Use IasCable to create a Virtual Private Cloud and a Red Hat OpenShift cluster on IBM Cloud

In that blog post we use the IasCable framework to create a Virtual Private Cloud and a Red Hat OpenShift cluster on IBM Cloud. I covered the starting point for the IasCable framework in my last blog post “Get started with an installable component infrastructure by selecting components from a catalog of available modules with IasCable“

The source code related to that blog post is also available on GitHub.

The following list shows Modules which are referenced in the example IBM ROKS Bill of Materials for IasCable.

The blog post is structured in following sections:

  • Pre-requisites for the example
  • Step-by-step example setup (6 steps)
  • Summary

Pre-requisites for the example

The following tools must be installed on your local computer to follow the step-by-step instructions.

That is the cloud environment we will use.

Step-by-step example setup

This is a step-by-step example setup to create a Virtual Private Cloud and an IBM Cloud managed Red Hat OpenShift cluster. That is a more detailed list of the resources we will create.

Simplified architecture overview

The images give a simplified overview of the created resources on IBM Cloud.

Step 1: Write the Bill of Material BOM file

nano my-vpc-roks-bom.yaml

Copy and past the following content into the my-vpc-roks-bom.yaml file.

apiVersion: cloudnativetoolkit.dev/v1alpha1
kind: BillOfMaterial
metadata:
  name: my-ibm-vpc-roks
spec:
  modules:
    - name: ibm-vpc
    - name: ibm-vpc-subnets
    - name: ibm-vpc-gateways
    - name: ibm-ocp-vpc
      variables:
        - name: worker_count
          value: 1

Step 2: Build the project based on Bill of Material BOM file

iascable build -i my-vpc-roks-bom.yaml
  • Output:
Loading catalog from url: https://modules.cloudnativetoolkit.dev/index.yaml
Name: my-ibm-vpc-roks
Writing output to: ./output

Step 3: Verify the create files and folders

tree
  • Output:
.
├── my-vpc-roks-bom.yaml
└── output
    ├── launch.sh
    └── my-ibm-vpc-roks
        ├── apply.sh
        ├── bom.yaml
        ├── dependencies.dot
        ├── destroy.sh
        └── terraform
            ├── docs
            │   ├── ibm-object-storage.md
            │   ├── ibm-ocp-vpc.md
            │   ├── ibm-resource-group.md
            │   ├── ibm-vpc-gateways.md
            │   ├── ibm-vpc-subnets.md
            │   └── ibm-vpc.md
            ├── main.tf
            ├── my-ibm-vpc-roks.auto.tfvars
            ├── providers.tf
            ├── variables.tf
            └── version.tf

4 directories, 17 files

You can find the details of the created files and folders also in IasCable starting point GitHub project and that blog post.

In the newly created bom.yaml file we see more detailed information about modules we are going to use and which variables are needed.

apiVersion: cloudnativetoolkit.dev/v1alpha1
kind: BillOfMaterial
metadata:
  name: my-ibm-vpc-roks
spec:
  modules:
    - name: ibm-ocp-vpc
      alias: cluster
      version: v1.15.4
      variables:
        - name: worker_count
          value: 1
    - name: ibm-vpc
      alias: ibm-vpc
      version: v1.16.0
    - name: ibm-vpc-gateways
      alias: ibm-vpc-gateways
      version: v1.9.0
    - name: ibm-vpc-subnets
      alias: ibm-vpc-subnets
      version: v1.13.2
    - name: ibm-resource-group
      alias: resource_group
      version: v3.2.16
    - name: ibm-object-storage
      alias: cos
      version: v4.0.3
  variables:
    - name: region
      type: string
      description: The IBM Cloud region where the cluster will be/has been installed.
    - name: ibmcloud_api_key
      type: string
      description: The IBM Cloud api token
    - name: worker_count
      type: number
      description: >-
        The number of worker nodes that should be provisioned for classic
        infrastructure
      defaultValue: 1
    - name: cluster_flavor
      type: string
      description: The machine type that will be provisioned for classic infrastructure
      defaultValue: bx2.4x16
    - name: ibm-vpc-subnets__count
      type: number
      description: The number of subnets that should be provisioned
      defaultValue: 3
    - name: resource_group_name
      type: string
      description: The name of the resource group

These are the Modules we see in the newly created bom.yaml file.

