meteor-multiverse-cookbooks

Custom Chef Cookbooks for Amazon AWS OpsWorks to support Meteor Multiverse environments

The Cookbooks

Cookbook: mm_layer_haproxy

This cookbook is for customizing a Custom Layer in an OpsWorks Stack to run an HAProxy Load Balancer in front of mm_layer_nodejs and mm_layer_nginx Layers.

Purpose

This Layer provides:

• Force HTTPS
• HTTPS termination
• Load balancing
• Sticky sessions via server affinity
• High-level backend server statistics and administration dashboards

Layer Necessity

• REQUIRED!

Prerequisites

1. You must use a Custom Layer.
2. Your App's type must be specifically set to Node.js.

Recipe Usage per AWS OpsWorks Lifecycle Phase

• Setup
  • mm_layer_haproxy::setup
• Configure
  • mm_layer_haproxy::configure
• Deploy
  • mm_layer_haproxy::deploy
• Undeploy
  • mm_layer_haproxy::undeploy
• Shutdown
  • mm_layer_haproxy::shutdown

Recipe Usage outside of the AWS OpsWorks Lifecycle Phases

• mm_layer_haproxy::app_restart
  • Restart the HAProxy service
• mm_layer_haproxy::app_start
  • Start the HAProxy service
• mm_layer_haproxy::app_stop
  • Stop the HAProxy service

Cookbook: mm_layer_nginx

This cookbook is for customizing a Custom Layer in an OpsWorks Stack to host/serve the static frontend assets from a Meteor app bundle using NGINX web server(s). Those same static frontend assets are available in the mm_layer_nodejs as well, just in case this mm_layer_nginx is unavailable (or you choose not to enable this layer).

Purpose

This Layer provides:

• Serving frontend static assets to offload that mindless burden from the mm_layer_nodejs
• GZip compression of those assets for reduced download size/time

Layer Necessity

• Optional but recommended

Prerequisites

1. You must use a Custom Layer.
2. Your App's type must be specifically set to Node.js.
3. Your App's source origin must contain the unzipped contents of the ZIP file produced by running meteor bundle bundle.tgz on your Meteor app codebase.

Recipe Usage per AWS OpsWorks Lifecycle Phase

• Setup
  • mm_layer_nginx::setup
• Configure
  • mm_layer_nginx::configure
• Deploy
  • mm_layer_nginx::deploy
• Undeploy
  • mm_layer_nginx::undeploy
• Shutdown
  • mm_layer_nginx::shutdown

Recipe Usage outside of the AWS OpsWorks Lifecycle Phases

• mm_layer_nginx::app_restart
  • Restart the NGINX service
• mm_layer_nginx::app_start
  • Start the NGINX service
• mm_layer_nginx::app_stop
  • Stop the NGINX service

Cookbook: mm_layer_nodejs

This cookbook is for customizing a Custom Layer in an OpsWorks Stack to run a Meteor app bundle using Node.js — NOT using Meteor!

Purpose

This Layer provides:

• Serving the primary functionality of the Meteor app from its bundled Node.js app form

Layer Necessity

• REQUIRED!

Prerequisites

1. You must use a Custom Layer.
2. Your App's type must be specifically set to Node.js.
3. Your App's source origin must contain the unzipped contents of the ZIP file produced by running meteor bundle bundle.tgz on your Meteor app codebase.

Recipe Usage per AWS OpsWorks Lifecycle Phase

• Setup
  • mm_layer_nodejs::setup
• Configure
  • mm_layer_nodejs::configure
• Deploy
  • mm_layer_nodejs::deploy
• Undeploy
  • mm_layer_nodejs::undeploy
• Shutdown
  • mm_layer_nodejs::shutdown

Recipe Usage outside of the AWS OpsWorks Lifecycle Phases

• mm_layer_nodejs::app_restart
  • Restart the Node.js app process(es)
• mm_layer_nodejs::app_start
  • Start the Node.js app process(es)
• mm_layer_nodejs::app_stop
  • Stop the Node.js app process(es)

Cookbook: mm_layer_ssh

This cookbook is for customizing a Custom Layer in an OpsWorks Stack to serve as your secured SSH Bastion Host a.k.a. SSH Jump Host a.k.a. SSH Pass-Through. In other words, if you enable this layer, then you must always SSH tunnel into one of its SSH Bastion Host servers before continuing on to one of the servers from the other Layers.

You can also choose to create this Layer in a separate OpsWorks Stack all of its own and then establish a VPC Peering Connection between it and your others OpsWorks Stacks using a "Hub-and-Spoke" Configuration to establish a one-to-many relationship of SSH Bastion Hosts to all of your other servers.

Purpose

This Layer provides:

• Secure SSH tunneling for authorized shell access
• Security buffer against unauthorized shell access

Layer Necessity

• Optional but recommended

Prerequisites

1. You must use a Custom Layer.

Recipe Usage per AWS OpsWorks Lifecycle Phase

• Setup
  • mm_layer_ssh::setup
• Configure
  • mm_layer_ssh::configure
• Deploy
  • mm_layer_ssh::deploy
• Undeploy
  • mm_layer_ssh::undeploy
• Shutdown
  • mm_layer_ssh::shutdown

Recipe Usage outside of the AWS OpsWorks Lifecycle Phases

• N/A

Cookbook: mm_lib_common

??? This cookbook is for customizing any/all built-in or Custom Layer(s) within an OpsWorks Stack. It should NOT be considered a "Layer" of its own but rather a set of Layer customizations/enhancements that can be applied to any other Layer. ???

Purpose

??? This "Layer" provides:

• A mechanism to apply shared best practices to any other Layer

Layer Necessity

• Optional but recommended

Prerequisites

• N/A

Recipe Usage per AWS OpsWorks Lifecycle Phase

• Setup
  • mm_lib_common::setup
• Configure
  • mm_lib_common::configure
• Deploy
  • mm_lib_common::deploy
• Undeploy
  • mm_lib_common::undeploy
• Shutdown
  • mm_lib_common::shutdown

Recipe Usage outside of the AWS OpsWorks Lifecycle Phases

• N/A

Creating New Cookbooks

See CONTRIBUTING.md.

Acknowledgements

Special thanks go out to:

• The Amazon AWS team for open sourcing the core OpsWorks cookbooks: aws/opsworks-cookbooks. This was a major help in understanding the [almost] complete internal flow of OpsWorks, as well as in eventually deciding to use all custom Layers instead of fighting against the built-in Layers.