I want to run GhostInspector (or similar) as part of CI/CD. The tests would execute as part of the release phase for staging, then if successful, production will be deployed. Does this work? Is the dyno publicly accessible with the usual staging url?
short answer: one-off dynos are not publicly accessible to the internet.
For your use-case the way on heroku would be pipelines:
deploy your app to a testing-stage app
run ghost-inspector there
promote to production/staging afterwards
(you can control all this via easy cli or api-requests)
alternative: find a tool that runs headless (inside the dynos) or can be called from the dynos (Browserstack can be used like this in a CI/CD/Pipeline)
Related
We use a Heroku pipeline for deployment review apps for our Angular app. Recently we invested in EndTest codeless automation and we need to run the test suites on every review app that is created. The url's of these review apps are dynamic in Heroku, is there a way to capture this generated url and then execute a script that would trigger my test case suite in EndTest(EndTest has an API which can consume the url).
How do I get this done in Heroku environment. I just have PROC file configured.
You could use the postdeploy script:
The app.json file has a scripts section that lets you specify a postdeploy command. Use this to run any one-time setup tasks that make the app, and any databases, ready and useful for testing. Postdeploy is handy for one-off tasks, such as:
Setting up OAuth clients and DNS
Loading seed/test data into the review app’s test database
But if you will run this script with each change to a pull request, use release phase.
The app name should be in the env variable HEROKU_APP_NAME.
This is a bit theoretical, but I'll try to explain my setup as much as I can:
1 server (instance) with a self-hosted gitlab
1 server (instance) for development
1 server (instance) for production
Let's say in my gitlab I have a ReactJs project and I configured my gitlab-ci.yml as following:
job deploy_dev Upon pushing to dev branch, the updates will be copied with rsync to /var/www/html/${CI_PROJECT_NAME} (As a deployment to dev server)
The runner that picks up the job deploy_dev is a shared runner installed on that same dev server that I deploy to and it picks up jobs with the tag reactjs
The question is:
If I want to deploy to production what is the best practice should I follow?
I managed to come up with a couple of options that I thought of but I don't know which one is the best practice (if any). Here is what I came up with:
Modify gitlab-ci.yml adding a job deploy_prod with the same tag reactjs but the script should rsync with the production server's /var/www/html/${CI_PROJECT_NAME} using SSH?
Set up another runner on production server and let it pick up the jobs with tags reactjs-prod and modify gitlab-ci.yml to have deploy_prod with the tag reactjs-prod?
You have a better way other than the 2 mentioned above?
Last question (related):
Where is the best place to install my runners? Is what I'm doing (Having my runners on my dev server) actually ok?
Please if you can explain to me the best way (that you would choose) with the reasons as in pros or cons I would be very grateful.
The best practice is to separate your CI/CD infrastructure from the infrastructure where you host your apps.
This is done to minimize the number of variables which can lead to problems with either your applications or your runners.
Consider the following scenarios when you have a runner on the same machine where you host your application: (The below scenarios can happen even if the runner and app are running in separate Docker containers. The underlying machine is still a single point of failure.)
The runner executes a CPU/RAM heavy job and takes up most of the resources on the machine. Your application starts experiencing performance problems.
The Gitlab runner crashes and puts the host machine in an inoperable state. (docker panic or whatever).
Your production app stops functioning.
Your app brakes the host machine (Doesn't matter how. It can happen), your CI/CD stops working and you can not deploy a fix to production.
Consider having a separate runner machine (or machines. Gitlab runner can scale horizontally), that is used to run your deployment jobs to both dev and production servers.
I agree with #cecunami's answer.
As an example, in our Org we have a dedicated VM only for the runner, which is explicitly monitored by our teams.
Since first creating the machine, the CPU, RAM and storage demand has grown massively, thus why the infrastructure is to be separated.
I have a Golang app running on Google Cloud App Engine that I can update manually with "gcloud app deploy" but I cannot figure out how to schedule automatic redeployments. I'm assuming I have to use cron.yaml, but then I'm confused about what url to use. Basically it's just a web app with one main index.html page with changing content, and I would like to schedule automatic redeployments... how do I have to go about that?
If you want to automatically re-deploy your app when the code changes, you need what's called CI/CD (Continuous integration/deployment). What a CI does is, for each new commit to your repository, check out the new code and run a test script. If all the tests pass (or if you don't have any tests at all), the CI server can then deploy your code to App Engine, all automatically.
One free (for open-source projects) CI provider is Travis CI. To configure it, you need to make an account with Travis, and a file called .travis.yml in the root of your repository. To set up App Engine deploys, you can follow this guide to set up a service account and add the encrypted file to your repo. It will run a gcloud app deploy from a container on their servers, whenever you push code to a certain branch (master by default) in your repo.
Another option, which avoids setting up CI at all, is to simply change your app to generate the dynamic parts of the page when it gets requested. Reading the documentation for html/template would point you in the right direction.
Is it possible, and if so, how? I'd like to be able to reach it from my existing Heroku infrastructure.
