Node.js on DigitalOcean with Ansible

Complete playbook to create and deploy a Node.js application on Digital Ocean.

Intro

This project created to be the one and only destination to bootstrap new projects on DigitalOcean using Ansible.

I wanted to:

• Automate build and configuration of a droplet
• Automate deployments of my project

To start using this repo, you need a DigitalOcean account, a DigitalOcean API key, a domain name and a Papertrail account along with its API key.

Many thanks to https://github.com/yoshz/ansible-digitalocean cause I took a lot of his code.

What's inside

This script will:

• Generate an SSH key on the local machine if it doesn't exist
• Create a droplet with the SSH key
• Add a domain and point it to the droplet
• Add swapfile to droplet
• Add a new root-user to the droplet and enable sudo
• Secure with ufw and restrict SSH to pub-key access only
• Setup Papertrail logging
• Add nginx as a reverse proxy
• Request a certificate from LetsEncrypt

How to use it

You need Ansible to start with this project. So go get it!

• Clone this repo
• Edit defaults/vars.yml
• Edit tasks/project.yml and add your own rules

Make sure to add the launch and deploy tags (or any other you need) to your own tasks.

Then run:

ansible-playbook main.yml --tags=launch to launch the server

Commands

ansible-playbook main.yml or ansible-playbook main.yml --tags=launch

for the initial setup. Make sure that you've obtained your domain and already pointed to DigitalOcean's nameservers. It's better to wait a few hours for the changes to be propagated.

ansible-playbook main.yml --tags=deploy

to deploy your app. Make sure to add the apropriate tags in [tasks/project.yml] (https://github.com/kbariotis/ansible-nodejs-digitalocean/blob/master/tasks/project.yml) when adding your custom tasks.

ansible-playbook main.yml --tags=certificate

to renew the certificate.

Internals

The main entrypoint is the main.yml file. The playbook is divided in three plays one for the DigitalOcean configuration, one for the server initial configuration which runs as root user and the third for the specific project configuration.

The tasks folder contains all tasks required by the playbook. Its file is named after its concern so it's easy to spot where something is happening.

You can place your project's specific files at the files folder.

Tweak the project using the defaults/vars.yml file. All of the values there are required, so make sure that are valid and cover your needs.

The main file you need to edit is the tasks/project.yml. This file is called after the server is up and running. The example file will:

• Pull your repo (http://docs.ansible.com/ansible/git_module.html) only if it has changes to pull
• install local dependecies (http://docs.ansible.com/ansible/npm_module.html)
• install global dependecies like webpack and pm2
• build your repo using webpack
• start it using pm2

Contribute

Please, do contribute by opening an issue or creating a Pull Request.

License

MIT