Learning DevOps: Aws, Terraform, Ansible, Jenkins, and Docker

 

Introduction

DevOps is a term used to describe the culture, delivery, and operational practices that emphasize the collaboration and communication of both software developers and other information technology (IT) professionals while automating the process of software delivery and infrastructure changes. It aims to help organizations to deliver products faster and more reliably.

The benefits of implementing DevOps in your organization include:

• Increased speed: As DevOps provides automation to most software delivery processes, it helps to speed up development and continuous integration cycles.

• Automated quality assurance: By automating tests, DevOps can help organizations reduce the cost and time associated with manual QA processes.

• Improved security: Using automated processes helps to ensure that systems are secure and reliable.

• Faster fixes and updates: By reducing human intervention, DevOps enables organizations to quickly resolve problems and deploy updates.

AWS, Terraform, Ansible, Jenkins, and Docker are all tools used in DevOps. They all have their own respective uses, but together they form a unified system for developing, deploying, and maintaining software applications.

AWS is a cloud computing platform that provides on-demand computing resources, storage, networking, databases, analytics, and more. It can be used for running applications, hosting websites, and storing backups.

Terraform is an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) tool used to provision, manage, and maintain infrastructure resources such as computing, storage, and networking.

Ansible is an automation platform used to manage and configure systems, deploy applications, and automate day-to-day administration tasks.

Jenkins is a build-automation and continuous delivery platform used for building, testing, and delivering software applications.

Docker is a computer program that performs operating-system-level virtualization, also called containerization. It can be used to package and deploy applications and services.

Getting Started with AWS for DevOps

• Setting up an AWS Account: Start by visiting the AWS website and either logging in or signing up for an AWS account. Once you have an AWS account, the next step is to set up an Account Billing System, configure Account Settings, and set up Security Credentials.

• Understanding AWS services for DevOps: DevOps is an ecosystem of tools and services to enable end-to-end automation for software development and operations. Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers an array of services for DevOps, ranging from project management tools such as Amazon CodePipeline and Amazon CodeBuild to cloud infrastructure services such as Amazon EC2 and Amazon S3.

• Creating and managing EC2 instances: EC2 instances can be launched, managed, and configured upon request. When creating an EC2 instance, you can choose between various instance types, including general purpose, compute-optimized, memory-optimized, and more. You will also need to specify a region or availability zone for your instance, upload or choose an existing environment, configure security rules, define network settings, and set a storage solution for the EC2 instance.

• Deploying applications on AWS: Deploying applications on AWS involves configuring infrastructure components such as Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances, security groups, subnets, Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC), and auto-scaling groups, and launching applications on them. Additionally, Amazon CloudFormation allows you to create stacks of resources and deploy applications quickly and easily with less manual effort.

Understanding Infrastructure as Code with Terraform

• Understanding Infrastructure as Code with Terraform: This module provides an introduction to Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and how it can be used to automate and simplify IT infrastructure configuration and management. It introduces the basic concepts of Terraform, how to create Infrastructure as Code with Terraform, and how to deploy and manage your Infrastructure as Code resources.

• Introduction to Infrastructure as Code: This module provides an understanding of the concepts of Infrastructure as Code and how this methodology can be used to implement and manage infrastructure deployments. It covers the fundamentals of Terraform, such as syntax, configuration files, and the Terraform workflow.

• Setting up a Terraform Environment: This module provides an introduction to setting up a Terraform environment. It covers how to install and configure Terraform, deploy the Terraform environment, and set up security policies for the environment.

• Deploying Infrastructure with Terraform: This module looks at how to deploy infrastructure with Terraform. It covers how to use Terraform for provisioning infrastructure, managing Infrastructure as Code modules, using Terraform for orchestration and automation, and more.

• Creating Reusable Code with Terraform Modules: This module looks at how to create reusable code with Terraform modules. It covers how to create, manage, and maintain a modular library of Terraform code, and how to share reusable code with other teams.

Automating Infrastructure Management with Ansible

• Introduction to Ansible: Ansible is an open-source automation platform used by thousands of IT professionals worldwide, for rapid system deployment and configuration. It automates the setup and configuration of IT environments and thus significantly reduces the time required to deploy an application or service on existing or cloud infrastructure. It also simplifies the management of IT environments and helps to ensure consistency throughout the environment. Ansible also provides many features that allow system administrators to work effectively, such as inventory management, multi-node deployment, and task execution.

• Setting up an Ansible Environment: Setting up an Ansible environment requires a few steps. Firstly, an inventory of the systems to be configured must be created. This includes the servers, network devices, and other components of the IT environment. Then, the Ansible software needs to be installed on a control node, from where it will manage the configuration of remote systems. Finally, Ansible playbooks and roles must be written, which are the definitions of the tasks that need to be performed in the environment.

