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DNSimple Network Infrastructure Automation with Consul and Terraform Demo

Welcome to DNSimple's Network Infrastructure Automation with Consul and Terraform demo. This demo is designed to provide a structured environment for you to gain practical insights into infrastructure automation and service discovery. With a focus on real-world applications, this demo guides you through a systematic process of setting up, deploying, and managing services in a simulated environment. By integrating DNSimple for domain management, Docker for containerization, and employing Consul for service discovery alongside Terraform for infrastructure as code, you'll experience the seamless interaction between these technologies. As you progress through the steps, from preparing configuration files to deploying and updating services, you'll grasp the essential concepts and practices that underpin modern network infrastructure automation. Whether you're looking to hone your skills or explore new horizons in automation, this demo provides a comprehensive and engaging platform to enhance your understanding and capabilities in orchestrating network resources efficiently.

What you'll gain from this demo:

  • Grasp the strategic advantage of Infrastructure as Code (IaC) through Consul and Terraform, enabling rapid, consistent, and error-free provisioning of network resources which can significantly accelerate the time-to-market.
  • Dive into the automated service deployment and DNS record updates enabled by Consul-Terraform Sync, illustrating a model for maintaining real-time service availability and domain resolution, which are essential for business continuity.
  • Practical insights into the seamless integration between DNSimple, Consul, and Terraform, providing a holistic view of the network infrastructure automation process.

Prerequisites

  • A zone on DNSimple (e.g. example.com) - whether it's registered with DNSimple or not. It doesn't need to be managed by DNSimple's name servers, but you won't be able to see the changes live if you're only using DNSimple's UI. Don't have an account? Sign up free.
    • If you'd like to register and set up a domain entirely through Terraform, check out our domains demo.
  • API access token with write access to the zone. Create a new token by following our support article. Note the token and your account ID, as you will need them later.
  • Docker and Docker Compose installed on your machine. Install Docker.

Getting Started

Step 1: Prepare the configuration files

Copy the terraform.tfvars.example file to terraform.tfvars and fill in the required variables.

cp config/terraform.tfvars.example config/terraform.tfvars
cp config/api-service.json.example config/api-service.json
cp config/web-service.json.example config/web-service.json

Next, update the api-service.json and web-service.json files with the zone you chose to use for this demo. You can also take this chance to inspect the configuration of the services, and familiarize yourself with the syntax and options available.

Step 2: Create the infrastructure

In this demo, we will be using Docker Compose to create the infrastructure. This will create a Consul server and two Consul clients. The Consul clients will be running the api-service and web-service containers. We will also be running the consul-terraform-sync container, which will be responsible for syncing the Consul service catalog with the Terraform state.

docker compose up -d

The following ports will be exposed on the host machine:

Port Protocol Description
8500 TCP Consul Server
8600 TCP Consul Server
8600 UDP Consul Server
8501 TCP Consul Client B
8558 TCP Consul Terraform Sync

If any of these ports are already in use on your machine, you can change the port mapping in the docker-compose.yml file.

Step 3: Verify the infrastructure

Once the containers are up and running, you can run the following command to verify that the Consul server and clients are running:

docker compose ps --format "table {{.Name}}\t{{.State}}\t{{.Ports}}"

You should see output similar to the following:

Name              State     Ports
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
consul-client-a   running   8300-8302/tcp, 8500/tcp, 8301-8302/udp, 8600/tcp, 8600/udp
consul-client-b   running   8300-8302/tcp, 8301-8302/udp, 8600/tcp, 8600/udp, 0.0.0.0:8501->8500/tcp

You can also visit the Consul UI at http://localhost:8500/ui and verify that the services have been registered.

Step 4: Deploy the services

Now that the infrastructure is up and running, we can deploy the services. To do this, we will be using a helper script in bin/servicesctl, which provides a utility wrapper around the Consul HTTP API, making interactions simpler. The script will read the service definitions from the api-service.json and web-service.json files and register them with Consul.

./bin/servicesctl deploy

You can verify that the services have been registered by visiting the Consul UI at http://localhost:8500/ui and clicking on the Services tab.

Step 5: Verify the DNS records are created

Once the services have been registered, you can verify that the DNS records have been created by the CTS container. You should be able to see the logs from the CTS container by running the following command:

docker logs cts

You should also be able to see the changes at DNSimple. If you had used a production account with a real domain, you would be able to verify the changes by running the following command:

dig @ns1.dnsimple.com api.example.com

Step 6: Update the services

Now that the services have been deployed, we can update the service definitions and see how the CTS container reacts to the changes. To do this, we will be updating the api-service.json and web-service.json files and changing the port value to a value of your choice. Once you have updated the files, run the following command to update the services:

./bin/servicesctl deploy

You should be able to see the changes in the logs from the CTS container and at DNSimple. If you had used a production account with a real domain, you would be able to verify the changes through a DNS lookup via something like dig.

Step 7: Cleanup

Once you are done with the demo, you can revert the changes by running the following command:

./bin/servicesctl teardown

This will remove the services from Consul and the DNS records from DNSimple as the CTS container reacts to the changes.

Next, you can stop the containers by running the following command:

docker compose down

Troubleshooting

  • If you are having issues with the CTS container not applying the changes, and you do not see any errors in the logs, change the log level to DEBUG in the config/cts-config.hcl file, and restart the container. This will provide more verbose logging, which should help you debug the issue. To restart the container, run the following command:
docker compose down
docker compose up -d

Taking it further

Most often you would see Consul being used as part of the HashiStack, which includes Vault and Nomad. You can take this demo further by adding Nomad to the mix and seeing how the CTS container reacts to changes in the Nomad jobs.

What's next?