"Drupal development, deployment, and automation with Puppet" by David Porter at Puppet Camp Austin 2013.

1. Drupal Development, Deployment
and Automation with Puppet
David Porter
Rackspace Hosting
Puppet Camp Austin
April 2013

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Tools
• Ubuntu
• Apache HTTP Server
• MySQL (Rackspace Cloud Databases)
• PHP
• Drupal
• Varnish Cache
To get started, you need a fresh cloud server instance (or other server)
running Ubuntu, with root or sudo access. You will also need a fresh
database, with the host and user credentials handy to complete the Drupal
install.
That's it! Now that you have these items, lets begin.

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Step 1: Update your package manager
apt-get update
Updating your package manager ensures you have
access to the latest software packages

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Step 2: Install Puppet
apt-get install puppet
Puppet is available via the common repos. Installation is
easy and we will add our own drupalstack puppet
module to set everything up.

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Step 3: Install git
apt-get install git-core
We will need git to clone this repo and obtain the base
Drupal application code and drupalstack Puppet
module.

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Step 4: Clone this repo
git clone https://github.com/bighappyface/drupal-cloud-
tutorial.git
Now that we have the code we can configure this server
to run our Drupal application

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Step 5: Copy module to the Puppet
modules folder
cp -r drupal-cloud-tutorial/drupalstack /etc/
puppet/modules/drupalstack
All Puppet modules from the Puppet Forge will be
installed here as well.

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Step 6: Install Apache and configure
puppet apply -e "include
drupalstack::apache"
This class follows a standard pattern in Puppet:
Package/File/Service

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Step 7: Install PHP
puppet apply -e "include drupalstack::php"
This class is very simple: install PHP and the necessary
extensions for Drupal. Also, it installs libapache2-mod-
php5 to ensure Apache and PHP work together.

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Step 8: Install and centralize Drupal
puppet apply -e "include
drupalstack::drupalcore"
This technique provides a simple method of upgrading/
downgrading Drupal Core without modifying or
deploying your application code.
To change Drupal Core, simply update the
"$drupal_version" variable to the desired version and
run the class.

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Step 9: Configure Drupal requirements
puppet apply -e "include
drupalstack::drupalapp"
This class provides the most common final steps of
setting up a new Drupal site.

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Lessons Learned - Development
Our Drupal application code is decoupled from a full copy
of Drupal core.
• Application-specific code under version control
• Small file size
• Easy upgrade of Drupal core via symlink update

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Our Drupal application is wrapped within a Puppet
module that defines the full application stack necessary
to run our whole application.
• Application-specific stack configuration and essentials
• Fire-and-forget design to deploy servers and application
in isolation
• Configuration under version control to adapt deployment
process with application overtime.
Lessons Learned - Deployment

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Our Puppet module provides a convenient and reliable
method for maintaining our application configurations
and dependencies.
• Application-specific package, service, and file inventory
and documentation
• Configuration under version control to adapt
dependencies with application overtime
• Limitless expansion and enhancement options for
logging, monitoring, caching, etc.
Lessons Learned - Automation

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Install Varnish cache, an HTTP accelerator. We can
install it on our server using a Drupal-specific
configuration and store the raw HTTP output of our
application in memory, along with all resources.
To get it going, apply the Puppet class as shown below:
puppet apply -e "include
drupalstack::varnish"
Bonus – HTTP Accelerator

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Can you think of a class that could combine these steps
into a single step?
With tools like Vagrant, could we tie our Puppet module
into a provisioning service to automate spawning
instances and applying our module?
For deployment, could offerings such as Cloud Backup,
Cloud Load Balancers, and Cloud Monitoring be
integrated to improve your applications stability,
scalability, and reliability?
Next Steps

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Discussion

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