Deploying a Rails app can be a somewhat daunting task to get set up right on new applications, even for seasoned Rails developers. While Capistrano has been the main player in Rails app deployments, it seems to have fallen somewhat out of favor as load balancers and computing servers have gained popularity.

Thankfully, AWS(Amazon Web Services) has created a tool for deploying and scaling Rails web application in their eco-system. Here is an explanation from their landing page:

AWS Elastic Beanstalk is an easy-to-use service for deploying and scaling web applications and services developed with Java, .NET, PHP, Node.js, Python, Ruby, Go, and Docker on familiar servers such as Apache, Nginx, Passenger, and IIS. You can simply upload your code and Elastic Beanstalk automatically handles the deployment, from capacity provisioning, load balancing, auto-scaling to application health monitoring. At the same time, you retain full control over the AWS resources powering your application and can access the underlying resources at any time. There is no additional charge for Elastic Beanstalk — you pay only for the AWS resources needed to store and run your applications.

Getting Started

If you do not have an AWS account yet, go sign up, and you get a bunch of free services for a year on specific levels(i.e t1.micro server, etc). The tutorial is going to focus on MacOS, and I can expand if enough interest is shown for windows, though most rails based commands should work on any platform.

After your set up your user, get AWS’s CLI(here via brew):

$ brew update

$ brew install aws-elasticbeanstalk

Now create the rails app if you have not already

$ **rvm or rbenv optional setup here**

$ gem install rails -v 5.0.1

$ rails new rails5app

$ cd rails5app

$ git init && git add -A && git commit -m "Init Commit Message"

…and now we’ll create an example scaffold

$ rails g scaffold message subject body:text

$ rails db:migrate

$ git add .

$ git commit -am "Add Messages"

$ git push

Alright, we have a basic Rails app needed to continue with the Elastic BeanStalk deploy. Lets initialize ElasticBeanstalk

$ eb init Select a default region

1) us-east-1 : US East (N. Virginia) Select an application to use

1)[ Create new Application ] Enter Application Name

(default is "rails5app"):

Application rails5app has been created. It appears you are using Ruby. Is this correct?

(y/n): y Select a platform version.

1) Ruby 2.3 (Puma) Do you want to set up SSH for your instances?

(y/n): y Select a keypair.

1) [ Create new KeyPair ]

(default is 1): 1

That sets up our environment, uses US East(preferable if you want to use AWS free SSL services), Ruby 2.3 and lets you access your EC2 when it is up and running by typing ‘eb ssh’.

Now we will create the environment. This is basically how Elastic Beanstalk lets you switch between different versions of your application. Most will use this to set up different rails environments to be deployed(prod, staging, etc)

$ git commit -am "Post EB init"

$ eb create production

..and wait. Right now Elastic Beanstalk is setting *everything* up for you, loadbalancers, security groups, EC2 server and more. Seriously, you should probably go grab a coffee. Also, I have had the eb-cli log time out on me before, disconnect, but still finish the environment creation.

A quick status check afterwards will get you environment information and your ElasticBeanstalk URL for your application:

$ eb status

Environment details for: production

Application name: rails5app

Region: us-east-1

Deployed Version: app-5cbc-170110_150338

Environment ID: e-krea6tdvjx

Platform: 64bit Amazon Linux 2016.09 v2.3.0 running Ruby 2.3 (Puma)

Tier: WebServer-Standard

CNAME: production.a3rjg2n9mm.us-east-1.elasticbeanstalk.com

Updated: 2017–01–10 22:10:57.815000+00:00

Status: Ready

Health: Green

Though, going there now would give you errors. To save you any ulcers, it’s because there is no Rails secret setup. So, here’s how you do that AND add an ENV variable to Elastic Beanstalk instances:

$ eb setenv SECRET_KEY_BASE=$(rails secret)

INFO: Environment update is starting.

INFO: Updating environment production's configuration settings.

INFO: Environment health has transitioned from Ok to Info. Configuration update in progress. 1 out of 1 instance completed (running for 51 seconds).

INFO: Successfully deployed new configuration to environment.

BOOM

From here on out, pushing code to your instance(s) is just an ‘eb deploy’ away.

Your default rails chariot awaits

The rest of the good stuff

I bet you’re saying, that’s great and all, but that’s not a production ready app. You’re right, let’s get postgresql, redis and sidekiq going! First up, Postgres. You’ll want to add the ‘pg’ gem to your gemfile and add the following to your database.yml:

production:

<<: *default

adapter: postgresql

encoding: unicode

database: <%= ENV['RDS_DB_NAME'] %>

username: <%= ENV['RDS_USERNAME'] %>

password: <%= ENV['RDS_PASSWORD'] %>

host: <%= ENV['RDS_HOSTNAME'] %>

port: <%= ENV['RDS_PORT'] %>

What is all that magic? AWS Elastic Beanstalk will throw those ENV variables on the your ec2 instances as soon as you have an RDS instance setup. Lets do that:

Go to https://console.aws.amazon.com/elasticbeanstalk/home?region=us-east-1#/applications

Click on the box for your application

Click on ‘Configuration’, scroll down to the bottom to ‘Data Tier’ and click ‘Setup RDS instance’

Setup RDS to your liking(postgres, t2.micro(if you want to stay in free tier, username, etc)

Wait for AWS to do it’s thing. You may acquire another cup of coffee now.

Note: A few readers have brought it to my attention that adding an RDS instance through the EBS interface binds it to the existence or destruction of your EBS environment. Setting up an RDS separately and manually adding the environment variable may have greater RDS assurance for some.

Now, another ‘eb deploy’ for your database config should get everything up and running through postgresql.

