Getting started with unipipe terraform runner on Azure

Introduction

This tutorial is for you if want to build your first service using unipipe + terraform.

Prerequesites

• write permissions on an empty git repository that supports SSH access; this tutorial will work with a GitHub repository
• unipipe cli, terraform, and az installed
• contributor rights on an Azure subscription that should host the service-broker and terraform-runner containers
• rights to create an Azure AD Application with a Service Principal

What we will build

We will build a service and integrate it with the meshStack marketplace. Our architecture includes two containers in Azure: one called Service Broker and one called Terraform Runner.

This is how things will fit together at the end:

sequenceDiagram
participant Marketplace
participant Service Broker
participant Git Repository
participant Terraform Runner
participant Azure

Marketplace->>Service Broker: User orders a pizza receipe instance
Service Broker->>Git Repository: Store order as instance.yml and binding.yml files
Git Repository->>Terraform Runner: Read instance.yml and binding.yml files
Terraform Runner->>Azure: Create Pizza Receipe by applying terraform
Terraform Runner ->> Git Repository: Write status.yml file
Git Repository  ->> Service Broker: Read status.yml file
Service Broker ->> Marketplace: Show status to user

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Steps

Deploying on Azure

Clone your empty git repository.

git clone git@<github/gitlab/azuredevops>.com:<your-organization>/pizza-receipe-services.git
cd pizza-receipe-services

We are going to use the terraform-azure-unipipe module for deployment.

Copy the files in the examples/standard-deployment-with-terraform-runner folder into your empty git repository under terraform/deployment

mkdir -p terraform/deployment
cd terraform/deployment
curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/meshcloud/terraform-azure-unipipe/main/examples/standard-deployment-with-terraform-runner/main.tf > main.tf
curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/meshcloud/terraform-azure-unipipe/main/examples/standard-deployment-with-terraform-runner/outputs.tf > outputs.tf

Open the main.tf file and replace all '...' with proper values.

Run terraform init and then terraform apply.

The resource group should look something like this

Create a hello world service

Run unipipe generate terraform-runner-hello-world in the repository root.

This will generate a set of files

├── README.md
├── catalog.yml
└── terraform
    ├── <uuid matching the service definition id in the catalog.yml file>
    │   ├── backend.tf
    │   ├── main.tf
    │   └── variables.tf
    └── deployment
        ├── README.md
        ├── main.tf
        ├── outputs.tf
        └── terraform.tfstate

Register the service broker in your marketplace and order a service instance.

The documentation for meshStack marketplace is available in the meshcloud public docs.

After you have ordered a service instance, the hello-world-service will apply the terraform module in the service binding folder. The result will look like this:

instances
└── <some uuid>
    ├── bindings
    │   └── <some uuid>
    │       ├── backend.tf
    │       ├── binding.yml
    │       ├── module.tf.json
    │       ├── pizza_receipe_<topping>.txt
    │       └── status.yml
    ├── instance.yml
    └── status.yml

That's it

The file pizza_receipe_.txt is the output of the terraform module.

You have built your first service with unipipe + terraform.

For a more advanced example, see the unipipe repository github.com/likvid-bank/networking-services