Using ShutIt and Docker to play with AWS (Part Two)

Previously I showed a very basic way of using ShutIt to connect to AWS.

I’ve taken this one step further so now there is a template for automating:

• killing any AWS instance you have running
• provisioning a new instance
• logging onto the new instance
• installing docker on it
• pulling and running your image

All you will need is a .pem file and to know the security group you want to use.

I’m assuming you already have an AWS account on the free tier and have nothing running on it, or one throwaway instance we’re going to kill.

Here are the steps to get going, from an ubuntu:14.04 basic install:

1) Basic installs

apt-get update
apt-get install -y docker.io python-pip
git clone https://github.com/ianmiell/shutit.git
cd shutit
pip install -r requirements.txt 
mkdir -p ~/.shutit && touch ~/.shutit/config && chmod 600 ~/.shutit/config 
vi ~/.shutit/config

2)Edit config for AWS

Then edit the file as here, changing the bits in CAPS as necessary:

[shutit.tk.aws.aws]
access_key_id:YOUR_AWS_ID
secret_access_key:YOUR_AWS_KEY
# region, eg 
# region:eu-west-1
region:YOUR_AWS_REGION
[shutit.tk.aws_example.aws_example]
# Your pem filename, eg if your pem file is called: yourpemname.pem
# pem_name:yourpemname 
pem_name:YOUR_PEM_NAME

3) Place your .pem file in the context’s pem directory:

cp /path/to/yourpemname.pem examples/aws_example/context/yourpemname.pem

4) Run it

cd examples/aws_example_provision
../../shutit build --shutit_module_path ../../library:.. --interactive 0

And wait.

Once you’ve seen that that works, you can now try changing it to automate the setup of an app on AWS.

You can start by uncommenting the lines here in aws_example_provision.py:

 shutit.send('sudo yum install -y docker')
 shutit.send('sudo service docker start')
 # Example of what you might want to do. Note that this won't work out
 # of the box as the security policy of the VM needs to allow access to
 # the relevant port.
 #shutit.send('sudo docker pull training/webapp')
 #shutit.send('sudo docker run -d --net=host training/webapp')
 # Exit back to the "real container"
 shutit.logout()

And running the build again.