Today, I am releasing Deployment from Scratch, 1st edition. It was a long journey of more than three years, and it’s time to make it a reality. Of course, I could always do a one more read and rewrite a paragraph or two, but it’s just as important to stop at some point and let the world benefit from all that work.

It all started as a small resource of deploying a Rails application on a virtual server, but it outgrew itself by a large margin. Python, containers, NFS, or emails were included, among other things. It’s the single resource you need to get started with deployment. Although from scratch, it goes wide and deep.

It covers a lot:

• networking and typical system administration
• static sites, proxies, and load balancers with NGINX
• SSL certificates with Let’s Encrypt
• installing Ruby/Python and configuring Puma/Gunicorn
• building systemd services and Docker containers
• PostgreSQL and Redis administration
• automation with Bash and git
• discussing storage, backups, emails

Here’s how it looks like inside:

Learn about the final list of chapters at the book landing page.

Apart from being a book, Deployment from Scratch is also about scripted demonstrations that you can use in production with a little bit of work. I show how you can do a decent repeatable process with a bit of Bash glue without the need for more tooling.

The three demonstrations being:

• A static website served over TLS with Let’s Encrypt certificates.
• A single server demonstration of running a full-featured Rails web application with UNIX sockets, PostgreSQL ident system authentication, Web Sockets, and Let’s Encrypt certificates. A git-push deployment with helpful administration scripts for connecting to the server or handling file and database backups.
• A self-sufficient PostgreSQL cluster demo with automatic system upgrades and log rotation. TLS with custom certificates and custom scripts for cluster-wide backups and restores.

And as a bonus, I included some cheatsheets and a security checklist. Handy to check before a production deploy!

If you havent’s bought the pre-release, get your copy! Chances are, the book will make you more down the line than it costs.

Happy reading!

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Published on 01 Sep 2021