Hosting dockerized Java application with Terraform and Packer in Azure

Overview

This is an example project that uses packer and terraform to manage virtual machines and docker containers in Azure cloud.

Requirements

To get through with all the operations these requirements should be met:

• Azure account obtained
• terraform installed locally
• packer installed locally
• azure cli installed locally
• jq installed
• ansible and docker for debug

Install on Linux (Ubuntu):

sudo apt-get install -y azure-cli terraform packer jq ansible

Cost

With the use of Azure free account the actions could be performed without an additional cost. However free Azure account registration requires use of a banking card.

Login to Azure with device code

Run command to obtain device code:

az login --use-device-code

Expected result: To sign in, use a web browser to open the page [https://microsoft.com/devicelogin] and enter the code YOUR DEVICE CODE to authenticate.

Go to the page and input obtained code.

Azure + packer

Create azure resource group:

az group create -n packergroup -l eastus

Expected output:

{
  "id": "/subscriptions/{YOUR SUBSCRIPTION ID}/resourceGroups/packergroup",
  "location": "eastus",
  "managedBy": null,
  "name": "packergroup",
  "properties": {
    "provisioningState": "Succeeded"
  },
  "tags": null,
  "type": "Microsoft.Resources/resourceGroups"
}

Get Azure subscription id:

az account show --query "{ subscription_id: id }"

Expected output:

{
  "subscription_id": "{YOUR SUBSCRIPTION ID}"
}

Create service principal (app registration):

az ad sp create-for-rbac --role Owner --name api://packer001 \
    --query "{ client_id: appId, client_secret: password, tenant_id: tenant }" \
    --scopes /subscriptions/{YOUR SUBSCRIPTION ID}

Expected output: Creating a role assignment under the scope of "/subscriptions/{YOUR SUBSCRIPTION ID}" Retrying role assignment creation: 1/36 Retrying role assignment creation: 2/36

{
  "client_id": "{YOUR CLIENT ID}",    
  "client_secret": "{YOUR CLIENT SECRECT}",
  "tenant_id": "{YOUR TENANT ID}"     
}

Update the client and tenant info in packer variables files - [packer/variables.json]

Build packer image:

cd packer/
packer build -var-file variables.json azure-ubuntu.json

Create VM in Azure using built packer image:

az vm create --resource-group packergroup --name packedVm --image packerimage --public-ip-sku Standard --admin-username packerazuser --generate-ssh-keys

Allow access through port 80:

az vm open-port --resource-group packergroup --name packedVm --port 80

Convert pakcer json file to hcl:

packer hcl2_upgrade -with-annotations azure-ubuntu.json

Automation

Useful scripts:

• scripts/init.sh - installs ansible galaxy roles, then creates azure resource group for packer images, app registration (packer app) and packer image, and then launches terraform
• scripts/remove.sh - removes ansible roles, sensitive info, app registration and resource groups

The scripts use variables from variables.json.

References

• How to use Packer to create Linux virtual machine images in Azure
• Create an Azure virtual machine scale set from a Packer custom image by using Terraform