Now, lets add two configuration files most apps will need. First, adding git to the deploy. Add a folder .ebextensions, and a file ruby.config

packages:

yum:

git: []

Now, when you get a few more gems in your app, especially those that insall native extensions, you may get failed deploys from running out of memory. Since, most apps can run on the free tier, and the only time memory is an issue is during a deploy, we will enable swap. Add a file 0001_setup_swap.config in the .ebextensions folder with the following text:

commands:

000_dd:

command: echo “noswap”#dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile bs=1M count=3072

001_mkswap:

command: echo “noswap”#mkswap /swapfile

002_swapon:

command: echo “noswap”#swapon /swapfile

Sweet, we’re almost done. The last piece of almost any production Rails app will be sidekiq(with Redis…which means we can also tie ActionCable into this Redis as well). Let’s start by adding Redis in AWS:

Go to https://console.aws.amazon.com/elasticache/home?region=us-east-1#redis:

Click create, and fill out the pretty straightforward form(picking t2.micro for free tier again).

Click Save and go for a water this time while you wait…three coffees are a lot.

Once created, clicking on the instance on the list will take you to a page with an endpoint listed in the table(it should look like your-name.iz6wli.0001.use1.cache.amazonaws.com)

Almost done! We just need to add a couple config files for sidekiq, redis and elastic’s deploy! First here is how I like to set up Sidekiq/Redis config:

In config/initializers/sidekiq.rb

rails_root = Rails.root || File.dirname(__FILE__) + ‘/../..’

rails_env = Rails.env || ‘development’

redis_config = YAML.load_file(rails_root.to_s + ‘/config/redis.yml’)

redis_config.merge! redis_config.fetch(Rails.env, {})

redis_config.symbolize_keys!

Sidekiq.configure_server do |config|

config.redis = { url: “redis://#{redis_config[:host]}:#{redis_config[:port]}/12” }

end

Sidekiq.configure_client do |config|

config.redis = { url: “redis://#{redis_config[:host]}:#{redis_config[:port]}/12” }

end

…and config/redis.yml

development:

host: ‘localhost’

port: ‘6379’

test:

host: ‘localhost’

port: ‘6379’

production:

host: ‘your-name.iz6wli.0001.use1.cache.amazonaws.com’

port: ‘6379’

*optional* config/cable.yml

development:

adapter: async



test:

adapter: async



production:

adapter: redis

url: redis://your-name.iz6wli.0001.use1.cache.amazonaws.com:6379

…lastly, for Elastic Beanstalk .ebextenstions/0002_sidekiq.config(gist)

# Sidekiq interaction and startup script

commands:

create_post_dir:

command: "mkdir -p /opt/elasticbeanstalk/hooks/appdeploy/post"

ignoreErrors: true

files:

"/opt/elasticbeanstalk/hooks/appdeploy/post/50_restart_sidekiq.sh":

mode: "000755"

owner: root

group: root

content: |

#!/usr/bin/env bash

. /opt/elasticbeanstalk/support/envvars EB_APP_DEPLOY_DIR=$(/opt/elasticbeanstalk/bin/get-config container -k app_deploy_dir)

EB_APP_PID_DIR=$(/opt/elasticbeanstalk/bin/get-config container -k app_pid_dir)

EB_APP_USER=$(/opt/elasticbeanstalk/bin/get-config container -k app_user)

EB_SCRIPT_DIR=$(/opt/elasticbeanstalk/bin/get-config container -k script_dir)

EB_SUPPORT_DIR=$(/opt/elasticbeanstalk/bin/get-config container -k support_dir) . $EB_SUPPORT_DIR/envvars

. $EB_SCRIPT_DIR/use-app-ruby.sh SIDEKIQ_PID=$EB_APP_PID_DIR/sidekiq.pid

SIDEKIQ_CONFIG=$EB_APP_DEPLOY_DIR/config/sidekiq.yml

SIDEKIQ_LOG=$EB_APP_DEPLOY_DIR/log/sidekiq.log cd $EB_APP_DEPLOY_DIR if [ -f $SIDEKIQ_PID ]

then

su -s /bin/bash -c "kill -TERM `cat $SIDEKIQ_PID`" $EB_APP_USER

su -s /bin/bash -c "rm -rf $SIDEKIQ_PID" $EB_APP_USER

fi . /opt/elasticbeanstalk/support/envvars.d/sysenv sleep 10 su -s /bin/bash -c "bundle exec sidekiq \

-e $RACK_ENV \

-P $SIDEKIQ_PID \

-C $SIDEKIQ_CONFIG \

-L $SIDEKIQ_LOG \

-d" $EB_APP_USER "/opt/elasticbeanstalk/hooks/appdeploy/pre/03_mute_sidekiq.sh":

mode: "000755"

owner: root

group: root

content: |

#!/usr/bin/env bash

. /opt/elasticbeanstalk/support/envvars EB_APP_USER=$(/opt/elasticbeanstalk/bin/get-config container -k app_user)

EB_SCRIPT_DIR=$(/opt/elasticbeanstalk/bin/get-config container -k script_dir)

EB_SUPPORT_DIR=$(/opt/elasticbeanstalk/bin/get-config container -k support_dir) . $EB_SUPPORT_DIR/envvars

. $EB_SCRIPT_DIR/use-app-ruby.sh SIDEKIQ_PID=$EB_APP_PID_DIR/sidekiq.pid

if [ -f $SIDEKIQ_PID ]

then

su -s /bin/bash -c "kill -USR1 `cat $SIDEKIQ_PID`" $EB_APP_USER

fi

One more ‘git commit’ and ‘eb deploy’ and you are good to go. Aw yeah!