Rails App Server AWS OpsWorks Stacks Layer

Important

The AWS OpsWorks Stacks service reached end of life on May 26, 2024 and has been disabled for both new and existing customers. We strongly recommend customers migrate their workloads to other solutions as soon as possible. If you have questions about migration, reach out to the AWS Support Team on AWS re:Post or through AWS Premium Support.

Note

This layer is available only for Linux-based stacks.

The Rails App Server layer is an AWS OpsWorks Stacks layer that provides a blueprint for instances that function as Rails application servers.

Installation: AWS OpsWorks Stacks uses the instance's package installer to install the server packages in their default locations. For more information about Apache/Passenger installation, see Phusion Passenger. For more information about logging, see Log Files. For more information about Nginx/Unicorn installation, see Unicorn.

The Add Layer page provides the following configuration options, all of which are optional.

Ruby Version

The Ruby version that will be used by your applications. The default value is 2.3.

You can also specify your preferred Ruby version by overriding the [:opsworks][:ruby_version] attribute.

Note

AWS OpsWorks Stacks installs a separate Ruby package to be used by recipes and the instance agent. For more information, see Ruby Versions.

Rails Stack

The default Rails stack is Apache2 with Phusion Passenger. You can also use Nginx with Unicorn.

Note

If you use Nginx and Unicorn, you must add the unicorn gem to your app's Gemfile, as in the following example:

source 'https://rubygems.org'
gem 'rails', '3.2.15'
...
# Use unicorn as the app server
gem 'unicorn'
...

Passenger Version

If you have specified Apache2/Passenger, you must specify the Passenger version. The default value is 5.0.28.

Rubygems Version

The default Rubygems version is 2.5.1

Install and Manage Bundler

Lets you choose whether to install and manage Bundler. The default value is Yes.

Bundler version

The default Bundler version is 1.12.5.

Custom security groups

This setting appears if you chose to not automatically associate a built-in AWS OpsWorks Stacks security group with your layers. You must specify which security group to associate with the layer. For more information, see Create a New Stack.

Elastic Load Balancer

You can attach an Elastic Load Balancing load balancer to the layer's instances.

You can modify some configuration settings by using custom JSON or a custom attributes file. For more information, see Overriding Attributes. For a list of Apache, Nginx, Phusion Passenger, and Unicorn attributes that can be overridden, see Built-in Cookbook Attributes.

Important

If your Ruby on Rails application uses SSL, we recommend that you disable SSLv3 if possible to address the vulnerabilities described in CVE-2014-3566. For more information, see Disabling SSLv3 for Rails Servers.

Disabling SSLv3 for Rails Servers

To disable SSLv3 for Rails servers, update the layer's Ruby Version setting to 2.1 or higher, which installs Ruby 2.1.4 or higher as the version that applications use.

• Update the layer's Ruby Version setting to 2.1 or higher.

• Update the configuration file for your Rails stack, as follows.

Apache with Phusion Passenger

Update SSLProtocol setting in the Apache server's ssl.conf file, as described in Disabling SSLv3 for Apache Servers.

Nginx with Unicorn

Add an explicit ssl_protocols directive to the Nginx server's nginx.conf file. To disable SSLv3, override the built-in nginx cookbook's nginx.conf.erb template file, which the Rails App Server layer's Setup recipes use to create nginx.conf, and add the following directive:

ssl_protocols TLSv1.2;

For more information on how to configure nginx.conf, see Configuring HTTPS servers. For more information on how to override a built-in template, see Using Custom Templates.

Connecting to a Database

When you deploy an app, AWS OpsWorks Stacks creates a new database.yml file using information from the app's deploy attributes. If you attach a MySQL or Amazon RDS instance to the app, AWS OpsWorks Stacks adds the connection information to the deploy attributes, so that database.yml automatically contains the correct connection data.

If an app does not have an attached database, by default, AWS OpsWorks Stacks does not add any connection information to the deploy attributes and does not create database.yml. If you want to use a different database, you can use custom JSON to add database attributes to the app's deploy attributes with the connection information. The attributes are all under["deploy"]["appshortname"]["database"], where appshortname is the app's short name, which AWS OpsWorks Stacks generates from the app name. The values you specify in custom JSON override any default settings. For more information, see Adding Apps.

AWS OpsWorks Stacks incorporates the following [:...][:database] attribute values into database.yml. The required attributes depend on the particular database, but you must have a host attribute or AWS OpsWorks Stacks will not create database.yml.

• [:adapter] (String) – The database adapter, such as mysql.

• [:database] (String) – The database name.

• [:encoding] (String) – The encoding, which is typically set to utf8.

• [:host] (String) – The host URL, such as railsexample.cdlqlk5uwd0k.us-west-2.rds.amazonaws.com.

• [:reconnect] (Boolean) – Whether the application should reconnect if the connection no longer exists.

• [:password] (String) – The database password.

• [:port] (Number). – The database's port number. Use this attribute to override the default port number, which is set by is set by the adapter.

• [:username] (String) – The database user name.

The following example shows custom JSON for an app whose short name is myapp.

{
  "deploy" : {
    "myapp" : {
      "database" : {
        "adapter" : "adapter",
        "database" : "databasename",
        "host" : "host",
        "password" : "password",
        "port" : portnumber
        "reconnect" : true/false,
        "username" : "username"
      }
    }
  }
}

For information on how to specify custom JSON, see Using Custom JSON. To see the template used to create database.yml (database.yml.erb), go to the built-in cookbook repository.

Deploying Ruby on Rails Apps

You can deploy Ruby on Rails apps from any of the supported repositories. The following shows how to deploy an example Ruby on Rails app to a server running an Apache/Passenger Rails stack. The example code is stored in a public GitHub repository, but the basic procedure is the same for the other supported repositories. For more information on how to create and deploy apps, see Apps. To view the example's code, which includes extensive comments, go to https://github.com/awslabs/opsworks-demo-rails-photo-share-app.

To deploy a Ruby on Rails app from a GitHub repository

1. Create a stack with a Rails App Server layer with Apache/Passenger as the Rails stack, add a 24/7 instance to the layer, and start it.

2. After the instance is online, add an app to the stack and specify following settings:

   • Name – Any name you prefer; the example uses PhotoPoll.

     AWS OpsWorks Stacks uses this name for display purposes, and generates a short name for internal use and to identify the app in the stack configuration and deployment attributes. For example, the PhotoPoll short name is photopoll.

   • App type – Ruby on Rails.

   • Rails environment – The available environments are determined by the application.

     The example app has three: development, test, and production. For this example, set the environment to development. See the example code for descriptions of each environment.

   • Repository type – Any of the supported repository types. Specify Git for this example

   • Repository URL – The repository that the code should be deployed from.

     For this example, set the URL to git://github.com/awslabs/opsworks-demo-rails-photo-share-app.

   Use the default values for the remaining settings and then click Add App to create the app.

3. Deploy the app to the Rails App Server instance.

4. When deployment is finished, go to the Instances page and click the Rails App Server instance's public IP address. You should see the following: