R Shiny + Ansible = shiny.nzoss.org.nz

Bruno P. Kinoshita
https://kinoshita.eti.br — https://github.com/kinow

Auckland, New Zealand 2018

R Shiny

• Brings R to the web
• Requires minimum knowledge of web development
• Both Pro & Open Source versions available
• Good documentation, code, and community

R Shiny installation

• Linux only
• Debian, SUSE, and Red Hat packages available
• On Ubuntu:
  • $ sudo apt-get install r-base
  • $ R
  • > install.packages('shiny')
  • $ sudo apt-get install gdebi-core
  • $ wget https://download3.rstudio.org/ubuntu-12.04/x86_64/shiny-server-1.5.6.875-amd64.deb
  • $ # you md5sum check the file...
  • $ sudo gdebi shiny-server-1.5.6.875-amd64.deb

R Shiny (automated) installation

• The old Perl motto TMTOWTDI applies here
• Docker
  • https://hub.docker.com/r/rocker/shiny/
  • https://github.com/rstudio/shiny-examples/tree/master/docker
• Vagrant
  • https://github.com/ginolhac/vagrant-shiny
• Configuration Management tools
  • https://github.com/fasrc/puppet-shiny
  • https://github.com/SkydiveMarius/puppet-r-shiny
  • https://github.com/openearth/stack/tree/master/roles/shiny
  • https://github.com/kinow/nz-shiny-server/tree/master/infra
• Shell script, Python, Perl, etc

R Shiny (automated) installation

• My preference: Configuration Management Tools
• More specifically Ansible. But worked with Puppet and SaltStack in the past, both are good as well
• With a CM tool you can craft a setup that is/has:
  • reproducible builds
  • portable across OS's
  • more declarative, less imperative
  • push and/or pull based
  • applicable to Docker, Vagrant, baremetal, Windows, Linux, notebook, Cloud, supercomputer, etc

shiny.nzoss.org.nz

shiny.nzoss.org.nz

• Still a work in progress
• We aim at working with R and Shiny users around NZ to make it useful and well used
• We want to increase the amount of open data available here
• Applications are deployed via pull requests to a git repository
• The server automatically install new applications listed in a file
• For more information visit https://github.com/kinow/nz-shiny-server/wiki/Adding-new-R-applications

shiny.nzoss.org.nz

• Built with Ansible, compatible with Debian distros for now
• Security updates automatically installed daily with Ubuntu unattended-upgrades
• Basic OS security roles adapted from British Antarctic Survey Ansible (github.com/antarctica), HTTPS thanks to LetsEncrypt
• The server queries the GitHub repository to check for new applications automatically
• In case of a disaster, a new server can be created in under 30 minutes *

shiny.nzoss.org.nz

• Infrastructure code in GitHub under MIT License
• 4 CPU
• 4 GB
• 10 GB disk + 20 GB partition
• 1 instance on Catalyst Cloud nz-por1

Current apps

• New Zealand River Monitoring (BETA) (https://shiny.nzoss.org.nz/nz_shiny_river_app/)
• Canterbury (NZ) Earthquake Analysis (https://shiny.nzoss.org.nz/nz_example_earthquakes/)

New Zealand River Monitoring (BETA)

Canterbury (NZ) Earthquake Analysis

Future work

• Get more applications running
• Make it easier to manage what applications are deployed
• Add security (ansible/ansible-lockdown, openshift)
• Add monitoring (Google Analytics, Graphite, collectd, etc)
• Improve documentation
• Investigate ShinyProxy

Thanks

• Aimee Whitcroft
• Auckland R Users Group (AKLRUG)
• Brent Wood
• Catalyst Cloud
• InternetNZ
• New Zealand Open Source Society — NZOSS
• All software involved, Open Source or commercial

Questions ?