How to set up and deploy a production server

Capistrano is used to deploy the application. We're using nginx, Unicorn, and Ruby 2 (through rvm), and MySQL in production with a node.js runtime for uglifier. The server was setup with the tips outlined in this article with some modifications. To set up the server:

Prerequisites

• Create a user for deployment (with sudo privileges).
• Update packages and install curl:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install curl

• Install rvm (Ruby Version Manager):

curl -L get.rvm.io | bash -s stable

• Load RVM and install dependencies

source ~/.rvm/scripts/rvm
rvm requirements

• Install Ruby 2.0

rvm install 2.0.0
rvm use 2.0.0 --default

• Install rubygems, rails, and mysql2.

rvm rubygems current
gem install rails --no-ri --no-rdoc
sudo apt-get install libmysqlclient-dev
gem install mysql2

• Install git-core:

sudo apt-get install git-core

• Install bundler:

gem install bundler

• Setup nginx

sudo apt-get install nginx
nginx -h
cat /etc/init.d/nginx
/etc/init.d/nginx -h
sudo service nginx start
cd /etc/nginx

The application has everything it needs in terms of unicorn and nginx configurations:

• config/nginx.conf: nginx configuration which redirects requests to the Unicorn server.
• config/unicorn.rb
• 'config/unicorn_init.sh': establishes commands for controlling Unicorn.

Generate an SSH key to use with the server. You can follow this guide. Add it to the server with the corresponding username.

Setting up the deployment

cap deploy:setup
cap deploy:setup_config
cap deploy:cold

sudo rm /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default
sudo service nginx restart
sudo update-rc.d -f unicorn_projectname defaults

Deploying new changes

After pushing your commits, simply run:

cap deploy

Updating config

To update configuration files (database.yml, application.yml, ldap.yml):

cap deploy:setup_config

More Capistrano tasks

Check em out.