Sample Exchange

This project is intended to automatically provision infrastructure for events such as Hackathons.

Getting Started

Prerequisites

Software

• 1+ vCenter instance (6.5, 6.7, & VMware Cloud on AWS account have all been tested successfully)
  • 1+ vSphere ESXi node that is managed by the above vCenter instance
  • 1 VirtuallyGhetto Nested ESXi 6.5 or 6.7 OVA file deployed as a VM on the above ESXi node
    • This VM will be used as a VM template by Terraform for deploying the nested ESXi nodes.
    • Windows PowerShell or PowerShell Core for running the Enable-VmVappProperties.ps1 script in the root of the project, which will set all VM vApp properties on the template VM to user configurable, which is a requirement in Terraform v0.11.7 and earlier.
    • VMware PowerCLI 10.0+
• HashiCorp Terraform v0.11.x
• Gruntwork Terragrunt v0.14.x
• An AWS S3 bucket for Terraform remote backend state storage
• An AWS DynamoDB database for Terraform state lock management
• An IAM AWS Access Key for programmatic remote access to your AWS account
  • These should be stored in a profile in your ~/.aws/credentials file.
• An EC2 Key Pair for credential encryption/decryption

Prepare the Template nested ESXi VM

• Run the following, where $vCenter is the prerequisite vCenter instance, and $name is the name of the prerequisite VirtuallyGhetto Nested ESXi 6.5 or 6.7 VM

  Connect-VIServer -Server $vCenter
  ./Enable-VmVappProperties.ps1 -Name $name

Configure Terraform

• Copy all terraform.tfvars.example files in the project to terraform.tfvars files
  • Note: Terraform tfvars files tend to contain sensitive information, and should not be checked into source control, which is why there is an entry for this in the .gitignore file.
• Update all values in each tfvars file per your environment.

Init, Plan, Apply, & Destroy

• terragrunt init: This will initialize your environment, including: download all terraform modules necessary, create the S3 bucket for storing remote state, create the DynamoDB table for lock management.
• terragrunt plan: This will analyze the state of your environment, and list what components need to be deployed, modified, and/or destroyed.
• terragrunt apply: If approved, this will deploy the environment per your specifications.
• terragrunt destroy: If approved, this will tear down the environment when you're done.