Terraforming Azure Red Hat OpenShift(ARO) with GitHub Actions

Introduction

By combining Infrastructure as Code with Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery and/or Deployment CI/CD in cloud platforms, organizations can achieve a highly automated and streamlined software development and delivery process. Developers can use code to define and provision infrastructure resources, and use CI/CD to continuously integrate code changes and test the software. This approach can help organizations to achieve faster and more reliable software delivery, as well as improve the overall quality of their software.

Many organizations use GitHub Actions and Terraform to deploy solutions in Azure as best practices to achieve collaboration, automation and scalability and security.

What will be covered

In this blog post, we are going to learn how to deploy Azure Red Hat OpenShift (ARO) with Terraform and integrate it with Terraform Cloud and GitHub Actions. If you want to learn about ARO you can get more information here.

Note : Azure-Samples/aro-azapi-terraform has been used for Terraform code as referenced in this post.

Dataflow

Create a new branch from the main and modify the code. As an example changing the work node instance type or subnet address.
Create a pull request(PR) to the new branch.
GitHub Actions workflow will be triggered to guarantee that your code is correctly formatted, consistent internally, and results in a secure infrastructure.
Create PR to merge into the main branch.
GitHub Actions workflow will be triggered to run a terraform plan. The result of Terraform plan will be accessible in both GitHub Actions and Terraform cloud workspace.
After reviewing PR by the team and merging to the main branch, Terraform apply will execute.
Terraform will deploy Red Hat OpenShift to Azure.

Workflow

For maintaining code quality, preventing accidental changes, enforcing policies, collaborating more effectively and as a best practice, it’s recommended that developers not push directly to the main branch.

By using protected branches, teams can ensure that critical branches are properly managed and maintained, which can lead to a more stable and reliable codebase over time.

The infrastructure team should create a new branch from main and apply changes to it, then push to feature/development branch. Pushing to branch will trigger Terraform-UnitTests.

After running Terraform-UnitTests successfully, the infrastructure team can create a pull request which will trigger Terraform-Push.

We will use two workflows:

Terraform-UnitTests.yml : The purpose of this workflow is to run unit tests on push into any branch. As part of this workflow’s Terraform validation, the format and security scans will be checked.
Terraform-Push.yml : This workflow has two phases, one for push and one for merge. Based on each push from feature/development branches to the main branch, this workflow will trigger and run the terraform plan command. After a successful push, when a merge request is submitted this workflow will trigger the terraform apply command.

Prerequisites:

Azure Account with active subscription
Terraform Cloud account
GitHub account
Visual Studio Code + Git + Azure CLI + Terraform CLI installed in local workstation
Red Hat account

Steps:

1- Install Azure CLI

Azure CLI is a command-line interface for managing resources in Microsoft Azure, which is Microsoft's cloud computing platform.

Install Azure CLI in your local workstation.

2- Increase limits by VM series

Increasing limits by VM series for ARO installation is necessary to ensure that your ARO cluster has the resources it needs to operate efficiently and reliably.

Standard DSv3 Family vCPUs = 150
Total Regional vCPUs = 200

3- Get a Red Hat pull secret

Navigate to your Red Hat OpenShift cluster manager portal and sign-in.

Download the pull secret.

We are going to use this secret in the Terraform Cloud while provisioning the ARO cluster.

4- Fork and Clone Github repository

Fork the following repository in your GitHub account and clone it in your local workstation.

https://github.com/DexHat/aro-terra-gitactions

After cloning in the local workstation update your .gitignore with following information.

#Secrets

pull-secret*

variables_secrets*

5- Set Variables and Run create.sh script

Set following variables for create.sh

#resourcePrefix=""

#aroDomain="${resourcePrefix,,}"

#aroClusterServicePrincipalDisplayName="${resourcePrefix}-aro-sp-${RANDOM}"

#pullSecret="${RedHat-PullSecret-Path}"

#location="${ARO-location}"

Run az login command to connect to Azure.

az login --use-device-code

Run create.sh file with following command:

sh create.sh

it will:

create variables-secrets file with all variables for ARO cluster
register necessary service providers
create service principal and assign contribute and system administrator role to it
generate variables for Terraform Cloud, GitHub Actions and tfvars.

6- Terraform Cloud Sign-up

To integrate between Terraform and GitHub Actions, we are going to use Terraform Cloud

Signup for terraform cloud new account
Choose an organization or create an organization

Create a new workspace and select API-driven as a workflow type

7- Copy and set variables and secrets

Copy the following variables and secrets from the variables_secrets file and set them in Terraform Cloud workspace level.

Terraform Variables:

aro_cluster_aad_sp_client_id = Service Principal Application (client) ID
aro_cluster_aad_sp_client_secret = Service Principal Secret Value
aro_cluster_aad_sp_object_id = Service Principal Object ID
aro_rp_aad_sp_object_id = Azure Red Hat OpenShift Resource Provider Object ID
pull_secret = xxxxx

Environment Variables:

ARM_CLIENT_ID = Service Principal Application (client) ID
ARM_CLIENT_SECRET = Service Principal Secret Value
ARM_SUBSCRIPTION_ID = Azure Subscription ID
ARM_TENANT_ID = Azure Tenant ID

For more information about sensitive variables in Terraform, please check Protect Sensitive Input Variables. Since we are going to use Terraform Cloud, we will set all variables at the workspace level.

8- Install Terraform CLI

Terraform CLI is a powerful tool for managing infrastructure as code, allowing users to version control infrastructure changes, collaborate more effectively, and automate the deployment and management of infrastructure resources. Install Terraform CLI from here.

Integrating Terraform Cloud and GitHub Actions

After installing Terraform CLI locally, run terraform login to create a token.

Generated token will be used to integrate with GitHub Actions as CI/CD pipeline.

Under GitHub repository - Secrets and Variables - Actions, create TF_API_TOKEN secret and copy value from previous step to here.

In GitHub under Environments, create Development environment.

You can deploy ARO cluster with different sizing and variables under different environments like production, staging and development.

Copy the following variables and secrets from variables_secrets file and set them under GitHub repository

ARM_CLIENT_ID = Service Principal Application (client) ID
ARM_CLIENT_SECRET = Service Principal Secret Value
ARM_SUBSCRIPTION_ID = Azure Subscription ID
ARM_TENANT_ID = Azure Tenant ID

Copy the following variables and secrets from variables_secrets file and set them in Development/tfvars file in your local workstation

domain
location
resource_group_name
resource_prefix
virtual_network_address_space
master_subnet_address_space
worker_subnet_address_space

9- psuh and merge to github repository

After creating/updating Development/tfvars push it to github repository which will trigger Terraform-UnitTests.yml.

Terraform-Push.yml will be triggered when you merge to main branch.

Cluster Information

You can get cluster information

Conclusion

In conclusion, the use of GitHub Actions and Terraform Cloud together can provide a powerful solution for deploying and managing Azure Red Hat OpenShift (ARO) clusters. GitHub Actions provides a way to automate and streamline the process of managing code changes and deployments, while Terraform Cloud provides a way to manage infrastructure as code in a scalable and efficient manner. Azure, as a cloud provider, offers a robust platform for hosting and managing ARO clusters. By leveraging these tools and services, organizations can deploy and manage ARO clusters more efficiently, with greater consistency and control, and with the ability to easily scale up or down as needed.