Skip to content

Latest commit

 

History

History
295 lines (212 loc) · 9.91 KB

BUILD_STEPS_FOR_PREPARING_THE_WORKSHOP.md

File metadata and controls

295 lines (212 loc) · 9.91 KB
Raw

Build Steps for Preparing the Workshop

Overview

The provisioning, configuration, and preparation needed for delivering the Cisco Full Stack Observability (FSO) series of workshops can be an extremely tedious and time-consuming challenge for SE's. To solve that problem, the FSO Lab DevOps project delivers a set of artifacts to automate the build, deployment, and configuration portion of these pre-workshop activities using open source tooling.

Build and Deployment Tools

Although there are many tools available to accomplish the project's automation goals, it was decided to standardize on Packer, Terraform, and Terraform Cloud from HashiCorp. This is primarily due to their capability for building and deploying software platforms to multi-cloud environments, as well as having a high level of adoption within the developer community.

Packer

Packer is an open source tool for creating identical machine images for multiple platforms from a single source configuration. Packer is lightweight, runs on every major operating system, and is highly performant. A machine image (or immutable VM image) is a single static unit that contains a pre-configured operating system and installed software which is used to quickly create new running machines.

As part of this project, Packer is used to create an immutable Lab VM image consisting of a standardized installation of Amazon Linux 2 with a set of common software. This static image is later used by Terraform when standing-up the infrastructure and compute resources needed by workshop participants. Currently, this VM consists of the following type:

  • LPAD VM: A 'Launchpad' Lab VM with pre-configured tooling for Kubernetes and AWS CLI Operations.

For SE-lead workshops, the Lab VM image is built and maintained by Cisco/AppDynamics. However, all of the artifacts used to build the image are present in this project, so customers are free to customize and build their own VM images if desired.

Terraform

Terraform is a tool for building, changing, and versioning infrastructure safely and efficiently. Terraform can manage existing and popular service providers as well as custom in-house solutions. The infrastructure Terraform can manage includes low-level components such as compute instances, storage, and networking, as well as high-level components such as DNS entries, SaaS features, etc.

In this project, Terraform is used to automate the deployment of the Lab infrastructure, including VPCs, subnets, security groups, load balancers, Kubdernetes clusters, and Lab VM using templates.

Terraform Cloud

Terraform Cloud is HashiCorp’s managed service offering for Terraform. It eliminates the need for unnecessary tooling and documentation for practitioners, teams, and organizations to use Terraform in production.

Get Started

To configure the FSO Lab workshop environments, the first step is to set-up your development environment by installing the needed software.

Prerequisites

You install Packer and Terraform on a control node, usually your local laptop, which then uses the cloud CLI and/or SSH to communicate with your cloud resources and managed nodes.

NOTE: A remote Virtual Machine with access to the internet can also be used as the control node. The specific instructions for installing the required software are left as an exercise for the reader.

Installation Instructions - macOS

For macOS environments, the following open source software needs to be installed on the host macOS machine:

  • Homebrew 4.2.12
  • Git 2.44.0
  • Packer 1.10.2
  • Terraform 1.7.4
  • jq 1.7.1

Perform the following steps to install the needed software:

  1. Install the Homebrew 4.2.12 package manager for macOS 64-bit. Paste the following into a macOS Terminal prompt:

    /bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install.sh)"

  2. Install Git 2.44.0 for macOS 64-bit.

    brew install git

  3. Install Packer 1.10.2 for macOS 64-bit.

    brew tap hashicorp/tap
brew install hashicorp/tap/packer

  4. Install Terraform 1.7.4 for macOS 64-bit.

    brew tap hashicorp/tap
brew install hashicorp/tap/terraform

  5. Install jq 1.7.1 for macOS 64-bit.
    brew install jq

Configuration and Validation - macOS

  1. Validate installed command-line tools:

    brew --version
# Homebrew 4.2.12

brew doctor
# Your system is ready to brew.

git --version
# git version 2.44.0

packer --version
# 1.10.2

terraform --version
# Terraform v1.7.4

jq --version
# jq-1.7.1

  2. Configure Git for local user:

    git config --global user.name "<first_name> <last_name>"
git config --global user.email "<your_email>"
git config --global --list

Installation Instructions - Windows 64-Bit

Windows users have a wide variety of choice in terminals and shells for running the command-line tools, such as the Windows Command Prompt, PowerShell, Windows Terminal, Git Bash, and the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL).

