6

I am new to DevOps, started learning the different tools. I would like to practice all of the tools like Jenkins, Chef, GIT, Puppet, Ansible, Docker, Kubernetes, etc .

My question is If I would like to practice all of the tools on AWS Free tier Instances How many of them are needed? and which tools I can combine them and install on which instances ?

Please help me in this regard.

1
  • All of those can be experimented with using only a single instance. Having two or three might make it a bit more challenging, but there's no technical reason you can't play with them on one instance.
    – chicks
    Sep 7, 2017 at 1:37

4 Answers 4

5

You might not be able to get this done on the free tier. Puppet for example isn't going to want to start because of the RAM limitations. The AWS free tier uses thje t2.micro instance which only has 1GB of RAM. Your operating system alone probably needs 512 to run at idle. This leaves you a mere 512 MB or ram for all of the things that you listed.

While the issue with puppet not starting can be overcome by editing /etc/sysconfig/puppetserver and setting something like:

JAVA_ARGS="-Xms512m -Xmx512m"

(this issue arises because puppet expects 2 GB or RAM out of the box)

You are bound to find that running all of these on a single server is debilitating and painful with only 1 GB of RAM. You should probably consider using something like virtualbox on your PC or laptop so that you can get some more ram than that offered by the AWS free tier. I'd say you want at least 4 or maybe 8 GB of RAM. While this probably can be done, I don't recommend it. You may have to stop one service to run another which then makes it difficult to have one talk to the other (eg, ansible talk to Jenkins while puppet is running, for example.)

3
  • Thanks buddy, ok Virtual Box is one of the solution, but many of my friends suggest that using VMWARE on laptop sometimes damages our PC. Moreover I would like to practice AWS EC2 so how many EC2 instances I would need to practice all these things. and if it all which tools would go together on single EC2 . and which would need separate allocation EC2 . If you could answer this, I would be very helpful for me. Thank you
    – EDU_EVER
    Sep 11, 2017 at 15:16
  • 1
    You could probably manage with just 1 EC2 instance as Briansburm says, but maybe not at the free tier. Perhaps a t2.medium instance. You can minimize costs by simply powering down the VM when you aren't using it. Letting it idle powered on is pretty expensive if all you are doing is using it for a couple of hours a night or week. I've never heard of VMWare workstation damaging a laptop though... You can also try QEMU. On the other hand, you might want to have 2 instances, a master instance and a vm to simulate a client. That one would be just fine on the free tier. Sep 11, 2017 at 15:30
  • You could potentially even run 1 free tier instance to act as a client and the master that the VM talks to on your laptop in a VM too. Sep 11, 2017 at 15:30
3

The Azure free trial gives you $200 in credit for the first month which is plenty of capacity spin up many VMs of an adequate size to run all the tools you mention. I would advise not starting the trial period until you have a good plan of what you want to do, to get maximum benefit from it.

Provision up to 14 virtual machines, 40 SQL databases or 8 TB of storage for a month

1

The good news for your question is that all of these tools can be played with on one free tier instance in AWS.

Using Docker/K8's, which it seems you want to learn as well, you'll be able to run all of the other tools that you want to learn as containers on that one host which should have enough grunt to allow you to play around.

0

You can use 2 instance in AWS free tier if you want to practice as client and Server configuration. When instance is not required shut it down.

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge you have read our privacy policy.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.