Nanite is a new way to build scalable backends for web applications using RabbitMQ. It allows services called Nanite agents to advertise themselves and be discovered. Nanite mappers track agents and can dispatch work to them based on factors like load. This provides presence of agents, ability for agents to come and go dynamically, and load-based dispatch. Engine Yard As A Service (EYAAS) aims to abstract infrastructure management and provide a highly automated cloud platform using state-based configuration management. It will initially target Amazon Web Services but also allow deploying to other providers and internal data centers.

1. Ruby Deployment
Ezra Zygmuntowicz
http://engineyard.com

2. Brief History

3. Webrick

4. Apache + FastCGI

5. Lighttpd + FastCGI

6. Lighttpd + SCGI

7. Apache + FCGID

8. Mongrel + Apache

9. Mongrel + Lighttpd

10. Lightspeed

11. Mongrel + Nginx
WIN!

12. Thin or Ebb + Nginx
WIN!(sometimes)

13. Passenger(with caveats)

14. State of the art now:
Passenger for shared
hosting/small VPS
Nginx + Mongrel or Thin
for high volume
production deployments

15. Woah! That is 10
different options!

16. Woah! That is 10
different options!
And I rewrote my
deployment book
almost that many
times :(

17. And it was already out
of date when it
shipped ;)

18. Rack: the great equalizer

19. Now with that out of
the way...

20. Nanite: A world of
services

21. Nanite is a new way of
building scalable
backends for web apps

22. Built around RabbitMQ
• Written in erlang, clusterable, highly
scalable, fast as hell.
• AMQP protocol provides many nice
features
• Transient, Persistent and Transactional
semantics

23. Nanite agents
consist of multiple Actors

24. Nanite agents advertise
their services and status
Feeds#crawl
advertises:
/feeds/crawl
Load average is advertised
as default status

25. Nanite Mappers
Track nanites and their advertised services and status
Can do dispatch based on a number of factors
Run inside your Merb or Rails app
State of all nanites is replicated across all mappers

26. Multiple Dispatch
Styles

27. Least loaded dispatch
and the fitness function

28. Agents ping the mapper exchange
every @ping_time seconds.
Mappers track the state of all
nanites and remove them from
mapping if they haven’t reported in
within a timeout

29. Nanite gives us:
• Presence, we know when nanites are ready
for requests or not.
• Self assembly, nanites can come and go and
can run anywhere with zero configuration
in the mappers.
• Dispatch based on load or any fitness
function that suits your app
• Easily take advantage of cloud

30. File Streaming

31. Rack over Nanite

32. Nanite makes it easy to
scale web app backends
Git it on GitHub:
http://github.com/ezmobius/nanite

33. EYAAS
Engine Yard As A
Service
Engine Yard
abstracted from
Engine Yard

34. EYAAS
Engine Yard As A
Service
Clouds are too
low level for
average humans

35. EYAAS
Engine Yard As A
Service
First Target:
AWS

36. EYAAS
Engine Yard As A
Service
Next Target:
Your own Servers in
your own DC, any
new cloud computing
platforms that pop up.

37. Demo

38. A Different Way of
Thinking

39. It’s all about the
Automation

40. 1. State Based Configuration
Management
Repeatable
Idempotent

41. 1. State Based Configuration
Management
Treat an instance like a referentially transparent function
f(config) -> Fully Configured Instance
Calling f(config) will *always* create the same instance
whenever config == config

42. 1. State Based Configuration
Management
Treat instances as throw away
Prefer rebuilding from scratch
Only persist what truly needs to be persistent

43. EYAAS
Custom Gentoo or Ubuntu Linux
State based config management
Ad hoc Change
Extensive Monitoring
24/7 support
High Level Cloud

44. EYAAS
Bridge multiple providers
Highly tuned databases on EY
Elastic app servers on ec2
Will support any compelling new
cloud platforms

47. JSON “DNA” describes your deployments. Servers can
be built from bare metal to spec in a few minutes.

50. Questions?