Although you are free to use any of these tools, the installation steps described below will be based on the usage of the Git Bash terminal or the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) with an Ubuntu installation.

Here is a list of the recommended open source software to be installed on the host Windows machine:

  • Curl 7.68.0 (Ubuntu 64-bit only)
  • Wget 1.21.2 (Ubuntu 64-bit only)
  • Git 2.44.0
  • Packer 1.10.2
  • Terraform 1.7.4
  • jq 1.7.1

Git Bash installation - Windows 64-Bit

Perform the following steps to install the needed software:

  1. Install Git 2.44.0 for Windows 64-bit.

  2. Install Packer 1.10.2 for Windows 64-bit.
    Create suggested install folder and extract contents of ZIP file to:
    C:\HashiCorp\bin

  3. Install Terraform 1.7.4 for Windows 64-bit.
    Create suggested install folder and extract contents of ZIP file to:
    C:\HashiCorp\bin

  4. Install jq 1.7.1 for Windows 64-bit.
    Create suggested install folder and rename binary to:
    C:\Program Files\Git\usr\local\bin\jq.exe

Configuration and Validation - Windows 64-Bit

  1. Set Windows Environment PATH to:

    PATH=C:\HashiCorp\bin;C:\Program Files\Git\usr\local\bin;%PATH%

  2. Reboot Windows.

  3. Launch Git Bash.
    Start Menu -- > All apps -- > Git -- > Git Bash

  4. Validate installed command-line tools:

    git --version
# git version 2.44.0.windows.1

packer --version
# 1.10.2

terraform --version
# Terraform v1.7.4

jq --version
# jq-1.7.1

  5. Configure Git for local user:

    git config --global user.name "<first_name> <last_name>"
git config --global user.email "<your_email>"
git config --global --list

Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) installation - Ubuntu 64-Bit

  1. Install Curl 7.68.0 for Ubuntu 64-bit.

    sudo apt install curl

  2. Install Wget 1.21.2 for Ubuntu 64-bit.

    sudo apt install wget

  3. Install Git 2.44.0 for Ubuntu 64-bit.

    sudo apt install git

  4. Install Packer 1.10.2 for Ubuntu 64-bit.

    cd /usr/local/bin
sudo wget https://releases.hashicorp.com/packer/1.10.2/packer_1.10.2_linux_amd64.zip
sudo unzip packer_1.10.2_linux_amd64.zip
sudo rm -i packer_1.10.2_linux_amd64.zip

  5. Install Terraform 1.7.4 for Ubuntu 64-bit.

    cd /usr/local/bin
sudo wget https://releases.hashicorp.com/terraform/1.7.4/terraform_1.7.4_linux_amd64.zip
sudo unzip terraform_1.7.4_linux_amd64.zip
sudo rm -i terraform_1.7.4_linux_amd64.zip

  6. Install jq 1.7.1 for macOS 64-bit.

    sudo apt install jq

Configuration and Validation - Ubuntu 64-Bit

  1. Validate installed command-line tools:

    git --version
# git version 2.44.0

packer --version
# 1.10.2

terraform --version
# Terraform v1.7.4

jq --version
# jq-1.7.1

  2. Configure Git for local user:

    git config --global user.name "<first_name> <last_name>"
git config --global user.email "<your_email>"
git config --global --list

Get the Code

  1. Create a folder for your FSO Lab DevOps project or use your home directory:

    cd ~

  2. Get the code from GitHub:

    git clone https://github.com/APO-SRE/fso-lab-devops.git
cd fso-lab-devops

Build the VM Image and Deploy the Lab Infrastructure

The FSO Lab DevOps project currently supports a VM image build for Amazon AWS. Click on the link below for platform-specific instructions and a Bill-of-Materials: