Rackspace Fanatical Support for AWS™, with our army of AWS experts, can help implement the ideal combination of cultural philosophies, practices, and tools which enable an organization to deliver applications and services at high velocity. This speed enables organizations to better serve their customers and compete more effectively in the market by allowing them to evolve and improve products at a faster pace than organizations using traditional software development and infrastructure management processes. Join our upcoming webinar to learn how ScriptDrop leveraged Rackspace to develop a best practices DevOps pipeline utilizing the latest AWS technologies, quickly and efficiently.

1. Rackspace Best Practices
for DevOps on AWS
Lex Crosett • Solutions Architect, AWS
Larry Scott • CTO, ScriptDrop
Eric Johnson • AWS Evangelist & Cloud Architect, Rackspace
Jerry Hargrove • Sr. Solutions Architect, Rackspace

2. Agenda
 AWS DevOps Solution Overview
 AWS DevOps Tools
 DevOps in New Technologies
 ScriptDrop Use Case
 Q & A

3. DevOps on the AWS Cloud
Lex Crosett • Solutions Architect, AWS

4. Traditional Development Models are Obsolete
 Business is increasingly software-driven
 End-users expect both continuous improvement and stability from
applications
 IT needs to be able to provision infrastructure as rapidly as developers
demand it
 An organization’s pace of innovation is largely constrained by their
ability to develop applications

5. Increase
 Business agility
 Application stability
 Ability to meet customer
demand
 Time spent on innovation
 Security
Decrease
 Length of development cycles
 Time to market
 Deployment failures and
rollbacks
 Time to recover upon failure
 Operational overhead
DevOps Can Help
DevOps practices enable companies to innovate at a higher velocity
for customers

6. Infrastructure
as Code
Microservices Logging and
Monitoring
Continuous Integration/
Continuous Delivery
DevOps on AWS
AWS provides on-demand infrastructure resources and tooling built to
enable common DevOps practices

7.  Provision the server, storage, and networking capacity you
need on demand
 Deploy independently, as a single service, or a group of
services
 Make configuration changes repeatable and standardized
 Build custom templates to provision resources in a controlled
and predictable way
 Use version control to keep track of all changes made to your
infrastructure and application stack
Infrastructure as Code
Replace traditional infrastructure provisioning and management with
code-based techniques

8.  Build services around the business capabilities you require
 Scale up and down as required with virtually no notice
 Make configuration code changes repeatable and
standardized
 API-driven model enables management of infrastructure
with language typically used in application code
 Free developers from manually configuring operating
systems, system applications, and server software
Microservices
Build applications as a set of small services that communicates with other
services through APIs

9.  Maintain visibility and auditability of activity in your
application infrastructure
 Assess how application and infrastructure performance
impact end-user experience
 Gain insight into the root causes of problems or
unexpected changes
 Support services that must be available 24/7 as a result of
continuous integration/ continuous delivery
 Create alerts based on thresholds you define
Logging and Monitoring
Capture, categorize, and analyze data and logs generated by applications
and infrastructure

10.  Model and visualize your own custom release workflow
 Automate deployments of new code
 Improve developer productivity and deliver updates faster
 Find and address bugs quicker with more frequent and
comprehensive testing
 Store anything from source code to binaries using existing
Git tools
Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery
Rapidly and reliably build, test, and deploy your applications, while
improving quality and reducing time to market.

11. Get started quickly
and pay as you go
Automate systems
operations
Scale without
infrastructure constraints
Improve visibility
and security
Leverage fully
managed services
Benefits of DevOps on AWS

12. AWS DevOps Tools
Eric Johnson • AWS Evangelist & Cloud Architect, Rackspace

13.  Infrastructure as Code
 Supports a wide range of AWS services
 Declarative & Flexible
 JSON & YAML Support
AWS CloudFormation

14.  Fully Managed Repo Service
 Private Repositories secured through AWS IAM access
control
 GIT Compatible
 AWS CLI accessible
AWS CodeCommit

15.  Workflow Modeling
 Secured with AWS Identity and Access Management
 AWS Integrations
 Third party integrations
AWS CodePipeline

16.  Build and tests code
 Preconfigured build environments
 Customizable build environments
 Configurable
 Centralized monitoring
 If you can do it from a command line, you can do it in code
build
AWS CodeBuild

17.  Automated, repeatable deployments
 AWS & on-premises deployments
 Rolling and Blue/Green updates
 Easy to rollback
 Centralized monitoring
AWS CodeDeploy

18. DevOps in New Technologies
Jerry Hargrove • Sr. Solutions Architect, Rackspace
Best Practices for Containers

19. Why Containers?
19

20. History
Containers & DevOps – Best Practices
20
Provide Fanatical Support on the World’s Leading Clouds
2008
Mar 2013
AWS Container History
Mar 2014 Jun 2014
Nov 2014
Nov 2015
Dec 2015BC
chroot, BSD jails,
Solaris Zones,
Google process
containers
Linux containers,
LXC (Docker's
origins) LXC
dotCloud releases
Docker to open
source
v0.9 released
by Docker
Amazon Linux
AMI includes
Docker v0.9
Apr 2014
AWS includes
Docker support in
Elastic beanstalk
1.0 released
by Docker
(production ready)
Amazon ECS
(GA Apr 2015)
Multi-container
Elastic Beanstalk
using ECS
EC2 Container
Registry, service
scaling, Application
Load Balancer, Blox,
Windows containers,
Container instance
draining