Will I need a Procfile? From what I understand it's just a standalone binary written in Go! so it shouldn't be that hard to deploy it, I'm just curious how to deploy it because I don't think I understand the ins and outs of Heroku deployment.
Heroku Dynos should not be used to deploy a database application like InfluxDB.
Dynos are ephemeral servers. Data does not persist between dyno restarts and cannot be shared with other dynos. Practically speaking, any database application deployed on a dyno is essentially useless. This is why databases on Heroku (e.g. Postgres) are all Add-ons. InfluxDB should be set up on a different platform (like, AWS EC2 or a VPS) since a Heroku Add-on is not available.
That said, it is possible to deploy InfluxDB to a Heroku dyno.
To get started, it is important to understand the concept of a 'slug'. Slugs are containers (similar to a Docker images) which hold everything needed to run a program on Heroku's infrastructure. To deploy InfluxDB, an InfluxDB slug needs to be created.* There are two ways to create a slug for Go libraries:
Create a slug directly from a Go executable as described here.**
Build the slug from source using the Heroku Go buildpack (explained below).
To build the slug from source using a buildpack, first clone the InfluxDB Github repo. Then add a Procfile at the root of the repo, which tells Heroku the command to run when the dyno starts up.
echo 'web: ./influxd' > Procfile
The Go buildpack requires all dependencies be included in the directory. Use the godep dependency tool to vendor all dependencies into the directory.
go get github.com/tools/godep
godep save
Next, commit the changes made above to the git repo.
git add -A .
git commit -m dependencies
Finally, create a new app and tell it to compile with the Go buildpack.
heroku create -b https://github.com/kr/heroku-buildpack-go.git
git push heroku master
heroku open // Open the newly created InfluxDB instance in the browser.
Heroku will show an error page. An error will be displayed because Heroku's 'web' process type requires an app to listen for incoming requests on the port described by the $PORT environment variable, otherwise it will kill the dyno. InfluxDB's API and admin panel run on ports 8086 and 8083, respectively.
Unfortunately, InfluxDB does not allow those ports to be set from environment variables, only through the config file (/etc/config.toml). A small bash script executed before InfluxDB starts up could set the correct port in the config file before InfluxDB starts up.
Another problem, Heroku only exposes one port per dyno so the API and the admin panel cannot be exposed to the internet at the same time. A smart reverse proxy could work around that issue using Heroku's X-Forwarded-Port request header.
Bottom line, do not use Heroku dynos to run InfluxDB.
* This means the benefits of a standalone Go executable are lost when deploying to Heroku, since it needs to be recompiled for Heroku's stack.
** Creating a slug directly from the InfluxDB executable does not work because there is no built-in way to listen to the right port given by Heroku in the $PORT environment variable.
I like to think anything is possible on a Heroku node when using a custom buildpack, but there are some considerations when hosting with Heroku:
ops, e.g. backup, monitoring (does it entail installing extra services, opening extra ports, etc - Heroku might get in the way here)
performance, considering dyno size
and if you need a larger dyno, cost becomes an issue. You'll get more bang for your buck when you go the IaaS route.
other "features" of a dyno, e.g. disk ephemerality
I highly recommend hosted InfluxDB or spinning up your own on a VPS, all of which you can point your existing Heroku-based apps to. It will then help to get those instances as close together as possible (i.e. same region, or co-located if possible), presuming a need for low latency between DB and app stack.
I want to build a Meteor-App to run a little side-project/business. This in mind:
I want a cheap environment (online) to test and share my progress
I want to have the option to scale it up in terms of production in a few months
I want to use some standard command line tools to push to this service
The database options have also to scale up if i need more
I've started looking into Heroku, but are there any "good practices" which anybody can recommend? I never hosted a Meteor-App, and i want to avoid a private server because of administration etc.
Meteor apps are immediately ready to deploy to Heroku. Your question is very broad, but Heroku fits the bill for every parameter you specified.
Here's a flow for creating an example meteor app and deploying it:
$ meteor create --example leaderboard
$ cd leaderboard
$ git init . && git add .
$ git commit -m "First commit"
$ heroku create --buildpack https://github.com/jordansissel/heroku-buildpack-meteor
$ git push heroku master
There are a few options:
Meteor.Com -- the easiest option, free hosting from Meteor. Super easy deployments, but limited resources until the Galaxy platform is complete. Not suitable for very high load/traffic sites (yet).
PaaS providers -- cloud hosting where you are responsible for your app, and the provider manages the infrastructure for you. Generally small virtual machines which host node apps, with great deployment tools.
Own Infrastructure -- info on how to host on your own servers, or via IaaS providers like Amazon AWS, Digital Ocean, Rackspace, etc. Most complicated option.
Deployment Services - services to manage deployment to your own servers (or IaaS servers). Advantages of the above but with the management taken care of for you (managed deployment, monitoring, etc).
Source: Meteorpedia
I have been hosting some meteor apps on Webfactions and it has been working fine so far.
Here is a tutorial :
http://racingtadpole.com/blog/meteor-mongodb-webfaction/