prasadashu / ottserver-deployer

This project showcases the deployment of an Over-the-Top (OTT) media streaming server with a strong focus on scalability, containerization and load balancing.

OTTServer-Dockerized-Deployer

The project is in association with https://github.com/official-srv-modak/OTTServer.

Repository to deploy containerized OTTServer through Ansible.

How to deploy OTTServer?

• Install Ansible in RedHat based distros.

sudo yum install -y ansible

• Clone this repo.

git clone https://github.com/prasadashu/OTTServer-Deployer.git

• Execute the playbook.

ansible-playbook deploy_dockerized_ottserver.yml -i inventory/inventory.txt --extra-vars "{'host':'db_web_server'}"

• Access the home page through port 5000.

Repository File Structure

.
├── deploy_dockerized_ottserver.yml
├── host_vars
│   └── db_web_server.yml
├── inventory
│   └── inventory.txt
├── library
│   └── custom_debug.py
├── mariadb
│   └── Dockerfile
├── nginx
│   ├── Dockerfile
│   └── nginx.conf
├── php-apache-web
│   └── Dockerfile
├── README.md
├── roles
│   ├── firewall_setup
│   │   └── tasks
│   │       └── main.yml
│   ├── python_dependency
│   │   └── tasks
│   │       └── main.yml
│   ├── setup_dependencies
│   │   └── tasks
│   │       └── main.yml
│   ├── setup_scripts
│   │   ├── tasks
│   │   │   └── main.yml
│   │   └── templates
│   │       ├── db.php.j2
│   │       └── path.php.j2
│   └── spin_up_docker
│       └── tasks
│           └── main.yml
├── templates
│   └── docker-compose.yml.j2
└── TO_DO.txt

Repository details

• Docker is configured to run three services.

  • web service to run the web server.
  • db service to run the db server.
  • nginx service to run the load balancer.

• By default, three web containers are set to spin up when the server is deployed.

• These web containers are being load balanced through an NginX container.

• The NginX container is running on port 5000 and so should be the port to access the home page.

• One can check the running containers in the background using the command below.

docker ps

• Firewall has been enabled as part of the deployment process.

• Firewall enabled ports can be viewed using the below command.

firewall-cmd --list-all

• Scaling up of containers can be achieved through the command below.

docker-compose up -d --scale <service_name_1>=<number of containers> <service_name_1>=<number of containers>

• An example to scale web server containers to 5.

docker-compose up -d --scale web=5

Configuration details

• The deployment can be configured at host_vars/db_web_server.yml.

• ansible_connection is set to local.

  • Other possible value ssh
  • Do not use winrm as the repo is configured for RedHat based distros.

• The Linux user, group and password for OTTServer admin can be changed.

  • flix_admin to change the Linux user.
  • flix_admin_group to change the Linux group.
  • flix_admin_pass to change the Linux user password.

• The database user and credentials can be configured.

  • mysql_db to change the DB name.
  • mysql_user to change the DB user.
  • mysql_password to change the DB user password.
  • mysql_root_password to change the DB root password.

• The hosted path for the server can be changed through path_server.

• A password salt value can be changed through password_salt.

Encrypting using Ansible Vault

The file host_vars/db_web_server.yml containing all the credentials is set in plain text format for display purposes. However, this file can be encrypted using Ansible Vault.

• To encrypt the file use the command

ansible-vault encrypt host_vars/db_web_server.yml

• To view the encrypted file use the command

ansible-vault view host_vars/db_web_server.yml

• To run the playbook with the encrypted vault file

ansible-playbook deploy_dockerized_ottserver.yml -i inventory/inventory.txt --extra-vars "{'host':'db_web_server'}" --ask-vault-pass

Version details

The below tech stack versions have been used to test the project:-

• OS: CentOS Linux release 7.7.1908 (Core)

• Ansible: ansible 2.9.25

• Web Dockerfile base image: php:7.2-apache

  • Apache: 2.4.38 (Debian)
  • PHP: 7.2.34 (cli)

• DB Dockerfile base image: mariadb:10

  • MariaDB: mariadb Ver 15.1 Distrib 10.6.4-MariaDB, for debian-linux-gnu (x86_64) using readline 5.2

• NginX Dockerfile base image: nginx:1.21

  • NginX: nginx/1.21.3

• Docker compose: docker-compose version 1.29.2

• Docker version: Docker version 19.03.6, build 369ce74a3c