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Using a 3rd Party to Install Redis

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The best part about roles is they're shareable. There are a ton of third-party roles that you can download to give your playbook free stuff! I love free stuff!

Refresh the page in the "dev" environment. The page took over 2 seconds to load! Why? In DefaultController, our app is trying to use Redis:

111 lines | src/AppBundle/Controller/DefaultController.php
// ... lines 1 - 9
class DefaultController extends Controller
{
// ... lines 12 - 14
public function indexAction()
{
// ... lines 17 - 20
// Redis cache
try {
if ($this->getRedisClient()->exists('total_video_uploads_count')) {
$totalVideoUploadsCount = $this->getRedisClient()->get('total_video_uploads_count');
} else {
$totalVideoUploadsCount = $this->countTotalVideoUploads();
$this->getRedisClient()->set('total_video_uploads_count', $totalVideoUploadsCount, 'ex', 60); // 60s
}
if ($this->getRedisClient()->exists('total_video_views_count')) {
$totalVideoViewsCount = $this->getRedisClient()->get('total_video_views_count');
} else {
$totalVideoViewsCount = $this->countTotalVideoViews();
$this->getRedisClient()->set('total_video_views_count', $totalVideoViewsCount, 'ex', 60); // 60s
}
} catch (ConnectionException $e) {
$totalVideoUploadsCount = $this->countTotalVideoUploads();
$totalVideoViewsCount = $this->countTotalVideoViews();
}
// ... lines 40 - 46
}
// ... lines 48 - 109
}

But, it's not installed! So, this fails... and just for a good example, our code rescues thing but sleeps for 2 seconds to "fake" the page being really slow:

111 lines | src/AppBundle/Controller/DefaultController.php
// ... lines 1 - 9
class DefaultController extends Controller
{
// ... lines 12 - 70
/**
* @return int
*/
private function countTotalVideoUploads()
{
sleep(1); // simulating a long computation: waiting for 1s
$fakedCount = intval(date('Hms') . rand(1, 9));
return $fakedCount;
}
/**
* @return int
*/
private function countTotalVideoViews()
{
sleep(1); // simulating a long computation: waiting for 1s
$fakedCount = intval(date('Hms') . rand(1, 9)) * 111;
return $fakedCount;
}
// ... lines 94 - 109
}

In other words, without Redis, our site is slow. But after we install it, the page should be super quick!

Installing the Redis Role

We already have all the skills needed to install Redis. But... maybe someone already did the work for us? Google for "Redis Ansible role". Hello DavidWittman/ansible-redis! This role helps install Redis... and it looks fairly active. And check it out: it looks like our role, with templates, vars, handlers and a few other things.

So... if we could download this into our project, we could activate the role and get free stuff! The way to do that is by using a command called ansible-galaxy. Copy it! Then, find your terminal and paste!

ansible-galaxy install DavidWittman.redis

In my case, it's already installed.

By default, ansible-galaxy downloads roles to a global directory. When you tell Ansible to load a role, it looks in your local directory but also looks in that global spot to find possible roles.

You could also download the role locally in your project. Add --help to the command:

ansible-galaxy install DavidWittman.redis --help

The -p option is the key! Downloading the role locally might be even better than downloading it globally. When it's in your project, you can commit it to your repository and manage its version.

Activate & Configure the Role

With the role downloaded, all we need to do is activate it! Easy! Copy the role name. Under our roles, I'll use a longer syntax: role: DavidWittman.redis then become: true:

173 lines | ansible/playbook.yml
---
- hosts: vb
// ... lines 3 - 35
roles:
// ... line 37
- role: DavidWittman.redis
become: true
// ... lines 40 - 173

If you tried the role, you'd find out you need that. We didn't need it for the nginx role because we had the become: true lines internally.

Ok team, run the entire playbook in the dev environment:

ansible-playbook ansible/playbook.yml -i ansible/hosts.ini

While we're waiting for someone else to install Redis for us - thanks David - head back to the documentation. The main way to control how a role works is via variables, like redis_bind in this example:

---
- hosts: redis01.example.com
  vars:
    - redis_bind: 127.0.0.1
  roles:
    - DavidWittman.redis

It's cool how it works: internally, the role sets some variables and then uses them. We, of course, can override them. Simple, but powerful.

There is one downside to third-party roles: they can add some serious bloat to your playbook. Yea, it's running a lot of tasks. Often, a role is designed to work on multiple operating systems and versions. Some of these tasks are determining facts about the environment, like what Ubuntu version we have or what utilities are available. The role is really flexible, but takes extra time to run.

And, this first execution will take a long time: it's installing Redis!

Finally... it gets into our stuff.

Ding! Let's try it! Refresh MooTube. Then, refresh again. Yes! 29 milliseconds! Amazing! So much faster!

This works because our application is already configured to look for Redis on localhost. So as soon as it was installed, our app picked it up.

Next, let's talk more about configuration and how you might control things like the Redis host or database password.