I made a script to automate django deployments on Amazon EC2 | Hacker News Reader

I made a script to automate django deployments on Amazon EC2

github.com

91 pointsflexterra23 comments

I maintain a CLI tool that does something similar but for WSGI apps, and with a slightly different stack (uWSGI and daemontools). It uses libcloud to create instances so rackspace and linode are also supported among others.

https://github.com/jokull/kraftwerk

Very cool. Curious why you didn't use fabric.api.put instead of `run(_write_to(config_file, "/home/%(SERVER_USERNAME)s/nginx.conf" % fabconf))` ?

You are right, I will fix that

A little late to the conversation, but none the less...

You could use the TurnKey Hub for easy deployment of a pre-configured Django appliance to Amazon EC2. If you prefer the command line you can use the Hub's API or CLI, for example:

$ hub-launch django [-options]

If you've enabled TKLBAM (encrypted backups of changes to files, databases, package management state, even users and groups), you can launch a new cloud server which will be automatically restored upon boot:

$ hub-launch $BACKUP_ID

Take that a step further and say you're developing your Django app in a local VM. When you're ready to deploy to the cloud you just trigger a backup, then launch it in the cloud.

Nice.

The state of the art here is to use AWS CloudFormation to bring up the instance.

With CloudFormation you can specify the base AMI and other resources, such as an Elastic IP, and AWS will either bring up the stack or rollback the entire transaction if something goes wrong.

Then, you specify the script to set up the AMI as a userdata script, and that will be run as root when the instance boots.

The downside here is that the CloudFormation syntax is very funky, and 100% AWS specific. This might justify sticking with your strategy of simple fabric scripts.

I like dotcloud for this, but before I fell in love with dotcloud, this is exactly the sort of solution I was looking for.

Not exactly the same, but BitNami provides ready-made Django AMIs http://bitnami.org/stack/djangostack

Cool. Fabric rocks!

People may also want to check out Ian Bicking's Silver Lining tool: http://cloudsilverlining.org/

On a related note, is there a repository of generic (though distribution-specific) deployment scripts for VPSes [+]? In my personal case I'm thinking along the lines of setting up BIND, sendmail and tweaking your HTTP server in one go, but the more choices the better.

[+] It would clearly apply to physical servers as well, but probably this carefree approach would be used most on VPSes.

It's not quite exactly what you asked for, but have you seen the StackScripts from Linode? http://www.linode.com/stackscripts/

I have personally found that even distro-specific scripts require some tweaking across various hosting providers due to the default configuration of VPSs being different in each case. It has generally not been worth the effort for me to write complete bootstrap scripts so generic that they will work on anybody's VPS, but it's usually trivially easy to adapt whatever I have written to the quirks of a new hosting environment if the need arises.

Thanks! Since I'm far from launching any serious work, I'm still learning with cheaper VPSes, but thanks for your tip. In particular, the term 'bootstrap scripts' will prove handy. (Similar standard terms, suitable for Googling, will be welcomed.)

Cool! Can you please describe how to get preexisting Django apps served with this in more detail.

edit:

reading the config file turns out to be a good place to start.

Just edit the config file and run the fab fab command. That will setup the server and create an empty django app in /home/ubuntu/webapps. After that just replace that app with yours. You still might need to install application specific dependencies.

Would it be better to use a configuration management tool that does eventual automation to nodes on pull requests?

I would really like to see more Fabric scripts like this available. Thanks for this one.

Here's the one that I wrote for my Linode setup. Nothing specific to linode, though. https://github.com/neeleshs/django_project_template/blob/mas...

How does this work? If I change my app on my local machine do I use fab to redeploy it?

Currently the script only helps creating an EC2 instante and setting it up for a django app.

I plan to add common "re-deployment" stuff, but is very hard to decide what to include because everybody uses django differently. We need to develop best practices and conventions.

Any special reason why you haven't used something like libcloud (deploy_node ...) - http://libcloud.apache.org/?

Then the script would work with multiple providers, not just Amazon.

Did not know about it, but it looks very nice. I will give it a try.

thanks, it's very interested, did you try capistrano before?

If you're looking for a similar script for Ruby, check out Rubber. https://github.com/wr0ngway/rubber

Django is Python, so is Fabric.

Capistrano is Ruby, so is Rails.

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