Part 1 of 3 in Digital Rebar Provision How To Blog Series

• (Part 2) RackN Portal Management Connection to the 10 Minute Demo 
• (Part 3) Create your first CentOS 7 Machine on RackN Portal with Digital Rebar Provision 

For operators looking to better understand Digital Rebar Provision (DRP) RackN has developed an easy to follow process leveraging Packet.net for physical device creation. This process allows new users to create a physical DRP endpoint and then provision a new physical node on Packet. Information and code to run this guide is available at https://github.com/digitalrebar/provision/tree/master/examples/pkt-demo.

In this blog, I will take the reader through the process with images based on running via my Mac.

SETUP

• You will need an account on Packet at https://www.packet.net/. I created a personal account and entered a credit card to pay for the services used. The cost on Packet to run this is minimal.
  • From your Packet.net account you will need to create a NEW Project and an API Key. The API key will look like 7DE1Be6NLjGP6KUH4mbUAbysjwOx9kHo and the Project will look like b5d29881-8561-4f3b-8efb-2d61003fe2e7. NOTE – The values shown are changed and will not work in Packet.
• You will need an account on the RackN Portal via https://portal.rackn.io. From this account you will need your Username which looks like t98743fk-3865-4315-8d11-11127p9e41bd. NOTE – The value shown is not a valid Username.
• Mac Users – I needed to have Homebrew installed on my machine to run this demo script. Run the 2 steps below…
  • /usr/bin/ruby -e “$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)”
  • brew install jq

PROCESS

• Git Clone the guide (DO NOT run w/ “sudo”)
  • git clone -n https://github.com/digitalrebar/provision.git –depth=1o
  • cd provision
  • git checkout HEAD examples/pkt-demo
  • cp -r examples/pkt-demo $HOME/pkt-demo
  • cd $HOME/pkt-demo
• Edit the Secrets file with Packet and RackN Portal info from Setup
  • vi private-content/secrets

# specify your API KEY that has access to PROJECT ID below
API=”insert_api_key_here”
# specify the PROJECT ID that API KEY has access to
PROJECT=”insert_project_id_here”
# RackN Username – necessary to download registered (but free) content packs
USERNAME=”insert username here”

• Run the demo-run.sh Script
  • ./demo-run.sh : this will launch the guide and you will see the Digital Rebar bear along with a request to run the next step

• <RETURN> “Install Terraform”

• <RETURN> “Install Secrets”

• <RETURN> “Generate Public/Private RSA Keys”

• <RETURN> “Packet SSH Key”

• <RETURN> “2^nd Packet SSH Key”

• <RETURN> Creating the DRP Endpoint on Packet

• <RETURN> Create a Terraform Plan

• <RETURN> Download DRP to Endpoint

• <RETURN> SSH Keygen

• <RETURN> SSH Keyscan

• <RETURN> Install DRP onto Packet Host Endpoint

Additional Installation Content Not Shown

• <RETURN> Configure DRP

Additional Configuration Content Not Shown

NOTE – Getting a FAILED at this stage is expected and you should continue

• <RETURN> Setup DRP Endpoint

• <RETURN> Create new Packet Physical Node form DRP Endpoint

At this point you will have 2 machines running in Packet:

• Digital Rebar Provision running on an Endpoint
• A new physical node provisioned by DRP
• To clean-up this process and shut down the 2 Packet machines run the following command ./bin/control.sh cleanup
  • It will clean up Packet as well as reset all files back to the original state when cloned from github.

In my next blog, I will introduce the process to connect your Packet Endpoint machine to the RackN Portal so you can see the newly created node and begin working with it from the RackN Portal.

If you have any questions, please leverage the RackN Slack #Community channel where Digital Rebar community members and RackN engineers are available to assist.