Disclaimer

This is a work in progress. Right now, it doesn't work. All help appreciated.

Goal

To install an EC2 micro server configured to serve 10 Million hits per day with WordPress on a $15 virtual server but without quite as much manual work.

• # for EC2
• Install EC2 API tools
• Create your Micro server
• Log in and update
• Install Puppet and Git
• Configure your puppet

For more detail, see Installation below. (Sadly, GitHub's Markdown lacks internal anchors.)

TODO

• Fix the WordPress installation. RIGHT NOW, IT DOESN'T WORK.
• Finish replicating Ewan's work (current step: "Run a blitz.io test to see how we’re doing")
• Make more manifest-ey so people can make many puppets, install multiple sites on one host, etc.

Installation

# for EC2

• # for EC2

• On the Security Credentials page, hit Access Credentials and the X.509 Certificates tab. Click Create a new Certificate.

• Click Download Private Key File. This will be your only chance to do so.

• Click Download X.509 Certificate.

• mkdir ~/.ec2

• Move the certificates. As a one-liner, it's:

  find ~/Downloads -type f | egrep ".*/(cert|pk)-[A-Z0-9]{32}.pem" | xargs -I{} mv {} ~/.ec2/

Install EC2 API tools

• Install Homebrew. If you're not on a Mac, you can't do this. Find another way to install the EC2 API tools and skip a few steps.

• brew install ec2-api-tools

• brew unlink ec2-api-tools to remove 284 scripts from your PATH unless you need them

• Do the variables per RS2008, but with an adjusted EC2_HOME that suits Homebrew.

    export EC2_PRIVATE_KEY=`ls $EC2_HOME/pk-*.pem`
    export EC2_CERT=`ls $EC2_HOME/cert-*.pem`
    export EC2_HOME=/usr/local/Cellar/ec2-api-tools/1.5.2.5/jars
    export JAVA_HOME=/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Home/
    export PATH=$EC2_HOME/bin
  

  Note that the EC2_PRIVATE_KEY and EC2_CERT lines will cause commands to fail if you have more than one matching file. Tip: don't.

Create your Micro server

• look for a 32-bit t1.micro oneirc image in your preferred region, and note its AMI, e.g. ami-ac05889c for us-west-2.

• Create a key pair for the region and set its permissions so that ssh will trust it:

    REGION=us-west-2
    ec2-add-keypair --region $REGION $REGION | tee $REGION.pem
    chmod 600 $REGION.pem
  

• Run the instance:

    AMI=ami-ac05889c
    ec2-run-instances $AMI --instance-type t1.micro --region $REGION --key $REGION
  

• If you're sick of specifying --region all the time, set EC2_URL to https:// plus the region's API address:

    export EC2_URL=https://$(ec2-describe-regions | grep $REGION | cut -f 3)
  

  I'll assume you've done so from now on.

• Use ec2-describe-instances to watch your instance boot. The output format is diabolical: a run of tab-separated values. Look for running, which for me turned up in column 6. Then note the group (probably default, perhaps in column 30) and hostname (ec2-$DASHED_IP-$REGION.compute.amazonaws.com, perhaps in column 4).

  Assuming your columns match:

    export $HOSTNAME=`ec2-describe-instances|grep $AMI|grep $INSTANCE|cut -f 4`
  

• Enable SSH and HTTP traffic to its group, which by default will be conveniently named default:

    ec2-authorize default -p 22
    ec2-authorize default -p 80
  

  The default Ubuntu instance lacks anything on port 80, so that second line is safe — especially as we're about to…

Log in and update

• SSH in and apply updates right away. First, connect:

    ssh -i $REGION.pem ubuntu@$HOSTNAME
  

  Then, on the host:

    sudo -i
    set -o emacs # else go insane
    apt-get update
    apt-get dist-upgrade
  

Install Puppet and Git

• Still as root, install Puppet, which is like CSS but which describes server configuration rather than element rendering:

    apt-get install puppet git-core
  

Configure your puppet

• Still as root, replace your node's Puppet configuration with git clone:

    rm -rf /etc/puppet/*
    git clone git://github.com/ewanleith/puppet-wp-micro.git /etc/puppet/
    cd /etc/puppet
  

• Secure your clone by changing the shipped passwords and other keys:

    curl https://api.wordpress.org/secret-key/1.1/salt/ > templates/wp-config-keys.php.erb
    vim manifests/passwords.pp
  

• Finally, apply the configuration. Puppet will install and build everything else:

    puppet apply manifests/self.pp
  

References:

• Robert Sosinski's Starting Amazon EC2 with Mac OS X
• Ewan Leith's 10 Million hits per day with WordPress on a $15 virtual server