VPC-ECS-ALB-Docker cluster deployment

Description

This repository contains some Terraform, Bash and Docker code for deploying simple app. based on node.js for code challenge. The following how-to is for Ubuntu 16.04 and greater.

Prerequisites:

• Ubuntu 16.04 or greater https://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop

• Terraform >= 0.11.8 https://www.terraform.io/downloads.html

• Docker >= 17.12.1-ce, build 7390fc6 https://docs.docker.com/install/linux/docker-ce/ubuntu/

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Project structure

Below you can find the project directory structure with description of the folders that contain the porject code.

├── deployment
├── docker-image
└── modules
    ├── builds
    ├── elastic-container-vpc
    └── elastic-service
        ├── policies
        └── tasks

• deployment/ - contains the Terraform module declarations for the AWS networking and the ECS.
• docker-image/ - contains the Dockerfile needed for building your Node.js Docker image.
• module/ - here the Terraform modules are placed. Those files are the re-usable Terraform modules which define the infrastructure components.
• modules/builds/ - local provisioning module used for executing local commands like docker build & docker push
• modules/elastic-container-vpc/ - all VPC AWS Terraform resources needed for the creation of fully working AWS Virtual Private Cloud
• modules/elastic-service/ - all ECS AWS Terraform resources needed for the creation of fully functional ECS cluster
• modules/elastic-service/policies - AWS IAM policies for the ECS cluster
• modules/elastic-service/tasks - the AWS ECS Task definitions

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How to create the infrastructure

1. Once you have installed the software mentioned in the Prerequisites you need to checkout your Node.js code in the docker-image/ folder. Edit the Docker file to match the building procedure you have for your Node.js application. Keep in mind that you need to expose port 80 and ensure that your app is not running on localhost.

2. Enter your AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID, AWS_SECRET_KEY, ACCOUNT_URL and your local machine SSH public key inside the ./deployment/credentials.sh file. Those are needed by Terraform in order to be able to access your AWS account.

• The ACCOUNT_URL variable is the URL to your ECS repository which is used to push Docker images. For example 0000000000000.dkr.ecr.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/code/codechallenge:latest

3. Change the tags and the build repository path inside the docker-image/docker-build.tf in order to tag correctly the new image build.

4. Change the ECS task definition according to your needs. You can find it in modules/elastic-services/tasks/web_task_definition.json

5. Enter the main project folder by typing cd ../ and run the deployment bash script deploy_me.sh. After couple of minutes you will have the working ECS cluster on the output address from Terraform. The output address variable is called: code-challange-DNS-name. You will see it in green text color and it will look like this project_name-alb-312321312321.eu-west-1.elb.amazonaws.com.

• You can change your AWS region by editing the terraform.tfvars file, but then you need to change the AWS availability zones inside the deployment/infrastructure.tf file within the locals{} definition.

• AWS needs some time to deploy your Docker image to the ECS cluster. Usually after couple of minutes your cluster is fully ready to serve traffic.

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How to destroy the infrastructure

1. Enter the main folder of the project and run bash destroy_me.sh. After couple of minutes there will be nothing left on your AWS account.

Never use this project for production code. This is demo code and it should be used only on a test AWS account !!!