Base ServerTemplate for Linux (Chef) (v14 Infinity)

Minimum Scripts for Best Practices

Since the “Base” ServerTemplate contains the minimum set of script that are required for optimal server management within the RightScale management platform, it’s recommended that these scripts are not deleted from a ServerTemplate unless you are an advanced user and are aware of the ramifications.

The minimum set of scripts in the "Base" ServerTemplate are found in most ServerTemplates published by RightScale and perform the following setup operations:

• ephemeral_lvm::default - This recipe sets up available ephemeral devices to be an LVM device, formats it, and mounts it.
• rightscale_tag::default* - Sets the standard machine tags for a RightScale server which are server:uuid, server:public_ip_X, server:private_ip_X (where X is 0, 1, etc.).
• rs-base::swap* - Creates a swapfile of the specified size (in GB) node['rs-base']['swap']['size'] in the specified location node['rs-base']['swap']['file'] and enables its usage. The swap file is added to /etc/fstab and will persist across reboots. If the size or the file location is invalid this recipe will fail with an error message indicating what the failure was.
• rs-base::ntp* - Configures ntp using servers in node['rs-base']['ntp']['servers'].
• rs-base::rsyslog* - Installs and configures the rsyslog service. If node['rs-base']['rsyslog_server'] is set, its value will be used as the remote syslog server. Otherwise local machine is used.
• rs-base::collectd* - Installs the collectd client with some of the basic plugins, syslog, interface, df, disk, memory, load, processes, users, and network.

Important!
As a general best practice, any new scripts that you add to the ServerTemplate should be added to the bottom of the existing boot script list.

Logging

By default, the rs-base::rsyslog script configures a server to store log data locally. But when you terminate the instance, all of its logs will be lost. So, if it's necessary to preserve log data after an instance is terminated, you can easily configure the server to send its logs to a central logging server or service by setting the Remote rsyslog Server input to either a FQDN or IP address of the remote logging server.