website-and-documentation/content/en/docs/edp/deployment/infrastructure/terraform.md

title	linkTitle	weight	description
Terraform-based deployment of EDP	Terraform	10	As-code definitions of EDP clusters, so they can be deployed reliably and consistently on OTC whenever needed.

Overview

The infra-deploy and infra-catalogue repositories work together to provide a framework for deploying Edge Developer Platform instances.

infra-catalogue contains individual, atomic infrastructure components: terraform modules and terragrunt units and stacks, such as Kubernetes clusters and Postgres databases.

infra-deploy then contains full definitions of stacks built using these components - such as the production site at edp.buildth.ing. It also includes scripts with which to deploy these stacks.

Note that both repositories rely on the wide range of features available on OTC. Several of these features, such as S3-compatible storage and on-demand managed Postgres instances, are not yet available on more sovereign clouds such as Edge, so these are not currently supported.

Key Features

• 'Catalogue' of infrastructure stacks to be used in deployments
• Definition of deployment stacks for each environment in prod or dev
• Scripts to govern deployment, installation and drift-correction of EDP

Purpose in EDP

For our Edge Developer Platform to be reliable it must be deployable in a consistent manner. When errors occur, or after any manual alterations, the system can then be safely reset to a working state. This state should be provided in code to allow for automated validation and deployment, and to allow it to be deployed from an always-identical CI/CD pipeline rather than a variable local deployment environment.

Repositories

Infra-deploy: https://edp.buildth.ing/DevFW/infra-deploy

Infra-catalogue: https://edp.buildth.ing/DevFW/infra-catalogue

Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Docker
• Kubernetes management
• Access to OTC
• HashiCorp Terraform or its open-source equivalent, OpenTofu
• Terragrunt, an orchestrator for Terraform stacks

Quick Start

1. Set up OTC credentials per README section
2. Set cluster environment and run install script per README section

Alternatively, manually trigger automated deployment pipeline.

• You will be asked for essential information like the deployment name and tenant.
• Any fields marked INITIAL only need to be set when first creating an environment
• Thereafter, the cached values are used and the INITIAL values provided to the pipeline are ignored.
  • Specifically, they are cached in a terragrunt.values.hcl file within infra-deploy/<tenant>/<cluster-name>, where both variables are set in the pipeline
  • e.g. prod/edp or nonprod/garm-provider-test

Verification

After the deploymenet completes, and a short startup time, you should be able to access your Forgejo instance at <cluster-name>.buildth.ing (production tenant) or <cluster-name>.t09.de (non-prod tenant). <cluster-name> is the name you provided in the deployment pipeline, or the $CLUSTER_ENVIRONMENT variable when running manually.

For example, the primary production cluster is called edp and can be accessed at edp.buildth.ing.

Screens

Deployment using production pipeline:

...

Configuration

Configuration of clusters is done in two ways. The first, mentioned above, is to provide INITIAL configuration when creating a new cluster. Thereafter, configuration is done within the relevant infra-deploy/<tenant> directory (e.g. prod/edp). Variables may be changed within the terragrunt.values.hcl file, but equally the terragrunt.stack.hcl file contains references to the lower-level code set up in infra-catalogue.

These are organised in layers, according to Terragrunt's natural structure. First is a stack, a high-level abstraction for a whole cluster. This in turn references terragrunt units, which in turn are wrappers around standard Terraform modules. When deployed, the Terraform modules require a provider.tf file which is automatically generated by Terragrunt using tenant-level and global configuration stored in infra-deploy.

When deploying manually (e.g. with install.sh), you can observe these layers as Terragrunt will cache them on your machine, within the .terragrunt-stack/ directory generated within /<tenant>/<cluster-name>/.

Troubleshooting

Version updates

Problem: Updates to infra-catalogue are not immediately reflected in deployed clusters, even after running deploy.

Solution: Versions must be updated. Each cluster deployment specifies a catalogue version in its terragrunt.values.hcl; this refers to a tag in infra-catalogue. Within infra-catalogue, stacks reference units and modules from the same tag.

Thus, to test a new change to infra-catalogue, first make a new tag, then update the relevant values file to point to it.

Status

Maturity: TRL-9

Additional Resources

• Terraform
• OpenTofu, the community-driven replacement for Terraform
• Terragrunt