Real World Vagrant For Distributed Computing
- 4 hours on-demand video
- 3 articles
- 4 downloadable resources
- Full lifetime access
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- Certificate of Completion
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Try Udemy for Business- Simply run a single command on your desktop, go for a coffee, and come back with a running distributed environment for cluster deployment
- Quickly build an environment where any NoSQL, IMDB or BigData software can be installed
- Ability to automate the installation of software across multiple Virtual Machines
- Basic programming or scripting experience is required.
- You will need a desktop PC and an Internet connection. The course is created with Windows in mind.
- The software needed for this course is freely available
- You will require a computer with a Virtualization chipset support - VT-x. Most computers purchased over the last five years should be good enough
- Optional : Some exposure to Linux and/or Bash shell environment
- 64-bit Windows operating system required (Would recommend Windows 7 or above)
- This course is not recommened if you have no desire to work with/in distributed computing
"NoSQL", "Big Data", "DevOps" and "In Memory Database" technology are a hot and highly valuable skill to have – and this course will teach you how to quickly create a distributed environment for you to deploy these technologies on.
A combination of VirtualBox and Vagrant will transform your desktop machine into a virtual cluster. However this needs to be configured correctly. Simply enabling multinode within Vagrant is not good enough. It needs to be tuned. Developers and Operators within large enterprises, including investment banks, all use Vagrant to simulate Production environments.
After all, if you are developing against or operating a distributed environment, it needs to be tested. Tested in terms of code deployed and the deployment code itself.
You'll learn the same techniques these enterprise guys use on your own Microsoft Windows computer/laptop.
Vagrant provides easy to configure, reproducible, and portable work environments built on top of industry-standard technology and controlled by a single consistent workflow to help maximize the productivity and flexibility of you and your team.
This course will use VirtualBox to carve out your virtual environment. However the same skills learned with Vagrant can be used to provision virtual machines on VMware, AWS, or any other provider.
If you are a developer, this course will help you will isolate dependencies and their configuration within a single disposable, consistent environment, without sacrificing any of the tools you are used to working with (editors, browsers, debuggers, etc.). Once you or someone else creates a single Vagrantfile, you just need to vagrant up and everything is installed and configured for you to work. Other members of your team create their development environments from the same configuration. Say goodbye to "works on my machine" bugs.
If you are an operations engineer, this course will help you build a disposable environment and consistent workflow for developing and testing infrastructure management scripts. You can quickly test your deployment scripts and more using local virtualization such as VirtualBox or VMware. (VirtualBox for this course). Ditch your custom scripts to recycle EC2 instances, stop juggling SSH prompts to various machines, and start using Vagrant to bring sanity to your life.
If you are a designer, this course will help you with distributed installation of software in order for you to focus on doing what you do best: design. Once a developer configures Vagrant, you do not need to worry about how to get that software running ever again. No more bothering other developers to help you fix your environment so you can test designs. Just check out the code, vagrant up, and start designing.
- Software engineers who want to expand their skills into the world of distributed computing
- System Engineers that want to expand their skillsets beyond the single server
- Developers who want to write/test their code against a valid distributed enviroment
Here you start to build out your first Virtual machine. You start from a blank Vagrantfile file! You will manually add entries to this file one concept at a time. You will truly know what every concept means by the time you finish the course.
You have the choice of using the RESOURCES.zip file. Simply unzip and work in this new directory, or create an empty directory somewhere on your system and work from there.
Here you will practice controlling the newly created Virtual machine. Now that you can build this Virtual machine from scratch, you can now launch and terminate this virtual machine at will. If you make a mistake with the vagrant commands, don't panic. You know how to recreate and relaunch.
Technically the course can end here! But you need to carve out and configure a multi-node environment in order to deploy a cluster, The rest of the course concentrates on this.
Here you convert your initial Vagrant script to use variables. It's best not to use hard coded values within the main body of the Vagrantfile.
Here you will change the underlying Linux operating system. You will configure the script in order to use the Graphical User Interface version of Centos Linux. Potentially an alternative to Windows.
You will now have the choice of using the lightweight console only version of Centos or the heavyweight GUI version.
The concept taught here is that it is very easy to select and switch to any operating system that has been built for Vagrant.
You will need to provide a friendly name to your Virtual machines as multiple Virtual machines are launched and listed within VirtualBox. This gives you the ability to control the Virtual machines from VirtualBox if Vagrant is not responding to your commands to control your nodes.
As an example, a corrupted script.
Just as you provide your Microsoft Windows machine a name/hostname, so too you must provide your Linux operating system a hostname. Especially in a multiple Virtual machine environment. The changes here gives you the ability to control the hostname across multiple Virtual machines.
In any cluster you build, you will have Management nodes, Worker nodes, Proxy Nodes etc ...
Each node will require it's own memory settings. Here you will extend the script so that no matter the number of Virtual machines configured, you can easily drill into one Virtual machine and configure the exact amount of memory that is required.
In any cluster you build, you will have Management nodes, Compute nodes, Proxy Nodes etc ...
Compute nodes will require more CPU than Proxy nodes.
Each node will require it's own CPU settings. Here you will extend the script so that no matter the number of Virtual machines configured, you can easily drill into one Virtual machine and configure the exact amount of CPU that is required.
Here I explain why centralizing your software resources in one location within your organization is a benefit.
If you are installing software within Production where portions of the binaries are housed on some external repository on the internet not controlled by you, then you are asking for trouble.
The remote site may be down for maintenance. Better to download and centralize your resources
PART I
Your script is now multi-node capable.
To add a new managed Virtual machine to your cluster, add a single line of code to your script
To add five new managed Virtual machines to your cluster, add five lines of code to your script!
Each line configures the Virtual machine' s - hostname, IP address, CPU, Memory and operating system
PART II
Your script is now multi-node capable.
To add a new managed Virtual machine to your cluster, add a single line of code to your script
To add five new managed Virtual machines to your cluster, add five lines of code to your script!
Each line configures the Virtual machine' s - hostname, IP address, CPU, Memory and operating system
Even though all the Virtual machines have their own hostname configured. The Virtual machines are not able to ping each other via the hostname (they certainly can via the IP addresses) of any of the other hosts. We will look at the reasons why and fix this in the next lesson
You will configure your project in order to install software across your Virtual machines.
You will download java as well as utilize the script provided for you. (RESOURCES.zip).
You will manually setup and execute the software installation script within one of your Virtual machine to ensure it works. In the next lesson, you will integrate the installation script into your Vagrant file.