things we need to do:

More detailed instructions for the Simian Army can be found here

1. Create a Simian Army IAM Role with this policy
2. Create a Simian Army security group

• Allow port 22 for SSH
• Allow port 80 for REST access only from your own IP address

1. Create a new Key pair (if you don't already have one) and add it to your keychain or SSH agent so you don't need to specify it later:

$ ssh-add mykey.pem

1. Launch a new EC2 instance using the above IAM Role, Security Group and key pair. Use Ubuntu 12.04 LTS as the AMI.
2. Set the Name tag of the instance to SimianArmy
3. Confirm you can see the instance using the Ansible EC2 inventory

$ /etc/ansible/hosts | grep 'SimianArmy'

Now you can run the playbook

$ ansible-playbook playbooks/simian-army-ubuntu.yml -l 'tag_Name_SimianArmy'

Once the playbook is finished, you can SSH to the instance an start configure the Simian Army. Example:

ssh ubuntu@ec2.xyz
cd /usr/local/tomcat/webapps/simianarmy/WEB-INF/classes/
sudo emacs chaos.properties
sudo service tomcat7 restart

The log files are located at /var/log/tomcat7, with catalina.out being the main one.

If all of that seems too hard, feel free to use the Simian Army CloudFormation template to bring up the Simian Army in just a few clicks.

Feedback

If you have feedback, comments or suggestions, please feel free to contact Peter at Answers for AWS, create an Issue, or submit a pull request.

About Answers for AWS

These playbooks were written by Peter Sankauskas, founder of Answers for AWS - a consulting company focused on helping business get the most out of AWS. If you are looking for help with AWS, please contact us.

License

Copyright 2013 Answers for AWS LLC

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.