Littlechef-Rackspace

Deploy chef to Rackspace Cloud Servers powered by OpenStack without a Chef Server.

Replaces knife rackspace for users of LittleChef.

Built on top of the excellent libcloud and littlechef libraries.

Installation Instructions

You must have libyaml-dev installed (C library required by PyYAML).

pip install littlechef-rackspace

Configuration

littlechef-rackspace supports a number of commands for managing your Cloud Resources.

• create
• rebuild
• list-servers
• list-images
• list-networks
• list-flavors

To do any of these, commands you must specify username, key, and region.

You can specify arguments on the command-line or in a rackspace.yaml file.x Your rackspace.yaml might look something like:

secrets-file: secrets.cfg
image: 5cebb13a-f783-4f8c-8058-c4182c724ccd
flavor: 2
public_key: bootstrap.pub
private_key: bootstrap
region: dfw
environment: preprod

• region: You can choose any Rackspace Cloud region (DFW, ORD, IAD, SYD, LON, HKG). For LON servers you must have an enabled account (sign up at rackspace.co.uk).

Putting Your Secrets in a Secrets File

You can specify a secrets-file in the rackspace.yaml that contains your username and api key. This allows your source repository to track common configuration (images, flavors) but not secrets. The secrets.cfg file is a Python configuration file and secrets will be read from under the [DEFAULT] configuration section. Here's an example secrets.cfg file:

[DEFAULT]
username=myrackspaceusername
key=myrackspaceapikey

Rackspace Create

fix-rackspace create \
    --username <username> \
    --key <api_key> \
    --region <region, must be DFW or ORD> \
    --image 5cebb13a-f783-4f8c-8058-c4182c724ccd \
    --flavor 2 \
    --name "test-creation" \
    --public-key <public_key_file> \
    --private-key <private_key_file> \
    --runlist "role[web],recipe[security-updates]" \
    --plugins "save_network,save_cloud" \
    --post-plugins "mark_node_as_ready"

Arguments

• image: Image to use (e.g. Ubuntu 12.04)
• flavor: Flavor to use (e.g. 2GB, 4GB, 8GB)
• name: Name of the newly created node in the Rackspace Cloud Control panel. Also sets the initial hostname. You will need to set up DNS yourself.
• public_key: Public key used to authorize root SSH access
• private_key: Private key used to authenticate as root to the newly created node
• environment: Sets the chef_environment on a newly created node
• runlist: Comma separated list of the Chef runlist to execute on the node.
• plugins: Comma separated list of littlechef plugins. Plugins are executed after chef deploy but before your recipe run. If your recipes depend on the cloud attribute being set, you can specify a custom littlechef save_cloud plugin that uses ohai to save data to the node before your cookbooks are run.
• post-plugins: Comma separated list of littlechef plugins. These plugins are executed after the initial chef run. They can be used to mark that a node is ready to go into rotation (for example).
• skip-opscode-chef: Don't run deploy_chef to install chef with opscode packages (only on command line)
• use-opscode-chef: '0' or '1' based on whether to run deploy_chef after initial node startup (defaults to 1). Useful when you are installing your own chef packages through a plugin.

Rackspace Rebuild

fix-rackspace rebuild \
    --username <username> \
    --key <api_key> \
    --region <region, must be DFW or ORD> \
    --image 5cebb13a-f783-4f8c-8058-c4182c724ccd \
    --name "test-rebuild" \
    --public-key <public_key_file> \
    --private-key <private_key_file> \
    --runlist "role[web],recipe[security-updates]" \
    --plugins "save_network,save_cloud" \
    --post-plugins "mark_node_as_ready"

Arguments

Arguments are as for create, with the exception of:

• name: Name of the node to rebuild.

Rackspace List Servers

List the servers with your associated region. Useful for determining which servers you want to rebuild.

4e7d282f-3827-4c71-bb1d-7519e0543c4b     server1                  5.6.7.8
30cd9fef-4302-47fa-9f05-3fc8cc35a0b7     server2                  12.13.14.15

Rackspace List Images

List the images with your associated region. Handy for finding the image you want to create.

$ fix-rackspace list-images
bca91446-e60e-42e7-9e39-0582e7e20fb9       Fedora 16 (Verne)
17282573-81b3-4a2d-80e4-7fcf16d4ac08       Windows Server 2012 (with updates) + SQL Server 2012 Web SP1
a620e9ee-cd4c-47a0-b909-042cb5058488       Windows Server 2012 (with updates) + SQL Server 2012 Standard SP1
3071dff8-6564-481e-a9c0-2c67f0b8cbf0       Windows Server 2012 (with updates)
# etc

Rackspace List Flavors

$ fix-rackspace list-flavors
2         512MB Standard Instance
3         1GB Standard Instance
4         2GB Standard Instance
5         4GB Standard Instance
6         8GB Standard Instance
7         15GB Standard Instance
8         30GB Standard Instance

Reducing Command-Line Boilerplate With Templates

In practice many arguments are grouped together for creates. For example, you may have a staging install in the DFW datacenter, but a production install in the ORD datacenter. These datacenters all use different private network identifiers. Additionally, you may have several types of node: web, application server, database, each with different plugins or runlists.

To support this hierarchy in arguments and reduce "what were those arguments anyways?" syndrome, littlechef-rackspace supports templates. These are specified in your rackspace.yml.

templates:
  base:
    runlist:
      - recipe[test]
      - recipe[test2]
  web:
    runlist:
      - recipe[web]
  preprod:
    region: dfw
    environment: preprod
    networks:
      - 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
      - 3d443c50-a45e-11e3-a5e2-0800200c9a66
  production:
    region: ord
    environment: production
    networks:
      - 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
      - 5df00920-a45e-11e3-a5e2-0800200c9a66

Once a template is defined you can use it as part of node creation by specifying it after the 'create'.

# Applies 'web' and 'preprod' templates to new node 'web-n01.preprod'
fix-rackspace create --name web-n01.preprod web preprod

# Applies 'web' and 'production' templates to new node 'web-n01.prod'
fix-rackspace create --name web-n01.prod web production

List-based arguments will be combined if multiple templates apply. For example, given the following template:

templates:
  base:
    networks:
      - 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
  preprod:
    region: dfw
    environment: preprod
    networks:
      - 3d443c50-a45e-11e3-a5e2-0800200c9a66

The following command will create a node with two networks, 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 and 3d443c50-a45e-11e3-a5e2-0800200c9a66.

fix-rackspace create --name base-n01.preprod base preprod

Notes

The server is created with your public key file in the /root/.ssh/authorized_keys. I highly recommended that you disable root password login as part of your chef recipes!

Tips for OS X

Mac users will most likely encounter the following libcloud error:

No CA Certificates were found in CA_CERTS_PATH

This can be remedied by executing the following:

$ brew install curl-ca-bundle
$ export SSL_CERT_FILE=/usr/local/opt/curl-ca-bundle/share/ca-bundle.crt

More information about this error can be found at libcloud.apache.org