Wordpress & Email All-In-One

Published by Ryan Geyer on Aug 26, 2012Revision: 7 This component has been superseded. Get the current version here

Description

This is an All-In-One (AIO) server for hosting PHP based web sites/applications, as well as email for one or many domain names (virtual hosting).

LNMP Virtual Hosting

The web hosting environment is a full LNMP stack consisting of;

Linux - CentOS 5.8
Nginx - 1.2.2
MySQL - 5.1.55-community
PHP - 5.3.6

Email Virtual Hosting

In addition to the LNMP stack, a Postfix server is installed and configured for virtual hosting of one or many email domains. Currently, the postfix server is configured to relay email for configured email addresses (more information on that below) to one or more other email addresses. I use this to accept email for a domain, and effectively "forward" it to my gmail account where I manage all of my email.

Usage

Prerequisites

Launching for the first time

If you've just imported this ServerTemplate from the library, here's what you need to know to get started.

Inputs

Database Admin Password

Pick a secure password for the database administrator. The default administrator username is "administrator". It's possible that you'll never need to use these credentials since the Chef recipes set everything up for you, but it's good to have in case of emergency or for administrative tasks not covered in an operational script etc.
Postfix MySQL Database Password

Pick a secure password for the user account that postfix will use to access the MySQL database. Did I mention that Postfix configuration information is stored in MySQL? I promise, I'll explain later.
Total Volume Size (1)

This server stores all of the data which needs to be persistent either on a separate attached storage volume, or on an LVM partition of your ephemeral storage to ease backups, disaster recovery, and vertical scaling. Specify a volume size here that makes sense for the data you're storing, including MySQL databases and your web site/application html and code files. NOTE: The default is 2GB
Backup Lineage (1)

For the attached volume, and for the continuous backups a lineage needs to be specified. This is effectively a name for the data backup, feel free to specify anything for this. For all of the volume management stuff I'm making heavy use of the RightScale "Storage Toolbox", and this input comes from those tools. Take a peek at the documentation and runbook for the "Storage Toolbox" here

Web Server Hostname

Some basic tools will get installed and hosted for this server on a particular hostname. These are things like phpmyadmin, and (hopefully, eventually) some web UI tools for managing your server. You can specify the hostname you want this to appear on. I recommend that you use a hostname specific to the management of this server, like tools.domain.com etc.

If you're in a hurry, and just wanted to get this up and running quickly, that's all you'll need to know.

Cookbook Repo: git://github.com/rgeyer-rs-cookbooks/cookbooks_st.git of RightScale (v12.11.0-LTS) + LNMP
Cookbook Repo: git://github.com/rgeyer/cookbooks.git of RightScale (v12.11.0-LTS) + LNMP
Cookbook Repo: git://github.com/rgeyer/cookbooks_linux.git of RightScale (v12.11.0-LTS) + LNMP
Cookbook Repo: git://github.com/rgeyer/rightscale_cookbooks-1.git of RightScale (v12.11.0-LTS) + LNMP
Cookbook Repo: git://github.com/rightscale/cookbooks.git of RightScale (v12.11.0-LTS) + LNMP
Cookbook Repo: https://github.com/downloads/rgeyer-rs-cookbooks/cookbooks_all/release_20120709.tar.gz of RightScale (v12.11.0-LTS) + LNMP
MultiCloudImage: RightImage_RHEL_5.8_x64_v5.8 [rev 5]
MultiCloudImage: SoftLayerImage_Storage_CentOS_5.8_x64_v5.8 [rev 4]
MultiCloudImage: RightImage_CentOS_5.8_x64_v5.8_HVM_EBS [rev 2]
MultiCloudImage: RightImage_CentOS_5.8_x64_v5.8_EBS [rev 3]
MultiCloudImage: RightImage_CentOS_5.8_x64_v5.8 [rev 5]
MultiCloudImage: RightImage_CentOS_5.8_x64_v5.8 - XenServer [rev 5]
MultiCloudImage: RightImage_CentOS_5.8_x64_v5.8 - KVM [rev 8]
Recipe: block_device::do_secondary_restore
Recipe: block_device::default
Recipe: block_device::do_delete_volumes_and_terminate_server
Recipe: block_device::do_force_reset
Recipe: block_device::do_primary_backup
Recipe: block_device::do_primary_backup_schedule_disable
Recipe: block_device::do_primary_backup_schedule_enable
Recipe: block_device::do_primary_restore
Recipe: block_device::do_restore_or_setup_block_device_on_boot
Recipe: block_device::do_secondary_backup
Recipe: app_wordpress::update
Recipe: block_device::setup_ephemeral
Recipe: db::default
Recipe: db::install_client
Recipe: db::install_server
Recipe: db::setup_monitoring
Recipe: db::setup_privileges_admin
Recipe: rightscale::default
Recipe: db_mysql::default_5_1
Recipe: app_wordpress::deploy
Recipe: sys_ntp::default
Recipe: sys_firewall::default
Recipe: sys::setup_swap
Recipe: rightscale::install_tools
Recipe: rightscale::install_file_stats_collectd_plugin
Recipe: lnmp_aio::setup_lnmp_aio
Recipe: logging::default
Recipe: nginx::setup_vhost
Recipe: db::setup_privileges_application
RepoPath: RightScale (v12.11.0-LTS) + LNMP [rev 4]
RightScript: [OpsCode] Connect Node [rev 3]
RightScript: [OpsCode] Chef Run [rev 1]
RightScript: [OpsCode] Delete Node [rev 1]
RightScript: [OpsCode] Initial Chef Run [rev 1]

Revisions

Revision 10 | Feb 05, 2013

Fixed php-fpm monitoring Fixes for app_wordpress nginx vhost creation

Revision 9 | Dec 21, 2012

Updated to RightScale v13.2 Chef code. Particularly useful for LVM fixes/enhancements in block_device

Revision 7 | Aug 26, 2012

* Install postfix mysql_pgsql from centosplus on CentOS * Update app_wordpress to require nginx, apache, and php5 so that recipes can be run as operational scripts * Set LVM vg data size to 50% to prevent possible data corruption * Remove scheduler cookbook/recipe, using block_device continuous backups instead * Set max snapshots to 10. 7 Daily + 1 Weekly + 1 Monthly + 1 Yearly = 10

Discussion

Owen Hopkins on Sep 10, 2012 | Re: v7

A really well thought out template with detailed instructions. There are lots of options to play with but the instructions cover everything and the default options are ones that work well. Top marks!