Setting Up a Multizone Resiliency Environment with IBM Cloud and Terraform

 

In this blog post, we will discuss how to set up a multizone resiliency environment using Terraform and IBM Cloud services. We will cover the steps to create a Virtual Servers on VPC with auto-scale feature. Reference architecture that we will automatically provision can be found at : https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/pattern-vpc-vsi-multizone-resiliency?topic=pattern-vpc-vsi-multizone-resiliency-web-app-multi-zone

Step 1: Clone the necessary repositories

To start, we need to clone the required repositories. We will be using the IBM Cloud Terraform module for VPC landing zone and autoscale, and the terraform-ibm-landing-zone-vsi-autoscale as the parent composite module.

% git clone git@github.ibm.com:client-solutioning/pattern-vpc-vsi-multizone-resiliency.git

Step 2: List available branches

Before we proceed, let's list all available branches in the repository.

% git branch -a

Clone the virtual server autoscale module with specific branch called "init-module"

% git clone --branch init-module https://github.com/terraform-ibm-modules/terraform-ibm-landing-zone-vsi-autoscale.git

Step 3: Update IBM Cloud Plugins

You may need to update IBM Cloud plugins such as VPC infrastructure plugin in my case.

% ibmcloud plugin update vpc-infrastructure

Step 4: Create a Terraform variables file

To pass commonly used parameter values easily, we can create a Terraform variables file called terraform.tfvars. In this file, we can store the API key, public/private SSH key, and other parameters that we will use throughout the deployment process. Otherwise, you need type those information repeatedly when you run `terraform plan` command.

% vi terraform.tfvars

Step 5: Generate SSH public and private keys

We'll generate SSH public and private keys using the "ssh-keygen" command if they haven't been generated previously. These keys are essential for connecting to IBM Cloud services.

$ ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C "changwoo.jung@ibm.com"

$ pbcopy < ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub

  # Copies the contents of the id_ed25519.pub file to your clipboard

(base) changwoojung@Changwoos-MacBook-Pro .ssh % ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C "changwoo.jung@ibm.com" 

Generating public/private rsa key pair.

Enter file in which to save the key (/Users/changwoojung/.ssh/id_rsa): /Users/changwoojung/.ssh/id_rsa_ibmcloud

Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase): 

Enter same passphrase again: 

Your identification has been saved in /Users/changwoojung/.ssh/id_rsa_ibmcloud

Your public key has been saved in /Users/changwoojung/.ssh/id_rsa_ibmcloud.pub

You can find SSH public key at ~/.ssh/id_rsa_ibmcloud.pub and SSH private key at ~/.ssh/id_rsa_ibmcloud

After ensuring all necessary files are in place, we'll initialize Terraform using the command terraform init. Following initialization, we'll proceed to plan and apply our deployment using terraform plan and terraform apply, respectively.

Step 6: Initialize Terraform Now that we have all the necessary files, let's initialize Terraform.

% terraform init

Step 7: Plan and apply

% terraform plan

% terraform apply

Upon successful execution, automatically provisioned resources can be viewed at IBM Cloud Resources.

Step 8: Find the hostname for web tier load balancer

Finally, we'll locate the hostname for the web tier load balancer by accessing the URL: http://4a3b1bc4-us-east.lb.appdomain.cloud/.

With these steps completed, you've successfully established a multizone resiliency environment using IBM Cloud and Terraform.