Azure Infrastructure Operations Project

Deploying a scalable IaaS web server in Azure.

Introduction

This project, contains a Packer template, and a Terraform template to deploy a customizable, scalable web server in Azure. It uses Packer to create the server image, and Terraform for deploying a scalable cluster of servers—with a load balancer to manage the incoming traffic. It also adheres to the security best practices ensuring that the infrastructure is secure.

Prerequisites

• Create an Azure Account
• Install the Azure command line interface
• Install Packer
• Install Terraform

Getting Started

1. Clone this repository
2. Deploy azure policies following these instructions
3. Deploy a scalable web server following the instruction bellow:

Instructions

• 1. Create a Service Principle for Packer and Terraform
• 2. Create a Resource Group for the Packer image
• 3. Deploy the packer image
• 4. Deploy the infrastructure with Terraform

1. Create a Service Principle for Packer and Terraform

Log into your Azure account

    az login 

    az account set --subscription="SUBSCRIPTION_ID"

Create Service Principle

    az ad sp create-for-rbac --name azure-iaas-webserver --role="Contributor" --scopes="/subscriptions/SUBSCRIPTION_ID"

This command will output 5 values:

{
  "appId": "00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000",
  "displayName": "azure-cli-2017-06-05-10-41-15",
  "name": "http://azure-cli-2017-06-05-10-41-15",
  "password": "0000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000",
  "tenant": "00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000"
}

Create a .env.sh file inside the packer directory and copy the content of the .env.sh.template to the newly created file. Change the parameters based on the output of the previous command. These values map to the .evn.sh variables like so:

appId is the ARM_CLIENT_ID
password is the ARM_CLIENT_SECRET
tenant is the ARM_TENANT_ID

For more information about Authenticating to Azure using a Service Principal and a Client Secret (follow this Guide)

2. Create a Resource Group for the Packer image

Create Resource Group

    az group create -l "LOCATION" -n "RESOURCE_GROUP_NAME" --tags Project=iaas-webserver

Ensure that the location and resource group that you specify here is the same specified in server.json.

3. Deploy the packer image

Source environment variables

    source packer/.env.sh

Run packer file

    packer build ./packer/server.json

This will create a packer image in the resource group specified in the previous step.

4. Deploy the infrastructure with Terraform

Edit variables in the variables.tf to reflect your desired infrastructure.

The following items should be updated accordingly:

• prefix
• location (should match packer image location)
• username
• password
• image_id (SUBSCRIPTION_ID, RESOURCE_GROUP_NAME, and IMAGE_NAME)
• instance_count

Run Terraform plan

    cd terraform/

    terraform init

    terraform plan -out solution.plan

After running the plan you should see all the resources that will be created.

Run Terraform apply

    terraform apply "solution.plan"

If everything runs correctly you should be able to see something like the screenshot bellow:

Output

Service Principal with permissions to manage resources in the specified Subscription:

• Azure Service Principal

Packer creates the following resources:

• Image resource group
• Managed virtual machine image

Terraform creates the following resources:

• Availability Set
• Azure Managed Disk(s)
• Load Balancer
• Network Interface Card(s)
• Network Security Group
• Public IP
• Virtual Machine(s)

All can be found under the specified resource group.

Clean Up

To delete all the resources created by terraform you can use the following command:

    terraform destroy

To delete the packer image run the following command:

    az image delete -g "RESOURCE_GROUP_NAME" -n "IMAGE_NAME"

To delete the resource group run the following command:

    az group delete --no-wait --name "RESOURCE_GROUP_NAME"

To delete the Service Principal Created in step 1 run the following command:

    az ad sp delete --id 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000