Nomad

Nomad is an infrastructure lifecycle management tool and differs from Terraform in that Terraform is more of a build/config/provisioning tool.

Installation and getting started with Nomad is pretty simple

For a Mac, just download the binary and copy it to your local path. It’s that simple!

So for my Mac, I just downloaded the binary from https://www.nomadproject.io/downloads.html and copied the binary to the user path

-rw-r--r--@ 1 ayan  ayan    18M Dec  24 09:46 nomad_0.8.6_darwin_amd64.zip

Now just unzip and copy it

Ayans-MacBook-Pro:Logs ayan$ sudo cp nomad /usr/local/bin/

Now to check if the binary works, just fire it up!

Ayans-MacBook-Pro:Logs ayan$ nomad
Usage: nomad [-version] [-help] [-autocomplete-(un)install] <command> [args]

Common commands:
    run         Run a new job or update an existing job
    stop        Stop a running job
    status      Display the status output for a resource
    alloc       Interact with allocations
    job         Interact with jobs
    node        Interact with nodes
    agent       Runs a Nomad agent

Other commands:
    acl             Interact with ACL policies and tokens
    agent-info      Display status information about the local agent
    deployment      Interact with deployments
    eval            Interact with evaluations
    namespace       Interact with namespaces
    operator        Provides cluster-level tools for Nomad operators
    quota           Interact with quotas
    sentinel        Interact with Sentinel policies
    server          Interact with servers
    ui              Open the Nomad Web UI
    version         Prints the Nomad version

To test Nomad, we can use the Vagrant file provided by Hashicorp on this link

The file looks like this – in case you want to modify or create your own Vagrant file

# -*- mode: ruby -*-
# vi: set ft=ruby :

$script = <<SCRIPT
echo "Installing Docker..."
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get remove docker docker-engine docker.io
sudo apt-get install apt-transport-https ca-certificates curl software-properties-common -y
sudo curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg |  sudo apt-key add -
sudo apt-key fingerprint 0EBFCD88
sudo add-apt-repository \
      "deb [arch=amd64] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu \
      $(lsb_release -cs) \
      stable"
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y docker-ce
# Restart docker to make sure we get the latest version of the daemon if there is an upgrade
sudo service docker restart
# Make sure we can actually use docker as the vagrant user
sudo usermod -aG docker vagrant
sudo docker --version

# Packages required for nomad & consul
sudo apt-get install unzip curl vim -y

echo "Installing Nomad..."
NOMAD_VERSION=0.8.6
cd /tmp/
curl -sSL https://releases.hashicorp.com/nomad/${NOMAD_VERSION}/nomad_${NOMAD_VERSION}_linux_amd64.zip -o nomad.zip
unzip nomad.zip
sudo install nomad /usr/bin/nomad
sudo mkdir -p /etc/nomad.d
sudo chmod a+w /etc/nomad.d


echo "Installing Consul..."
CONSUL_VERSION=1.4.0
curl -sSL https://releases.hashicorp.com/consul/${CONSUL_VERSION}/consul_${CONSUL_VERSION}_linux_amd64.zip > consul.zip
unzip /tmp/consul.zip
sudo install consul /usr/bin/consul
(
cat <<-EOF
  [Unit]
  Description=consul agent
  Requires=network-online.target
	After=network-online.target

  [Service]
  Restart=on-failure
  ExecStart=/usr/bin/consul agent -dev
  ExecReload=/bin/kill -HUP $MAINPID

  [Install]
  WantedBy=multi-user.target
EOF
) | sudo tee /etc/systemd/system/consul.service
sudo systemctl enable consul.service
sudo systemctl start consul

for bin in cfssl cfssl-certinfo cfssljson
do
  echo "Installing $bin..."
  curl -sSL https://pkg.cfssl.org/R1.2/${bin}_linux-amd64 > /tmp/${bin}
  sudo install /tmp/${bin} /usr/local/bin/${bin}
done
nomad -autocomplete-install

SCRIPT

Vagrant.configure(2) do |config|
  config.vm.box = "bento/ubuntu-16.04" # 16.04 LTS
  config.vm.hostname = "nomad"
  config.vm.provision "shell", inline: $script, privileged: false

  # Expose the nomad api and ui to the host
  config.vm.network "forwarded_port", guest: 4646, host: 4646, auto_correct: true

