CI/CD Pipeline using Node.js and Jenkins - 6: Creating and Destroying Droplets

After getting my CI/CD pipeline up and running, I needed an easier way to create droplets from snapshots so that process wasn’t so time-consuming.

Parameterising the Node-App IP Address:

With my current setup, if I take a snapshot and destroy the Node-App server, when I re-create the server from the snapshot in another droplet it will have a different IP address. The IP address is hard-coded into the deploy script so each time I create it, I would need to commit new code to be able to deploy.

To get over this hurdle, I parameterised the deploy script to accept the IP address as a command line argument, so the IP address could be configured in the Jenkins config, instead of within the code itself.

#!/bin/sh
ssh twulz@$1 <<EOF
 cd ~/node-app
 git pull
 npm install -—production
 pm2 restart all
 exit
EOF

So now the Build Execute Shell script reads:

whoami
npm install
./script/test
./script/deploy 157.245.55.163 #IP address of node-app server.

So each time the Node-App server address changes, just need to update that parameter to the new IP on the Jenkins server, without needing a new commit to git.

To spin up a new Jenkins droplet:

  1. Use the previous droplet snapshot.
  2. Wait for it to be live, then copy the new IP address
  3. Update the webhook in Github
  4. Done! Any new commits will automatically deploy to the Node-App server.

To spin up a new Node-App droplet:

  1. Create the droplet from the snapshot
  2. Wait for it to be live, then copy the new IP address
  3. Update the IP address in the jenkins config: http://jenkins-ip-address:8080/job/node-app/configure
  4. ssh into the jenkins droplet (may need to login as root or twulz then su - jenkins)
  5. ssh from jenkins droplet into node-app droplet once ssh twulz@node-ip-address, answer “yes”, this adds it to a known hosts file.
  6. in the node-app server, start pm2: pm2 start index.js
  7. Now if you hit “Build now” in Jenkins, it should build and deploy: http://jenkins-ip-address:8080/

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