Example IaC for Azure with terraform

Last updated: 2024-04-15

Introduction

This is a simple repo showcasing how to setup some simple infrastructure in Azure. Namely,

• a Resource Group with a Storage Account. This is created using the create_storage_account.sh bash script and is intended to be used before using terraform. The Resource Group will have all the resources the project might need (each environment – development, production, etc. should have its own Resource Group) and the Storage Account will store the tfstate, which is a file that holds the state of the infrastucture terraform built. Each time a new service is added or a current service is altered/deleted, the tfstate will be checked to see which infrastructure to change/delete and will update that file accordingly with the changes made.
• a Container Registry, which is used to store Docker Images (this can be the image of an app we are building, for example.). Ideally, this service should be accessed via GitHub Actions (or any other CI/CD provider) and a new version of the image should be added to the registry.
• a Container Instance, which is a service used to run a container. This can be used to run the images stored in the Container Registry or can directly access the Docker Hub, so that you only need to specify the image and the tag that you wish to use. For example, you may run a postgresql container and use this for your development database (which should probably be less expensive than instantiating a DB service).
• a Web App can be used to host a web application. It can, for example, access you Container Registry and spin a container with the image you want. You can also deploy, for example, Python code to this service via CI/CD from your repo if you are using Flask/FastAPI. I prefer to use Docker Images, since I've ran into some problems using code deployments (but for simple apps should be enough!).

Repo Structure

The repo has the following structure.

.
├── README.md
├── create_storage_account.sh
├── environments
│   ├── development
│   │   ├── main.tf
│   │   ├── provider.tf
│   │   └── variables.tf
│   └── production
└── modules
    ├── aci
    │   ├── main.tf
    │   ├── outputs.tf
    │   └── variables.tf
    ├── acr
    │   ├── main.tf
    │   ├── outputs.tf
    │   └── variables.tf
    ├── app-service
    │   ├── main.tf
    │   └── variables.tf
    └── sql-db
        ├── main.tf
        └── variables.tf

In the modules folder we have several services that we can instantiate. They are reusable and we can change any configurations (CPU, RAM, ports, etc.) that we need to make them more suitable to different environments (development, stage, production, etc.). Each of subfolders inside modules corresponds to a different service.

The environments folder is divided into several environments (for now just production and development) and makes use of the modules in the modules folder to instantiate the infrastructure with the necessary configurations.

How to use?

If you don't yet have a storage account that serves as backend to store your terraform state files, run sh create_storage_account.sh to create a it. Define the RESOURCE_GROUP_NAME, STORAGE_ACCOUNT_NAME and CONTAINER_NAME .

Then cd to environments/development and run

terraform init
terraform plan
terraform apply

This will create your infrastructure if you haven't already.