In this guide, we will walk through the process of setting up a scalable and highly available infrastructure using Terraform and Kubernetes on AWS. This step-by-step guide is designed for beginners, including elementary school students, who are interested in learning about cloud computing and automation. By the end of this guide, you will have a functioning infrastructure on AWS and understand the basics of using Terraform and Kubernetes.

Objective: Design, implement, and automate a scalable and highly available infrastructure using Terraform and Kubernetes on AWS.

To start, we need to install Terraform and the AWS Command Line Interface (CLI) on our computer. These tools will help us automate the creation of cloud resources.

Open your terminal (the command line interface).

Install Terraform and AWS CLI by typing the following commands:

sudo yum install -y yum-utils
sudo yum-config-manager --add-repo https://rpm.releases.hashicorp.com/RHEL/hashicorp.repo
sudo yum -y install terraform
sudo yum install -y aws-cli

Next, we need to configure the AWS CLI with our AWS account credentials.

Create an IAM user in your AWS account with programmatic access.

Get your Access Key and Secret Key from the IAM user.

Configure AWS CLI by typing the following command:

aws configure

Enter your AWS Access Key, Secret Key, Region, and Output format.

Now, let's create a directory for our Terraform project and a configuration file to define our infrastructure.

Create a new directory and move into it:

mkdir terraform-project
cd terraform-project

Create a file named main.tf:

touch main.tf

Edit the main.tf file to include the AWS provider and define a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC).

Open main.tf in a text editor and add the following code:

provider "aws" {
  region = "us-east-1"
}

resource "aws_vpc" "main" {
  cidr_block = "10.0.0.0/16"
}

resource "aws_subnet" "subnet1" {
  vpc_id            = aws_vpc.main.id
  cidr_block        = "10.0.1.0/24"
  availability_zone = "us-east-1a"
}

Let's initialize Terraform and apply the configuration to create the resources defined in the main.tf file.

Initialize Terraform:

terraform init

Apply the configuration:

terraform apply -auto-approve

Next, we need to install kubectl and eksctl, which are tools for managing Kubernetes clusters on AWS.

Install kubectl:

curl -o kubectl https://amazon-eks.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/1.18.9/2020-11-02/bin/linux/amd64/kubectl
chmod +x ./kubectl
sudo mv ./kubectl /usr/local/bin/

Install eksctl:

Go to the eksctl and find the latest version for your machine architecture.

Download and install eksctl:

curl --silent --location "https://github.com/eksctl-io/eksctl/releases/download/v0.183.0/eksctl_Linux_amd64.tar.gz" | tar xz -C /tmp
sudo mv /tmp/eksctl /usr/local/bin

Now, we will create an EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Service) cluster using eksctl.

Create the cluster:

eksctl create cluster --name dob-profile-cluster --version 1.24 --region us-east-1 --nodegroup-name linux-nodes --node-type t2.medium --nodes 3 --nodes-min 1 --nodes-max 4 --managed

Note: If you encounter a version error, refer to the for supported versions.

After creating the cluster, we need to verify that it is running correctly.

Check the nodes in the cluster:

kubectl get nodes

Finally, let's deploy a simple application to our Kubernetes cluster.

Create a deployment for an NGINX web server:

kubectl create deployment nginx --image=nginx

Expose the deployment to the internet:

kubectl expose deployment nginx --port 80 --type LoadBalancer

Check the services:

kubectl get svc

Now that our project is up and running, let's push it to GitHub.

Initialize a Git repository in your project directory:

cd path/to/terraform-project
git init

Create a .gitignore file to exclude unnecessary files:

touch .gitignore
nano .gitignore

Edit .gitignore with the following content:

# Terraform files
*.tfstate
*.tfstate.*
*.tfvars
.terraform/
crash.log

# AWS CLI credentials
.aws/

Add and commit your files:

git add .
git commit -m "Initial commit of Terraform and Kubernetes project"

Create a GitHub repository and add it as a remote:

git remote add origin https://github.com/your-username/terraform-kubernetes-project.git

Push your project to GitHub:

git push -u origin main

When you're done with your project, it's important to clean up your resources to avoid unnecessary charges.

1. Delete the EKS cluster:

eksctl delete cluster --name my-cluster --region us-east-1

2. Destroy the Terraform-managed infrastructure:

   • Navigate to your Terraform project directory:

      cd path/to/terraform-project
     

Run the destroy command:

terraform destroy -auto-approve

Clean up local files:

rm -rf .terraform
rm terraform.tfstate
rm terraform.tfstate.backup

Congratulations! You have successfully set up a scalable and highly available infrastructure using Terraform and Kubernetes on AWS. You also learned how to deploy a sample application and push your project to GitHub. Remember to clean up your resources to avoid unnecessary charges. Keep experimenting and exploring the world of cloud computing and automation!