• Deploying application
• Sharing environment
• Monitoring

Minimal project

• Execution env
• Database
• HTTP server
• Frontend + Backend
• Cache

To setup project:

• Install required software
• Modify configuration
• Deploy project
• Run commands to initialise application

Dependencies have

dependencies

Real world web application

# application services

1. Frontend / Backend / API / etc...
2. Database replication
3. Cache server
4. Load balancing
5. Mailing service
6. Queue / Messaging service
7. Session storage
8. Deployment

Project components

# toolset

• Package manager // Bower, NPM, Composer, etc...
• JS/CSS building // SASS, LESS, CoffeScript...
• Execution environment // PHP, Ruby, Python, NodeJS, etc...
• Caching // memcached, redis, etc...
• Monitoring // sentry, logstash, statsd, collectd, graphite...
• Queues // beanstalk, redis, etc...
• Building // Grunt/gulp, Jenkins, phing, etc... 
• Database sever

Project deployment 

# environments

Development

1 per developer

Production

depends on project

Additional servers

staging

testing

backup

monitoring

deployment

...

Server

1 server

1 OS instance

1 application

Infrastructure

Hypervisor

OS

Frontend

PHP/nginx

OS

Database

MySQL

OS

Monitoring

Python/NodeJs

OS

API

Ruby/Unicorn

OS

Backend

PHP/nginx

OS

CDN

nginx/NodeJs

Sample infrastructure

# servers

Configurations needed:

Configuratios = Steps X Application X Server

Example:

50 steps

2 developers

production + testing

application + backend

= 400

Current project:

~70 steps per configuration

4 developers

16 production servers + testing + staging

11 applications

~ 10000

Environment differences

• Hardware
• OS (Windows/Linux/OS X)
• x86 / x86_64
• OS version/distribution
• Installed software
• Configuration

Adapt for everything

• Hard to implement
• Constant adoption for changing environments
• Code complexity

Matrix of hell

Virtualization

• Same OS and version
• Same installed software
• Same configuration
• Configurable hardware features

Other benefits

• Reusable, distributable boxes
• Snapshots
• Runs on any OS
• No extra software installation
• Conflicting configurations

Drawbacks

• Resource hungry
• Slower
• Hard to share
• Need for manual configuration

• Requirements change
• Instance needs manual update
• Repackaging needed after change
• Every instance updated separately

Sharing OS instance

Vagrant

• Share single file instead of instance
• Support for all Linux / OS X / Windows
• VirtualBox or VMware
• Easy sharing
• Many boxes to choose from
• Supports for provisioning

Provisioning

Automated process of configuring servers

Provisioners

• Ansible
• Chef
• Puppet
• Other

Inventory

• Comunication
• Server location
• Server roles

Recipe

• Install software
• Change configuration
• Create files
• Ensure system state

Running provisioner

• On initialization
• Manual
• Push (on schedule)
• Pull (on schedule)

Rolling updates

• For duplicated services only
• Sequence:
  • Remove from pool
  • Run provisioner
  • Check state
  • Put back to pool
  • Continue with next

Tips & tricks

• Use version control
• Use recipes for everything
• Don't update image, update recipe
• Share recipe, not image
• Provision production
• Keep organized
• Use --dry-run for testing

Virtualization

• Whole-system (vmware, virtualbox, etc..)
• OS level

in virtual machine

Linux containers + Docker

• Process isolation
• No need to create virtual machines
• Easy image sharing
• One image for one purpose
• No overhead
• Fast

Monitor your server

• Disk space
• CPU utilization
• Trafic
• DB activity

But don't forget users

• Collect user events:
  • Logins / unsuccessful logins
  • Registrations 
  • Purchases
  • Other important actions
  • Errors

Collect metrics

• Application
  • statsd
  • metricsd
  • bucky

• Server/services:
  • collectd
  • diamond
  • many others

• Logs:
  • logstash
  • fluentd

Aggregate data

• Graphite
• Carbon
• Logstash

Analyze data

• Grafana
• Giraffe
• Kibana

Receive alerts

• Seyren
• Cabot
• RearView

Or use what's

• New Relic
• DataDog
• LogicMonitor

already there

Monitoring is not about

• Get alerts
• Have stats on display
• Explain why things happen

beautiful graphs

Q&A

Thank you

https://slides.com/vaidasmikalauskas/serverside-ktu