RiotKit Universal Node

Turns a typical cheap virtual node into a dockerized applications environment node. Natively integrates with RiotKit's Harbor 2+ for webservices deployment.

Installs docker, docker-compose, adds users, configures logs rotation, configures security.

First time setup

# setup a repository
git clone git@github.com:riotkit-org/infrastructure-harbor-universal-node.git

cd infrastructure-harbor-universal-node
$(./setup-venv.sh)

# set INVENTORY_GIT_URL to a URL of your repository that contains Ansible inventory with hosts.cfg, host_vars/, group_vars/
cp .env-dist .env
nano .env

rkd :install-roles
rkd :setup
rkd :copy-host-defaults

Features

Structure and automation
User accounts management
Basic security (firewall ports, fail2ban, partial disk encryption)
Extensibility
Native integration with RiotKit Harbor
Logs rotation and logs privacy management
Inventory in separate GIT repository

Cheap node specification

This set of playbooks needs to run at least on this specification:

CPU: 1-4 cores
RAM: 0,5-4 GB
HDD: 20-40 GB SSD (including OS)
OS: Ubuntu 16.04+ or latest Debian Stable or Latest Armbian
Host type: Physical ARM, KVM or OpenVZ

Notice: The ARM support is not official. We do not have any ARM nodes to test currently, we did in the past.

Usage documentation

Operating

Each operation is performed using RKD (RiotKit-Do) using rkd command. It is recommended to work in a virtual env using $(./setup-venv.sh) wrapper - for stability and reproducibility.

Design - concept

The architecture requires that the Ansible Inventory (list of SSH hosts with variables per host to customize deployment roles) should be placed in a separate repository, and the url should be in .env at INVENTORY_GIT_URL variable.

Thanks to this concept we can leave this Universal Node Repository at github, and all the secrets and personalized settings have separated in other, private repository - to update Universal Node Repository we can just do git pull. It can be also forked into private repository for full customization.

How to create inventory repository?

Inventory structure should consist of:

inventory/hosts.cfg (example)

[disasterrecovery]
recovery.example.internal

inventory/group_vars/all

This file should be actually created from template by executing command rkd :copy-host-defaults first time. In it you can define deployment settings globally for EACH HOST.

inventory/host_vars/recovery.example.internal.yaml (example name)

There you should define ansible_ssh_user, ansible_ssh_pass, ansible_sudo_pass and/or private key path. In this file you can also overwrite deployment settings for this host.

When in inventory/group_vars/all there is a section for example default_role_encryption then you can create a role_encryption in inventory/host_vars/recovery.example.internal.yaml. The values will be MERGED together, the section would not replace original one but will merge all values recursively.

inventory/scripts/pre_deployment/{{hostname or groupname}}

Optionally an executable script could be created that will be started before ansible-playbook with host filter.

Example usage: Decrypt SSH private key

inventory/scripts/post_deployment/{{hostname or groupname}}

Optionally an executable script can be placed there, then it will be started right after ansible-playbook will finish execution.

Example usage: Remove previously decrypted, plain SSH private key

ENCRYPTION

Each host file in host_vars can be encrypted with a different Ansible Vault key, Ansible supports this. With this combination you can divide access to multiple admins handling administration of different servers.

TIP: Keep inventory/hosts.cfg with minimum of information (only group names and host names) to keep it unencrypted, so you will not have to enter password twice

Adding this inventory repository

# set url in INVENTORY_GIT_URL
nano .env

Editing configuration per host and disabling/enabling roles

This command will automatically encrypt existing and new file using AES-256 with Ansible Vault.

Please note: All values there are overriding group_vars/all.yaml default values for edited host

To disable a role - remove or comment out it's section eg. role_fail2ban

To enable a role without overriding any values (inheriting all defaults) just add empty section eg. role_fail2ban: {}

rkd :edit:host-config my-host.org

Setting default values for ALL hosts in inventory (hosts will inherit those values by default)

When a host does not override given value, then it is inherited from global defaults.

Note: This file you can also encrypt and below command will support encrypted edits

rkd :edit:all-hosts-defaults-config

Variables inheritance explained

Given we have inventory/group_vars/all.yaml defined with:

default_role_encryption:
    enc_file: /storage
    enc_file_size: 17160M

And a host_vars/example.org.yaml file that is host-specific:

role_encryption:
    enc_file_size: 900G
    enc_mount_name: storage
    enc_mount_path: /mnt/storage

Then finally the variables will be:

role_encryption:
    enc_file: /storage    # this one is a global default
    enc_file_size: 900G   # this one is overridden
    
    # those two are present only on this host
    enc_mount_name: storage
    enc_mount_path: /mnt/storage

Deploying

# perform a partial disk encryption (optional)
rkd :encrypt-first-time recovery.example.internal

# provision with users, firewall settings, etc. - a regular deployment
rkd :deploy prepare-machine.yml --host recovery.example.internal --vault

# update operating system with careful
rkd :deploy update-machines.yml --host recovery.example.internal --vault

RiotKit/ansible-universal-node-playbooks