haproxy lab setup!

Been seeing haproxy more and more lately as it seems even the stuff I work with are moving towards web :)

So a good time as any to play around with it!

First setup is the tag “single-node” in https://github.com/martbhell/haproxy-lab – this means it just configures one apache httpd and one haproxy. In the haproxy it creates multiple vhosts with content being served from different directories, and then it points to each of these as a haproxy backend.

To illustrate the load balancing the playbook also installs php and shows the path of the file that’s being served.

I used ansible for this and only tested it with CentOS7 in an OpenStack. The playbook also sets up some “dns” in /etc/hosts.

There are also “ops_playbooks” for disabling/enabling backends and setting weights.

I wonder what’s a good next step. Maybe multiple hosts / Docker containers? Maybe SSL termination + letsencrypt? Maybe some performance benchmarking/tuning?
I like the help for the configuration file – it begins with some detail about what an HTTP request looks like :)

read on
Posted at 8pm on 07/08/17 | No Comments » | Filed Under: IT

Automated testing of ansible roles

What is this?

Basic idea: whenever most things happen in your ansible repository (for example commit, pull request or release) then you want to automatically test the ansible code.

The basic tools:

  • syntax-checking
  • lint / codying style adherence
  • actually running the code
  • is it idempotent
  • does the end result look like you want it to?

How it should be done

Use something like molecule https://github.com/metacloud/molecule which can launch your container/virtual machine, run ansible, check for lint and also run some testing framework like serverspec/testinfra.

How I currently to do it

I use travis to test many ansible roles and playbooks. From travis you basically get an Ubuntu machine and in that you can run whatever you want.

Basic process I’ve used for ansible testing:

  • Configure docker on the Ubuntu machine (or LXC in some roles)
  • Launch a docker with the OS you want to test on (in my case mostly CentOS 7, but sometimes Debian)
  • Run ansible-playbook with –syntax-check, –check and twice to check for idempotency
  • Run some manual commands at the end to test whatever was configured / or at least print some config files to make sure they look OK

All of the above and more should be doable now with molecule, first and last time I tried I couldn’t get it to work but it’s looking better.

Actual commands to test

css.php