• Writing Ansible Playbooks for Common Tasks: Ansible playbooks are the instructions that define the tasks that need to be performed. They are written in YAML language, which is a human-readable and machine-parsable language. Playbooks define the tasks to be executed, the remote nodes to which the tasks should be applied, and the conditions under which the tasks should be executed. Variables can also be set for their use in the playbooks, which allows for more dynamic control of the system.

• Integrating Ansible with Other DevOps Tools: Ansible can be integrated with other DevOps tools to help streamline the process of system configuration and deployment. Common DevOps tools such as Jenkins, Docker, and Kubernetes can be used with Ansible to monitor and maintain the system configuration and deploy applications quickly and efficiently. Additionally, Ansible can be used with cloud providers such as AWS, Google Cloud Platform, and Microsoft Azure for managing cloud infrastructure configuration.

Continuous Integration with Jenkins

Continuous Integration (CI) is an automated process that allows developers to integrate their code into a repository multiple times a day. With CI, developers can quickly identify any errors and ensure that their code is constantly functioning correctly.

Setting up a Jenkins environment involves installing and configuring Jenkins on a local server. This involves creating users and setting up security policies. Additionally, plugins and other dependencies must be properly configured so that Jenkins can perform its job as an automation server.

Setting up a build pipeline with Jenkins involves creating a series of jobs that together build a complete project from source code to deployment. This usually consists of steps such as compiling, unit testing, integration testing, and code quality assurance.

Running tests and deploying code with Jenkins requires configuring and scheduling build jobs that execute tests at predetermined intervals. Deployment of code can also be automated using Jenkins by creating a job to deploy the latest version of the code to a server.

Containerization with Docker

Docker is a containerization platform that enables developers to package applications into lightweight, self-contained units called containers. Containers include the necessary software, libraries, configuration, and dependencies required to run an application, making it easy to move an application between environments and run it on any infrastructure that supports Docker.

Setting Up a Docker Environment: Setting up a Docker environment requires installing the Docker Engine, setting up a virtual environment, and setting up users and access control. The Docker Engine is the software build used to run containers, so it must be installed prior to creating and running containers. Once the Docker Engine is installed, creating virtual environments — such as networks, images, and volumes — is required before deploying Docker containers.

Building Docker Containers: Building Docker containers is a two-step process. First, developers need to create a Dockerfile, which is a text document that details how the container is to be built and includes the commands to build an image. Once the Dockerfile is created, the image can be built using the docker build command.

Deploying Docker Containers with DevOps Tools: Once an image has been built, DevOps tools can be used to deploy the Docker containers into production. DevOps tools provide an automated way to deploy, manage, and scale Docker containers in production. These tools are typically used to deploy large-scale applications and enable users to quickly spin up and tear down containerized applications.

Best Practices

AWS:

• Use Infrastructure-as-code tools like Terraform and CloudFormation to automate deployments in AWS.

• Create security best practices for each resource type such as securely restricting access using IAM policies, configuring custom security groups, hardening EC2 instances, and using S3 bucket policies to protect sensitive data.

• Utilize Cloud Trail for logging and audit to trace malicious user individual user operations.

• Monitor resources for unusual activity using CloudWatch and CloudTrail.

Terraform:

• Use version control systems such as Git or GitHub to manage Terraform plans and states

• Deploy resources in an order that makes sense while taking dependencies into account.

• Set up a remote backend in either S3 or another more secure cloud service to ensure the state files are managed correctly and shared easily.

• Use Terraform Workspaces for the separation of environments.

Ansible:

• Use Ansible for configuration management with specific roles for each server class, for example, web applications, databases, and more.

• Separate server groups and playbooks into roles that keep configurations organized.

• Utilize Ansible Tower to manage complex workflow deployments.

• Provision resources in a secure way using Ansible Vault to password-protect sensitive information.

Jenkins:

• Continuously assess the security vulnerabilities of the Jenkins server itself, particularly for source code repositories and user management.

• Utilize plugins such as Multi-Branch Project Plugin, Job DSL Plugin, and Jenkins Security Realm plugin to improve and secure Jenkins CI/CD pipelines.

• Monitor the output of jobs, and configure alerts for failures to identify and fix them quickly.

• Utilize role-based access control in Jenkins so only users who need access gain it.

Docker:

• Leverage user namespaces for managing user permissions in the docker containers.

• Automate scanning of Docker images for malware and vulnerabilities.

• Use docker image signing, GPG signatures, or something similar to verify the images from which the containers will be built.

• Adopt a least privileged approach to increase security by restricting capabilities and using the read-only mode for the base image.