Ruby on Rails server config for Capistrano Deployment

This repo contains the scripts (and the configuration files to go with them) for provisioning Ubuntu 20.04 for use with Ruby on Rails w/ Capistrano.

Features:

• Nginx, RVM, Redis, and ImageMagick installation
• Services and socket configuration for Rails and Sidekiq
• Staging and Production Nginx configuration
• Staging and Production Capistrano files for deployment
• AWS Load Balancing
• Others (AWS Cloudwatch, GeoIPUpdate, etc.)

Prerequisites: SSH

1. Create a public key if needed in your development environment

sudo apt-get install ssh-keygen
cd ~/.ssh
ssh-keygen

Reference: https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-on-the-Server-Generating-Your-SSH-Public-Key

2. Add the public key (identified by id_rsa.pub) to the ~/.ssh/authorized_keys file on the target server

NOTE: This may be configured for you at server creation, depending on the Cloud Provider.

3. Make sure you can SSH into the target server.

Server setup

1. Clone this repo to the home directory of the target server

git clone https://github.com/strouptl/rails_server_config

2. Run the "provision_server" script and answer the prompts

cd rails_server_config
./bin/provision_server

3. Create a "rails.conf" file in the /etc/environment.d/ directory, and set any needed environment variables there.

For example:

# /etc/environment.d/rails.conf
RAILS_ENV=production
SECRET_KEY_BASE=
DOMAIN_NAME=

NOTE: You can run "rails secret" on any server (including a development machine) to generate the value for the SECRET_KEY_BASE environment variable)

4. Consider setting the RAILS_ENV and any other essential environment variables in your local bash shell, as well (rails.conf will only load within the service)

# ~/.profile
RAILS_ENV=production
DOMAIN_NAME=
SECRET_KEY_BASE=

Applicaion Configuration

1. Add the following to your Gemfile (development group)

# Gemfile

# For allowing Puma to notify systemd of successful/unsuccessful start/stop/restart events
gem "sd_notify"

# For using Capistrano to deploy
group :development do
  gem "capistrano", require: false
  gem "capistrano-rails", require: false
  gem "capistrano-bundler", require: false
  gem 'capistrano-rvm', require: false
  gem 'elbas', require: false
  gem 'ed25519', require: false
  gem 'bcrypt_pbkdf', require: false
end

2. Install Capistrano to generate the default Capistrano files

bundle exec cap install

References: https://github.com/capistrano/capistrano/blob/master/README.md#install-the-capistrano-gem

3. Copy the application config files to your application, updating the Capistrano files where needed

cp -r config_files/application/* YOUR_APPLICATION_DIRECTORY

4. Generate binstubs for puma and sidekiq for the services

bundle binstubs puma
bundle binstubs sidekiq

5. (If using AWS autoscaling) Add the following environment variables to the .env file in your rails repo

AWS_REGION=
CAP_AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=
CAP_AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=

NOTE: This AWS user must have full access to EC2 in order to interact with the Target Group and/or Templates. Keep it safe, and keep it separate from other AWS Credentials.

Capistrano - Server Side

On the server side, you need to enable the server to read from your application's git repo. To do so:

1. Create a private key (same as above)

2. Add this private key to your application's Git repo

Final DNS/Hosting Configuration

Staging

1. Point your desired domain name (e.g. www.example.com) to the IP address of your server.

2. Install certbot, and obtain SSL certificate

sudo apt-get install certbot
sudo certbot

References: https://certbot.eff.org/instructions?ws=nginx&os=ubuntufocal

Production (using AWS terms)

1. Create a Launch Template from your production server above

2. Create a Target Group referencing this Launch Template

3. Create an AWS Scaling Group, referencing the Target Group above

4. Create an SSL Certificate for your desired domain name via AWS Certificate Manager

5. Create a Load Balancer with this certificate, and configure it to forward traffic to the desired AWS Target Group

NOTE: The above is a rough outline of the general requirements for utilizing AWS Autoscaling. For Steps 2,3, and 5, we recommend utilizing Terraform/OpenTofu for configuring the AWS cloud environment properly (coming soon!).