Software Life Cycle: 4. Updating The Production Servers
Contents
Overview
New releases of the web app and associated databases are staged on the development server. After testing, they are pushed into production. Here is a summary of the main steps.
- Check disk space and local and remote nodes: to do
- Purge old releases from local and remote nodes: to do
- Push new AceDB to AceDB nodes: cron_rsync_acedb.sh
- Push new MySQL databases to MySQL nodes: cron_rsync_mysql_dbs.sh
- Push new support databases: cron_rsync_support_dbs.sh
- Put the site into maintenance mode: to do
- Push updated version of the webapp: deploy_wormbase_webapp.sh VERSION
- Go live script that adjusts database symlinks and restarts services: to do
- Restore the site to active mode: to do
- Make a blog post
- Send release email: to do (possibly via blog)
These steps -- and the scripts that mediate them -- are described in more detail below.
Releasing a new build
New builds of the database are staged on wb-dev. Appropriate scripts are in the private wormbase-admin mercurial module.
Purge old builds
Purge a specific release from production nodes. This need to be run every release but is useful to periodically clear out old builds.
Remove build WSXXX, including acedb, mysql, and support DBs
wb-dev> admin/update/production/purge_old_releases.sh WSXXX
Remove build WSXXX from localhost (ie the dev server), including acedb, mysql, and support DBs
wb-dev> admin/update/production/purge_old_releases.sh WSXXX local
Push out Acedb
The Acedb data directory is kept in sync by cron:
wb-dev> cron_rsync_acedb.sh
Push out MySQL
Originally intended to be run as a cron job, it's less error prone to push databases out when they are ready to go.
wb-dev> cron_rsync_mysql_dbs.sh WSXXX
Deploy software
Deployment is handled by a script in the wormbase-admin module:
wb-dev:admin/update/production/deploy_wormbase_app.sh WSXXX [1]
Major Releases
Every push to production is
- tied to a version of the database
- tied to a major version of the webapp
- tied to a minor revision corresponding to hg tip
The deployment script runs the following steps.
- gets the current major version of the webapp from lib/WormBase/Web.pm
- gets the current changeset of wb-dev:website/staging
- rsyncs the directory to local and remote web cluster nodes
Date Mercurial changeset | | WS221-2010.12.24-0.02-1350 | | Acedb version Major software version
- symlinks production to above:
node:/usr/local/wormbase/website/production -> WS221-2010.12.24-0.02-1350
- creates a release of the software to the ftp site (should it branch/tag, too?) and symlinks it to current
- copies the website/staging directory to "production" or easy reference on the dev server.
Minor Revisions
Pass a flag to the update script if this is just a minor revision. In this case, the staging directory will be synced to webserver nodes but no other steps will be executed:
wb-dev:admin/update/production/deploy_wormbase_app.sh WSXXX 1
Restart services
cd /usr/local/wormbase/website/production
source wormbase.env bin/starman-production.sh start