RailsConf 2021 Workshop: Deploying Your Rails Application to Kubernetes

Welcome!

This workshop is scheduled for April 12, 2021 from 1 PM to 3 PM EDT. We are super excited to share this workshop with you.

The workshop

Kubernetes has a lot of DevOps mindshare and is how shops like GitHub and Shopify are deploying their apps. But, what is Kubernetes? What does it mean for deploying your application? Do you need it?

In this workshop, we'll answer by migrating a small Rails application to Kubernetes. We'll build up the deployment tooling necessary to stand the application up on a small Kubernetes cluster.

We'll also explore the core concepts and considerations of adding Kubernetes to your deployment pipeline, including Kubernetes operations, preparing for ephemeral infrastructure, data storage, and more.

Structure

We're slated for two hours of workshop. We'll take a couple of short breaks during those two hours.

Nathan and Alex will be around on Discord after the workshop to answer questions and give further help.

Prerequisites

• A computer capable of running Ruby on Rails and two VirtualBox virtual machines
  • We recommend a recent laptop with at least two physical CPU cores and at least 8 GB of memory
    • Plan on ~3GB of memory being used by the VMs
  • You will need up to 20 GB of disk space to run two Ubuntu virtual machines and a small Rails app
    • It probably will not be that much, but as I write this, I'm using close to 7 GB between the two machines
  • The smoothest path will be via macOS, since that's where our direct experience is
  • Windows and Linux users should also be able to successfully set-up and run the Rails app locally and
• Basic experience with Rails applications
  • Rails beginners are welcome,

Setup

You will want to have set-up completed before attending the workshop. We will review the prerequisites and what we're doing during the workshop, but, we are not setting aside time to install software or create accounts during the workshop.

Exceptions to suggested installations

"Nathan, Alex, there are other valid ways to install this software that's less resource intensive!"

Granted! We're prioritizing on "easiest path to get up and running". If you want to experiment with other virtualization libraries, use smaller VM images, whatever, you can, however, you will be on your own.

Software

• Homebrew
  • For macOS users, you might already be using this tool, and for the next steps, you may find it helpful to use brew install X as your installation method
• Ruby 2.7.2
  • Install via rbenv, rvm, chruby or other tool
• Bundler 2.2
  • gem install bundler on the command-line
• VirtualBox
  • For macOS users, you can install via Homebrew
    • brew install virtualbox
  • Linux