Creating an NFS Instance on AWS EC2 with Vagrant & Chef

This repository is part of this blog post.

Description

Create a Vagrant + Chef configuration to create a AWS EC2 instance with NFS. Why? Because I want to use this instance as a NFS server to share directories with large files.

How to use it?

1. Install these software:

• Vagrant: Virtual Machine provider
• Vagrant AWS Plug-in: integrate Vagrant with AWS EC2
• Vagrant Omnibus Plug-in: Omnibus to install Chef client
• Chef SDK: to upload Chef artifacts
• (Optional) VirtualBox: if you want to test it locally

2. Configure the following accounts:

• Chef Server (or Cloud): for provisioning
• AWS account: to create EC2 instances

3. Fork this repository
4. Configure your AWS credentials (aws.properties)
5. Upload Chef cookbooks and roles
6. Update and run Vagrant configuration

Configure your AWS credential

If you have downloaded the repository, you should have the following structure:

Where boxes are Vagrant configurations and chef-repo is the Chef repository with 3 cookbooks (line and nfs downloaded from Chef Supermarket) and 2 roles: one for NFS Server and other for NFS Clients.

You should add the following file to your aws directory "boxes/aws":

keys:
  access_key_id: [access key id]
  secret_access_key:[secret access key]
  key_pair_location: [path to <key_pair>.pem]

Upload Chef cookbooks and roles

You should upload Chef artifacts to consume them from AWS instance. If you try it locally, you don't need to update them.

1. Copy cookbooks and roles directories on you chef-repo directory from your Chef Starter Kit. (To learn more about Chef: Learn Chef)

2. Upload your artifacts using knife tool:

cd [chef-repo directory]
knife upload *

Update and run Vagrant configuration

Now that you have your Chef recipes online, you can configure your Vagrant files:

Vagrantfile:

# To load properties files
require "yaml"

VAGRANTFILE_API_VERSION = "2"

Vagrant.configure(VAGRANTFILE_API_VERSION) do |config|
  # Load box properties
  props = YAML.load_file("box.properties")
  # Load AWS properties (credentials)
  aws_props = YAML.load_file("../aws.properties")

  config.vm.box = "#{props['box']['name']}"
  # Target to aws.box file that only contains AMI id (is not used)
  config.vm.box_url = "file://#{props['box']['base_location']}"

  config.vm.provider :aws do |aws, override|
    # Set AWS credentials
    aws.access_key_id = "#{aws_props['keys']['access_key_id']}"
    aws.secret_access_key = "#{aws_props['keys']['secret_access_key']}"
    aws.keypair_name = "jeqo"

    # Set instance configurations - define it depending on your requirements
    aws.instance_type = "t2.micro"
    aws.region = "us-east-1"
    aws.availability_zone = "us-east-1a"
    aws.ami = "ami-9eaa1cf6"

    override.ssh.username = "ubuntu"
    override.ssh.private_key_path = "#{aws_props['keys']['key_pair_location']}"

    aws.tags = {
      'Name' => "#{props['box']['name']}"
    }

    # Define storage
    aws.block_device_mapping = [{
      'DeviceName' => '/dev/sda1',
      'Ebs.VolumeSize' => props['box']['disk_size']
      }]

    # Define security group (inbound ports that should be open: TCP: 111, 2049, 32768, 44182, 54508 and UDP: 111, 2049, 32768, 32770-32800)
    aws.security_groups = "nfs-group"

    config.ssh.pty = true
  end

  # Instal last chef client software  
  config.omnibus.chef_version = :latest

  # Increment SWAP on AWS EC2 Instance
  config.vm.provision "shell" do |s|
    s.path	= "increase_swap.sh"
  end

  # Chef server configuration
  config.vm.provision "chef_client" do |chef|
    chef.chef_server_url = "https://api.opscode.com/organizations/[organization]"
    chef.validation_client_name = "[organization]-validator"
    chef.validation_key_path = "#{props['chef']['repo_location']}/.chef/[organization]-validator.pem"
    chef.node_name = "#{props['box']['name']}"
    # Role uploaded to configure NFS Server
    chef.add_role "nfs-server"
  end
end

It's important to follow these recommendations to create AWS EC2 Security Group.

Demo

You can check how to use it in this video:

TODO: upload youtube video

Note: If you want to test locally, you need to download this box for NFS Server (Ubuntu) and this one for NFS Client (Oracle Linux) and change box url on box.properties file.