Azure Infrastructure Operations Project: Deploying a scalable IaaS web server in Azure

Introduction

For this project, we will use a Packer template and a Terraform template to deploy a customizable, scalable web server in Azure.

The original starter template of this project lives at this repository

Getting Started

1. Clone or make a fresh copy of this repository, so you can tweak'n'squeeze it.

2. Follow the instructions

3. Enjoy your new magical abilities

Dependencies

1. Create an Azure Account
2. Install the Azure command line interface
3. Install Packer
4. Install Terraform

Instructions

0. Login into Azure CLI using your Azure credentials

az login

• delete terraform.tfstate , solution.plan , .terraform.lock.hcl artifacts from previous builds

1. Deploy a Policy

1.1 Create a custom tagging policy definition based on the json configurations:

Check-out the policy.rules.json file

az policy definition create --name "TaggingPolicyDef" --description "Deny all not idexed resources" --display-name "Deny if not taggd" --mode "Indexed" --rules ./policy.rules.json

1.2 Create a policy assignment:

az policy assignment create --name "TaggingPolicy" --policy "TaggingPolicyDef" --display-name "Assignment of policy Deny if not tagged" --description "Assignment of denying non tagged indexed resources"

1.3 Verify the creation of the policy

az policy assignment list

2. Packer image template

In order to support application deployment, we'll need to create an image that different organizations can take advantage of to deploy their own apps! To do this, we'll create a packer image that anyone can use, and we'll leverage in our own Terraform template.

2.1 Create a Server Image

Things we need to do here are:

• use the template provided
• use Ubuntu 18.04-LTS as a base image
• modify the provisioners according the requirements
• ensure the resource group names in Packer and Terraform are the same
• assign the proper values to environment variables

Make sure that you place the right values at the: packer.vars.json

packer build -var-file=packer.vars.json server.json

• verify the newly created image by running:

az image list

3. Terraform template

3.0 Terraform variables

Check-out the vars.tf file!

There you may need to fill-out with the right values:

• prefix
• client ID
• client secret
• subscription ID
• tenant ID
• username ( for the VMs)
• password ( for the VMs)
• VM's number
• location

3.1 Initialize Terraform

terraform init

3.3 Review the solution that is up to be deployed

terraform plan -out solution.plan

3.4 Build and deploy the solution

terraform apply solution.plan

3.5 Destroy the infrastructure

The main important thing after deploying is destroying. Make sure that all your unused resources are destroyed before going to sleep.

terraform destroy

Outputs

Please check docs/output-n-screenshots folder, where you can find example console outputs received after executing the various commands.

Be blessed