Immutable Infrastructure Automation with Packer, Ansible, Terraform and GitHub Actions

Introduction

This project leverages the power of Packer, Ansible, Terraform, and GitHub Actions to automate the creation of an immutable infrastructure. Immutable infrastructure is a model where servers, once deployed, are never modified. Instead, changes are made by deploying new servers built from a common image. Immutable infrastructure is a very popular approach in modern cloud application environments.

Prerequisites

1. Local machine setup: Install and configure Git, Terraform, and vscode.
2. IAM Role: Create a role in AWS IAM, with necessary permissions for Packer.
3. GitHub repository secrets: You need to configure valid credentials.
4. Project structure: Arrange your project directories and files.

Project Walkthrough

Packer: Packer is used to create identical machine images for multiple platforms. It starts with a base image, adds server software, and application code, then converts it into an image. This ensures that we’re deploying the exact same image, regardless of when we deploy it.

Ansible: Ansible simplifies configuration management and task automation. It applies server-specific configurations on the base image during the baking process.

Terraform: Terraform creates and manages your infrastructure resources like VPCs, subnets, security groups, and instances. Instead of modifying existing instances, it creates new instances with the updated configuration when needed.

GitHub Actions: GitHub Actions automates the entire process, enhancing efficiency. The workflow consists of two jobs: packer-ansible and Terraform-commands. The packer-ansible job sets up Packer and Ansible, and builds an Amazon Machine Image (AMI). The Terraform-commands job sets up Terraform and applies a Terraform plan to provision infrastructure.