May 2022 Summaries

Kubernetes (K8s) is a complex system that requires best practices to ensure successful deployment and maintenance. These recommendations cover three broad categories: application development, governance, and cluster configuration. Key points include using namespaces for organization and security, employing readiness and liveness probes as health checks, setting resource requests and limits, deploying pods across nodes, using role-based access control (RBAC), hosting clusters externally on cloud services, upgrading K8s versions, monitoring cluster resources and audit policy logs, utilizing version control systems, implementing a git-based workflow, reducing container size, organizing objects with labels, applying network policies to restrict traffic, and using firewalls for additional security. Following these best practices will help users achieve success in their modern application journey.

Terragrunt is an open-source tool that extends the functionality of Terraform to help manage code at scale. It addresses common issues faced by Terraform users such as redundant variable declarations, complexity in deploying to multiple cloud providers, and managing dependencies across deployments. Some key use cases include keeping Terraform configurations DRY, working with multiple providers, dependency management, and integration with Spacelift for enhanced collaboration, automation, and controls.

Managing variables effectively is crucial in Infrastructure as Code (IaC) projects. Terraform provides various methods for declaring and assigning variables using .tfvars files, which are the most common way to manage variables due to their simplicity and effectiveness. These files allow users to manage variable assignments systematically by providing a centralized location for variable declaration and value assignment. By using tfvars files, users can easily deploy IaC projects across multiple environments with different variable values. Additionally, tools like Terragrunt can help keep Terraform configuration DRY and reduce redundancies in variable usage.

This article explores best practices for managing Infrastructure as Code (IaC) with Terraform. It covers topics such as using remote state, existing shared and community modules, importing existing infrastructure, avoiding hard-coding variables, consistently formatting and validating code, implementing a naming convention, tagging resources, policy as code, secret management strategy, testing code, enabling debug/troubleshooting, and utilizing helper tools. The article also discusses key Terraform concepts such as the configuration language, resources, data sources, modules, state, and providers. It emphasizes the importance of using version control, shifting to collaborative IaC culture, and structuring Terraform projects according to specific needs and use cases.

This guide provides a comprehensive cheat sheet for commonly used commands on the Terraform Command Line Interface (CLI). It covers various aspects such as getting help, version checking, code formatting, initializing directories, downloading and installing modules, validating code, planning infrastructure, deploying and destroying infrastructure, tainting or untainting resources, refreshing state files, importing existing infrastructure, managing workspaces, viewing outputs, releasing locks on workspaces, logging in and out to remote hosts, producing dependency diagrams, testing expressions, and using Spacelift with Terraform. The guide is written using the latest version of Terraform at the time of writing, v.1.1.9, and aims to help users get straight to the command they need when working with Terraform CLI.

This blog demonstrates how to use Spacelift to provision Kubernetes clusters and deploy a private worker pool within the same organization structure. The process involves creating two Kubernetes clusters, one for the worker pool and another for test deployment of Nginx. A certificate signing request is generated using OpenSSL, and a private key is encoded using base-64. Spacelift token is obtained from the UI after uploading the CSR file in the worker pool creation form. The Spacelift Worker Pool is deployed by creating a new repository for the Helm stack and setting up variables within the Stack. Finally, a test Kubernetes deployment is triggered to confirm successful deployment to the Kubernetes cluster.

Spacelift has introduced Kubernetes integration, allowing users to provision a Kubernetes cluster on AWS using Terraform with Spacelift. The blog provides a step-by-step guide for deploying an EKS cluster, starting with cloning a Terraform repository on GitHub and configuring it within Spacelift. Users create a Stack in Spacelift, integrate with their VCS, configure backend settings, and set up necessary AWS integrations. The deployment process involves triggering a run, which initiates a Terraform Plan and ultimately deploys the EKS cluster, with outputs accessible for review. Spacelift simplifies Terraform management by offering features like policy as code, context sharing, drift detection, and resource visualization, and encourages users to start with a free trial to explore its capabilities.

Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is the management and provisioning of infrastructure through code rather than manual processes. Over time, IaC has evolved with languages being either imperative or declarative. The Kubernetes ecosystem has become a significant part of infrastructure-related developments. Spacelift uses Kubernetes for its infrastructure and supports customers' deployment of private workers on Kubernetes via Helm. Kustomize drives Kubernetes support in Spacelift, allowing users to run kubectl from a task within a stack. The platform aims to provide an alternative to homegrown solutions on top of generic CI, helping overcome common state management issues and adding essential capabilities for infrastructure management.

The article discusses the value of applying changes before merging in a Terraform environment and introduces Atlantis, an open-source tool for automating Terraform deployments. It highlights Atlantis' limitations, such as its reliance on pull requests and lack of native scalable means for managing dependencies across Terraform deployments. The article then presents Spacelift, a more flexible management platform for infrastructure as code that supports various tools and languages, including Terraform, AWS CloudFormation, Pulumi, and Kubernetes. It explains how to use Spacelift's promote functionality to achieve pre-merge apply workflow and manage dependencies using trigger policies with labels. The author concludes by emphasizing the importance of infrastructure automation and encourages readers to explore Spacelift as an alternative to homegrown solutions on top of a generic CI/CD tool.