21. Container Images
21

22. Minimize Image Size
Containers & DevOps – Best Practices
22
 Large containers take longer to deploy,
slow down CI/CD pipelines
 Keep images as small as possible
– Use small base images like Debian or
Alpine
– Don’t install unnecessary packages
– Use .dockerignore
 Copy On Write (COW) behavior
https://docs.docker.com/engine/userguide/storagedriver/imagesandcontainers/

23. Don’t Run Containers as Root
Containers & DevOps – Best Practices
23
 Default: Docker containers run with root
privileges
 More specifically, the default user is that
of the parent image
 Most containers do not need root access
on the host
 The Docker daemon itself requires root
privileges and runs as root
 Namespaces now provide daemon /
container privilege separation
 Check public repo images and verify user
FROM node:latest
WORKDIR /usr/src
COPY package.json /usr/src/package.json
RUN npm install
COPY app.js /usr/src/
COPY test /usr/src/test
COPY script /usr/src/script
# user to non-privileged user
USER nobody
EXPOSE 5000
CMD [“node”,”app.js”]
Sample Dockerfile:

24. php:
build: ./php
...
backend:
build: ./backend
links:
- php:php
...
varnish:
build: ./varnish
links:
- backend:backend
...
frontnginx:
build: ./frontnginx
links:
- varnish:varnish
...
Limit Container Scope
Containers & DevOps – Best Practices
24
 One container, one purpose (or
role)
 Facilitates horizontal scaling and
reuse
 Allows decoupled containers to
vary independently
 Dependent containers may be
linked together
docker-compose.yml

25. Container Orchestration
25

26. Containers & DevOps – Best Practices
26
Container Orchestration
 Addresses operational
complexity
 Container orchestration includes:
– Placement, scaling, deploying
– Resource management
 RAM, CPU, Disk, Ports, Ips
– Monitoring, security, logging,
networks, etc
 Managed vs. DIY
Amazon ECS
Amazon EC2
Kontena
Docker
Kubernetes
… and others

27. Containers & DevOps – Best Practices
27
Container Pipeline
AWS
CodeCommit
AWS
CodePipeline
AWS
CodeBuild
AWS
CloudFormation
Amazon
ECS
Amazon
ECR
Developers

28. Containers & DevOps – Best Practices
28
Container Pipeline
AWS
CodeCommit
AWS
CodePipeline
AWS
CodeBuild
AWS Elastic
Beanstalk
Amazon
ECR
Developers
Using AWS Elastic Beanstalk

29. ScriptDrop
Larry Scott • CTO, ScriptDrop

30. About ScriptDrop
 Prescription (Rx) delivery service based
out of New York
 Small team startup
 3 total members
 Early employees of CoverMyMeds
(Recently sold for $1.4 billion)

31. Evaluating the Solutions
 Why ScriptDrop chose Rackspace
– Felt secure with Rackspace’s AWS Knowledge
– Felt confident in the plan proposed by Rackspace
– Competitive pricing

32. Why Rackspace on AWS?
 Why ScriptDrop chose to work with Rackspace on AWS
– Chose AWS because of the ease of use
– AWS seemed overwhelming
– Rackspace had the required knowledge
– Ability to support HIPAA Compliant workloads sealed the deal!

33. Initial Process
AWS
CodePipeline
AWS
CodeDeploy
Pipeline 1
Pipeline 2
Prepared
Artifact
User BitBucket CodeShip
Manual
EC2
instance
EC2
instance
EC2
instance
EC2
instance
Prepared
Artifact

34. Initial Process
Steps
1. BitBucket Git Repo
2. CodeShip for Build and Test
3. Manually drop prepared
artifacts in CodeCommit
4. Monitor and deploy with
CodePipeline and CodeDeploy
Issues
 Manual steps required
 Requires multiple repos storing
unneeded code
 Multiple pipelines to manage

35. Rackspace Advantage
EC2
instance
EC2
instance
EC2
instance
EC2
instance
AWS
CodePipeline
AWS
CodeBuild
AWS
CodeDeploy

36. Steps
 Move to GitHub for Source
Control
 CodeBuild replaced CodeShip
 Pipeline Orchestration
 Deploy with CodeDeploy
Improvements
 One Pipeline
 Fully Automated
 One Code Repo
Rackspace Proposed Story

37. PIVOT
Hold up a sec…

38. Why Containers?
 Consistent Environments from
Development to Production
 Separation of Concerns
 Insects vs. Cattle vs. Pets
Rackspace Enablement
 Recognizing the want to go to
Containers
 Designing a best-practices AWS
infrastructure for containers
 Designing a best-practices AWS
DevOps process for containers
The Pivot to Containers

39. Containers Pipeline
AWS
CodeCommit
AWS
CodePipeline
AWS
CodeBuild
AWS
CloudFormation
Amazon
ECS
Amazon
ECR
Developers

40. Q & A
For more information please visit:
https://www.rackspace.com/aws
@edjgeek
@awsgeek
For more DevOps insights follow our speakers on Twitter: