gitlab-challenege

This challenge is to automate the installation of gitlab on microsoft auzre (acloudguru azure sandbox) using Terraform and Ansible.

Method

Prior to this, previous learners have completed the challenge. For the ease of completing this challenge, we will git clone from (https://github.com/vysky/challenge-gitlab) and run the Terraform and Ansible Playbook from here.

Getting started

Pre-requisites

Ensure you have the following prepared and installed on your machine

1. python
2. az cli
3. terraform
4. ansible
5. username and password provided by acloudguru azure sandbox (or your own azure account)

Running Terraform and Ansible

Git clone the repo

In your terminal:

1. git clone https://github.com/vysky/challenge-gitlab
2. cd challenge-gitlab/

Editing the Terraform main.tf file

From your browser:

1. Login to Azure portal using the username and password generated by acloudguru's Azure Sandbox
2. Copy the generated resource group name in the Azure portal.
3. **Open main.tf file and replace the default value of variable "rg" with the copied resource group name.
4. Save the main.tf file

** Note: You must change the resource group to your sandbox resource before moving on to Running Terraform.

Running Terraform

In your terminal (you should be in the challenge-gitlab folder):

1. az login -u <acloudguru username>. Then copy and paste the password from acloudguru.
2. terraform init
3. terraform plan
4. terraform apply --auto-approve
5. When completed, refresh your Azure portal. Resources should have successfully deployed and three files (inventory, fqdn, password) will be generated in the working directory.

Running Ansible playbook main.yml

Ensure you have sshpass installed in your terminal.

• For Mac users, run ansible-playbook main.yml.

• For Windows users, you can run the playbook in a 2 ways to ssh into the public ip below.

Windows: Method 1

Run ansible-playbook --ask-pass main.yml and key in the password from the password file (which should be Qwerty123456!).

Windows: Method 2

1. Edit the inventory file.
2. Add in ansible_ssh_password=Qwerty123456! after the IP address.
3. Run ansible-playbook main.yml

If ansible-playbook is successful, a Gitlab 'root' and 'password' will be generated as one of the debug message from the playbook.

Checking if it is successful

1. Copy the fqdn (url) generated in the fqdn file and paste it in a new browser. You should be able to see the Gitlab login page.
2. Log in with the username root, copy and paste the password from the Ansible playbook debug message.

Congratulations! You have successfullu completed the challenge.

Terraform destroy and cleaning up

1. In terminal, type terraform destroy --auto-approve to destroy the resources created and files generated on local machine

Further reading from Brendan (https://github.com/vysky/challenge-gitlab)

finding the publisher, offer and sku of image

to install gitlab onto a vm, we are required to use the image provided by gitlab

in azure portal, we only need to do a search to find the gitlab image and use it to create the vm. however we are required to provide publisher, offer and sku of the image to automate and create the vm in terraform

there are multiple methods to find the required parameters of the gitlab image (or other images by other publishers)

1. arm template and az powershell

this fantastic article guide you on how to find publisher, offer and sku through arm (azure resource manager) template and az powershell

2. az cli

this az vm image document by microsoft lists the commands to find publisher, offer, sku and more

example instructions for az cli to find the sku of gitlab by first finding the publisher , then offer, and finally sku

1. ensure you are login to az in terminal using az login -u <username> and enter the password when prompted
2. type az vm image list-publishers --location eastus > publisher.txt in terminal to output a txt file with a list publishers in eastus
3. open the publisher txt file and search for gitlab (there may be multiple results) and note down the name value (as of 17 Mar 2022, gitlabinc1586447921813 is the correct publisher for the image we need to use)
4. type az vm image list-offers --location eastus --publisher gitlabinc1586447921813 > offer.txt in terminal to output a txt file with a list of offers by gitlabinc1586447921813
5. open the offer txt file and note down the name value (it should be gitlabee)
6. type az vm image list-skus --location eastus --offer gitlabee --publisher gitlabinc1586447921813 > sku.txt in terminal to output a txt file with a list of skus
7. open the sku txt file and note down the name value (it should be default)
8. add the publisher, offer and sku we found above to the terraform file to automate the creation of vm using the gitlab image

work in progress

working in integrating both terraform script and ansible script so the automation is seemless (code is already present in the main.tf file)