Setting Up Your Plone Deployment Server – Plone Deployment

Setting Up Your Plone Deployment Server

Setting Up Your Plone Deployment Server#

Your Plone project's generated codebase includes a /devops folder, equipped with tools for provisioning and setting up a basic server installation. We'll utilize Ansible for automation, Docker for containerization, and Docker Swarm for enhanced scalability and availability.

Navigating to Devops#

Start by changing your directory to devops:

cd devops

Configuring the Environment#

Create a new .env file by copying the content from the existing .env_dist file:

cp .env_dist .env

Customize the .env file to match your specific deployment environment. Here’s an example configuration:

DEPLOY_ENV=prod
DEPLOY_HOST=ploneconf2023-<user>.tangrama.com.br
DEPLOY_PORT=22
DEPLOY_USER=plone
DOCKER_CONFIG=.docker
STACK_NAME=ploneconf2023

Note

The .env file is listed in .gitignore to prevent pushing environment-specific configurations to the repository.

Installing Ansible#

Run the following command to create a Python 3 virtual environment and install Ansible with its dependencies:

make setup

Configuring the Inventory#

Update the inventory/hosts.yml file with the appropriate server details:

---
prod:
  hosts:
    ploneconf2023-<user>.tangrama.com.br:
      ansible_user: root
      host: ploneconf2023-<user>
      hostname: ploneconf2023-<user>.tangrama.com.br

Initiating Server Setup#

Execute the server setup command. It runs the Ansible playbook playbooks/setup.yml, performing tasks like installing base packages, creating a user, setting up SSH, and initializing Docker Swarm on the remote server:

make server-setup

Verifying Remote Server Access#

You should now be able to SSH into the remote server as both root and plone users:

ssh root@ploneconf2023-<user>.tangrama.com.br
ssh plone@ploneconf2023-<user>.tangrama.com.br

Setting Up Docker#

Ensure you’re logged into Docker, as the deployment process uses public images. Create a new Docker context for the remote server:

make docker-setup

Confirm the setup by retrieving information about the Docker context:

make docker-info

Review#

By now you’ve now successfully set up a Plone deployment server using Ansible for automated provisioning, Docker for containerization, and Docker Swarm for scalability and availability.

The next step is to deploy your project to this server.