  # Increase memory for Parallels Desktop
  config.vm.provider "parallels" do |p, o|
    p.memory = "1024"
  end

  # Increase memory for Virtualbox
  config.vm.provider "virtualbox" do |vb|
        vb.memory = "1024"
  end

  # Increase memory for VMware
  ["vmware_fusion", "vmware_workstation"].each do |p|
    config.vm.provider p do |v|
      v.vmx["memsize"] = "1024"
    end
  end
end

Since we already have Vagrant up (check out the Vagrant installation page in earlier blogs) we can now copy the file to a location we want to run Vagrant from and bring up the Vagrant instance

Ayans-MacBook-Pro:vagrant ayan$ vagrant up
Bringing machine 'default' up with 'virtualbox' provider...
==> default: Importing base box 'hashicorp/precise64'...
==> default: Matching MAC address for NAT networking...
==> default: Checking if box 'hashicorp/precise64' is up to date...
==> default: Setting the name of the VM: ayan_default_1547021585868_30600
==> default: Vagrant has detected a configuration issue which exposes a
==> default: vulnerability with the installed version of VirtualBox. The
==> default: current guest is configured to use an E1000 NIC type for a
==> default: network adapter which is vulnerable in this version of VirtualBox.
==> default: Ensure the guest is trusted to use this configuration or update
==> default: the NIC type using one of the methods below:
==> default: 
==> default:   https://www.vagrantup.com/docs/virtualbox/configuration.html#default-nic-type
==> default:   https://www.vagrantup.com/docs/virtualbox/networking.html#virtualbox-nic-type
==> default: Clearing any previously set network interfaces...
==> default: Preparing network interfaces based on configuration...
    default: Adapter 1: nat
==> default: Forwarding ports...
    default: 22 (guest) => 2222 (host) (adapter 1)
==> default: Booting VM...
==> default: Waiting for machine to boot. This may take a few minutes...
    default: SSH address: 127.0.0.1:2222
    default: SSH username: vagrant
    default: SSH auth method: private key
    default: 
    default: Vagrant insecure key detected. Vagrant will automatically replace
    default: this with a newly generated keypair for better security.
    default: 
    default: Inserting generated public key within guest...
    default: Removing insecure key from the guest if it's present...
    default: Key inserted! Disconnecting and reconnecting using new SSH key...
==> default: Machine booted and ready!
==> default: Checking for guest additions in VM...
    default: The guest additions on this VM do not match the installed version of
    default: VirtualBox! In most cases this is fine, but in rare cases it can
    default: prevent things such as shared folders from working properly. If you see
    default: shared folder errors, please make sure the guest additions within the
    default: virtual machine match the version of VirtualBox you have installed on
    default: your host and reload your VM.
    default: 
    default: Guest Additions Version: 4.2.0
    default: VirtualBox Version: 5.2
==> default: Mounting shared folders...
    default: /vagrant => /Users/ayan

This brings the Vagrant instance up on Virtualbox

You should now be able to access your Vagrant instance

Ayans-MacBook-Pro:vagrant ayan$ vagrant ssh
Welcome to Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (GNU/Linux 3.2.0-23-generic x86_64)

 * Documentation:  https://help.ubuntu.com/
New release '14.04.5 LTS' available.
Run 'do-release-upgrade' to upgrade to it.

Welcome to your Vagrant-built virtual machine.
Last login: Fri Sep 14 06:23:18 2012 from 10.0.2.2

And you should be able to start Nomad

vagrant@precise64:~$nomad
Usage: nomad [-version] [-help] [-autocomplete-(un)install] <command> [args]

Common commands:
    run         Run a new job or update an existing job
    stop        Stop a running job
    status      Display the status output for a resource
    alloc       Interact with allocations
    job         Interact with jobs
    node        Interact with nodes
    agent       Runs a Nomad agent

Other commands:
    acl             Interact with ACL policies and tokens
    agent-info      Display status information about the local agent
    deployment      Interact with deployments
    eval            Interact with evaluations
    namespace       Interact with namespaces
    operator        Provides cluster-level tools for Nomad operators
    quota           Interact with quotas
    sentinel        Interact with Sentinel policies
    server          Interact with servers
    ui              Open the Nomad Web UI
    version         Prints the Nomad version