Ohio Linux Fest 2013: Provisioning VMs Quickly with Vagrant and CFEngine

www.cfengine.com
Vagrant & CFEngine
Ohio Linux Fest 2013

Before we get started
Is everyone in the right place?
Has everyone installed Virtualbox 4.2.16 or later?
VirtualBox --help | grep VirtualBox
Has everyone installed Vagrant 1.2.7 or later?
vagrant --version

Get to know each other
Hi, I'm Nick
SysAdmin > 10 Years
Work at CFEngine
Live in Lawrence, KS
Twitter: @cmdln_
IRC: nickanderson
Blog: http://www.cmdln.org
Who are you?
What do you do?
Have you used Vagrant?
Have you used CFEngine?
Why did you choose this
session and what do you
hope to get from it?

9/13/13
What is Vagrant?
Tool to make working with
development environments
easy.
Create, configure, destroy
lightweight, reproducible,
and portable environments.
● Created by Mitchell Hashimoto
● @mitchelh
● http://www.vagrantup.com

9/13/13
Provides common environment
Designers
Developers
Operations
QA

9/13/13
Portable
● VirtualBox
● AWS
● VMware
● More
● https://github.com/mitchellh/vagrant/wiki/Available-Vagrant-Plugins

9/13/13
How can it help?
Developer on-boarding
Quickly provision/decommission
test environments in repeatable
fashion
Bug Validation
Continuous Integration
Ad-hoc Demos

9/13/13
Vagrantfile
● Describe the type of machine(s) required for a project
● Syntax of Vagrantfile is Ruby, but knowledge of the Ruby language is not
necessary. It's mostly simple variable assignment.
Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
# All Vagrant configuration is done here. The most common configuration
# options are documented and commented below. For a complete reference,
# please see the online documentation at vagrantup.com.
# Every Vagrant virtual environment requires a box to build off of.
config.vm.box = "centos-5.x-i386_nickanderson_201304271927"
end

9/13/13
CFEngine Provisioner: Currently Undocumented
● am_policy_hub
●
extra_agent_args
– Extra arguments to pass to cf-agent executions
●
classes
– Additional classes to define when running cf-agent
● deb_repo_file
– The apt repository configuration file to use for configuring
the repository containing the CFEngine packages
● deb_repo_line
– The line that specifys the repository to use for CFEngine
packages
●
files_path
– Directory to copy on top of the default masterfiles
● force_bootstrap
– If true, bootstrap the host even if it has been bootstrapped
before
● install
– Install CFEngine package from repository
● mode
– “bootstrap” or “single_run”, determines whether CFEngine will
be bootstrapped or just executed once on the host
●
policy_server_address
●
repo_gpg_key_url
– http location of GPG key used for checking package signatures
●
run_file
– Standalone CFEngine policy file to upload and execute
●
upload_path
– Path to upload run_file
●
yum_repo_file
– The yum repository file to use when configuring the repository
containing CFEngine packages
●
yum_repo_url
– The url of the repository containing the CFEngine packages
●
package_name
– The cfengine package name to install

9/13/13
CFEngine Provisioner: Example Use

9/13/13
Boxes
● Predefined operating system install
● Provider specific
● http://www.vagrantbox.es
● Use veewee or packer.io (build your own automatically)
– Kickstart/preseed, postinstall scripts

9/13/13
Automagic
● Ssh automatic port forwards
● Shared project folder /vagrant

9/13/13
Useful Plugin
● vagrant-vbguest automatically installs
the host's VirtualBox Guest Additions
on the guest system.
● vagrant plugin install vagrant-vbguest
● https://github.com/dotless-de/vagrant
-vbguest

9/13/13
Getting started
● vagrant box list
● vagrant box add
● vagrant init
● vagrant status
● vagrant up
● vagrant up
● vagrant status
● vagrant ssh
– vagrant ssh node
● vagrant destroy

9/13/13
Test it out
● Import vagrant basebox
– Locate CFEngine_Training.box in resources/veewee
– vagrant box add CFEngine_Training CFEngine_training.box
● Create a new empty directory
● vagrant init CFEngine_Training
● vagrant up
● vagrant ssh
● vagrant destroy -f

9/13/13
Daily Use
vagrant up
vagrant {destroy, halt, suspend}
!-2

9/13/13
Build base boxes for all the things!

9/13/13
Automating Vagrant Provisioning
● Ansible
● CFEngine
● Chef
● Puppet
● Salt Stack
● Shell Scripts
● MixnMatch!

9/13/13
CFEngine
● IT infrastructure automation, compliance, and
knowledge management framework
● Opensource and Commercial Software
● Originally written by Mark Burgess
● @markburgess_osl
● http://www.cfengine.com

9/13/13
CFEngine History
● First released in 1993
● CFEngine 2 released in 1998, self healing
computer immunology. Added machine
learning and anomaly detection.
● 2003 Promise Theory work began
● 2008 CFEngine 3 released. Integrates
knowledge management and discovery
mechanisms.

9/13/13
CFEngine Properties
● Small

9/13/13
CFEngine Properties
● Small
● Secure (http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/search)

9/13/13
CFEngine Properties
● Small
● Portable

9/13/13
CFEngine Properties
● Small
● Portable
● Resilient

9/13/13
CFEngine Properties
● Small
● Portable
● Resilient
● Declarative

9/13/13
Bootstrap a test environment

9/13/13
CFEngine Demo Time
● Lets try some community
contributed policy

9/13/13
cf-sketch
● Log in to your policy hub, locate the
design center repository and access
the cf-sketch shell
– vagrant ssh hub
– sudo -i
– cd /vagrant/resources/design-center/tools/cf-sketch
– ./cf-sketch.pl

9/13/13
Configure Timezones
● search time
● info -v tzconfig
● install System::tzconfig
● define paramset System::tzconfig
– Name: NO_Oslo_TZ
– Timezone: Europe/Oslo
– Zoneinfo: /usr/share/zoneinfo

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Configure Timezones
● search time
– Name: NO_Oslo_TZ
– Timezone: Europe/Oslo

9/13/13
Configure Timezones Cont.
● search time
– Name: US_Central_TZ
– Timezone: US/Central

9/13/13
Activate and Deploy Timezone Configuration
● activate System::tzconfig NO_Oslo_TZ hub
● activate System::tzconfig US_Central_TZ node001
● deploy

9/13/13
Editor War!
● I prefer vim, and it's fun to mess with
the emacs people
● services/editor_war.cf

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Wage War
● Remove Disallowed Packages
– vagrant ssh hub
– watch rpm -q emacs-nox
– Uncomment disallowed_packages to activate policy.
Watch it get fixed.
● Install Required Packages
– watch rpm -q vim-enhanced
– Uncomment required_packages to activate policy

9/13/13
More Nodes!
● Increase nodes to 2 in Vagrantfile
● vagrant up
● vagrant ssh node00{1,2}

9/13/13
The Books
● Learning CFEngine 3
– Diego Zamboni
● Vagrant Up and Running
– Mitchell Hashimoto

Ohio Linux Fest 2013: Provisioning VMs Quickly with Vagrant and CFEngine

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