Added modules based on module dependencies:

We can verify the dependencies with the dependencies.dot content in the Graphviz Online tool.

Step 4: Execute the terraform init command

Navigate to the output/my-ibm-vpc-roks/terraform folder and execute the terraform init command.

cd output/my-ibm-vpc-roks/terraform
terraform init

Step 5: Execute the terraform apply command

Execute the terraform apply command.

terraform apply -auto-approve

Note: You can create an IBM Cloud API Key with following command: ibmcloud iam api-key-create iascable-example.

  • Input of your variables:
var.ibmcloud_api_key
  The IBM Cloud api token
  Enter a value: XXX

var.region
  The IBM Cloud region where the cluster will be/has been installed.
  Enter a value: eu-de

var.resource_group_name
  The name of the resource group
  Enter a value: default
  • Output:

Finally you should get this output in your terminal.

...
Apply complete! Resources: 56 added, 0 changed, 0 destroyed.

The following files were created with the  terraform apply command. These files shouldn’t be deleted by you, because these will used for the deletion or update of the resources later. I added those files in my case to .gitignore.

example/output/my-ibm-vpc-roks/terraform/.terraform.lock.hcl
example/output/my-ibm-vpc-roks/terraform/clis-debug.log
example/output/my-ibm-vpc-roks/terraform/.kube/b88790957171731697722dc07f0f923283278cf784b9fce792b831afbab8d83e_default-cluster_admin_k8sconfig/admin-key.pem
example/output/my-ibm-vpc-roks/terraform/.kube/b88790957171731697722dc07f0f923283278cf784b9fce792b831afbab8d83e_default-cluster_admin_k8sconfig/admin.pem
example/output/my-ibm-vpc-roks/terraform/.kube/b88790957171731697722dc07f0f923283278cf784b9fce792b831afbab8d83e_default-cluster_admin_k8sconfig/config.yml
example/output/my-ibm-vpc-roks/terraform/.kube/b88790957171731697722dc07f0f923283278cf784b9fce792b831afbab8d83e_default-cluster_k8sconfig/config.yml
example/output/my-ibm-vpc-roks/terraform/bin2/.igc-release
example/output/my-ibm-vpc-roks/terraform/bin2/igc
example/output/my-ibm-vpc-roks/terraform/bin2/jq
example/output/my-ibm-vpc-roks/terraform/bin2/yq3
example/output/my-ibm-vpc-roks/terraform/bin2/yq4

Step 6: Execute the terraform destroy command

Note: Ensure you didn’t delete created files before.

To destroy the provisioned resources, run the following:

terraform destroy -auto-approve

You need to provide the IBM Cloud API Key, the region and the resource group name again, because we didn’t save those values in variables.

var.ibmcloud_api_key
  The IBM Cloud api token
  Enter a value: XXX

var.region
  The IBM Cloud region where the cluster will be/has been installed.
  Enter a value: eu-de

var.resource_group_name
  The name of the resource group
  Enter a value: default
  • Output:

The final output should be:

Destroy complete! Resources: 56 destroyed.

Summary

When you use IasCable and the Modules it is much easier to setup infrastructure on a cloud using Terraform. The Modules containing a lot of pre-work and IasCable creates automated an awesome starting point for you. Surly you still should understand what are you creating and the final architecture you will be produce.

Especially the pre-work for the example we use which divides the worker nodes over 3 zones, does pre-configurations of rules for the security groups and many more. So I looking forward now to get started with the GitOps topic which is also a part of the Modules in that framework.

I hope this was useful to you and let’s see what’s next?

Greetings,

Thomas

#ibmcloud, #vpc, #terraform, #cloudnativetoolkit, #softwareeverywhere, #iascable, #redhat, #openshift, #cloudobjectstorage

2 thoughts on “Use IasCable to create a Virtual Private Cloud and a Red Hat OpenShift cluster on IBM Cloud”

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  1. Pingback: Use Software Everywhere and IasCable to setup GitOps on a Red Hat OpenShift Cluster in a Virtual Private Cloud on IBM Cloud – Thomas Suedbroecker's Blog
  2. Pingback: Everything as Code and easy automation with minimal Terraform and GitOps knowledge – Thomas Suedbroecker's Blog

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