Provisioning sandboxes

GitHub pull requests

When configured correctly, the instance manager can automatically provision sandboxes whenever a pull request is made on GitHub. You can choose which repositories and organization to watch by creating in admin or shell a WatchedFork object with the name of your fork (e.g. edx/edx-platform).

To customize these sandboxes, you can add a Settings section to your pull request description, using the following format:

**Settings**
```yaml
# Include extra ansible vars as yaml here
```

For example:

**Settings**
```yaml
EDXAPP_FEATURES_EXTRA:
  ALLOW_HIDING_DISCUSSION_TAB: true
```

Note: You need to match the above format exactly.

Another option to customize sandboxes is to write the settings as a field inside the WatchedFork: configuration_extra_settings. These settings will be applied to all pull requests for that repository, without having to write a Settings section in each PR. If there is a Settings section, it will be combined with the WatchedFork settings, with the PR settings always having precedence. The configuration_source_repo_url, configuration_version and openedx_release from the WatchedFork provide a default value for all PRs of that fork, and can also be overriden in the PR body through the edx_ansible_source_repo, configuration_version and openedx_release variables respectively.

Manual provisioning

If you want to create an instance outside of a GitHub pull request, you can do so from the shell. There are two options:

Factory methods

OpenCraft IM provides two factory methods for creating instances (the following lines should run via make shell):

from instance.factories import instance_factory, production_instance_factory

# Creating an instance with defaults appropriate for sandboxes:
instance = instance_factory(name="Sandbox instance", sub_domain="sandbox")

# Creating an instance with defaults appropriate for production:
production_instance = production_instance_factory(name="Production instance", sub_domain="production")

The only mandatory keyword argument for both functions is sub_domain. You can use additional keyword arguments to pass in non-default values for any field that is defined on the OpenEdXInstance model. Since both functions return a newly created instance in the form of an OpenEdXInstance object, you can also customize field values later on:

instance.email = 'myname@opencraft.com'
instance.configuration_version = 'named-release/dogwood'
instance.save()

If you pass custom configuration_extra_settings to production_instance_factory, they will override the variables defined in instance/models/mixins/openedx_config.py.

Django API

You can also use the Django API to create an instance:

from instance.models.openedx_instance import OpenEdXInstance

instance = OpenEdXInstance.objects.create(
    name='Dogwood sandbox',
    sub_domain='dogwood',
    # The rest of the parameters are all optional:
    email='myname@opencraft.com',
    openedx_release='named-release/dogwood',
    configuration_version='named-release/dogwood',
    configuration_source_repo_url='https://github.com/edx/configuration.git',
    configuration_extra_settings='',
)

# Optionally, set custom ansible variables/overrides:
instance.configuration_extra_settings = """
NGINX_ENABLE_SSL: true
"""
instance.save()

Once the instance is created, use the web UI to review the instance configuration, then use the "Launch new AppServer" button to provision a server.

Once the server is ready (refresh the page to check), select it in the UI and click "Activate this app server". (You can also do this in advance, during provisioning, if you want the DNS updated sooner and aren't concerned about the DNS pointing to a potentially broken server, in the case the provisioning should fail.)

To change an instance's parameters, if that instance is not controlled by a pull request:

First, note the instance's ID (will be in the URL of that instance in the web UI, or get it in the shell as instance.ref.id). Then, load the instance, make changes, and save:

instance = InstanceReference.objects.get(id=20).instance
# Update settings of instance:
instance.edx_platform_commit = 'master'
# Save:
instance.save()

Then use the "Launch new AppServer" button in the web UI to provision a server with the updated settings, wait, refresh the page to check if it's ready, and click "Activate this app server" to use the new server when it's ready.

To terminate all VMs associated with an instance, but still preserve the information about the AppServers and their configuration, run:

for appserver in instance.appserver_set.all():
    appserver.terminate_vm()

To delete an instance in production, use the archive() method. The archive() method will terminate all associated AppServers, remove DNS entries, disable monitoring, and remove instance from the UI, but will keep data in databases and SWIFT/S3 storage intact:

instance.archive()

To completely delete an instance in development, use the delete() method, which works just like archive() except that it also destroys all data (MySQL, mongo, SWIFT/S3):

instance.delete()

Use delete(ignore_errors=True) in case some of the resources related to an instance were deleted or modified and "forcing" deletion is necessary.

It is possible to ignore errors for specific resources when deleting an instance:

  • delete(ignore_mysql_errors=True) to ignore MySQL errors.
  • delete(ignore_mongo_errors=True) to ignore Mongo errors.
  • delete(ignore_rabbitmq_errors=True) to ignore RabbitMQ errors.

Note: Any errors raised and its stacktrace will be logged in case there's need for more information.

Do not use delete() in production!