🏗️ provisioning-voteapp

Infrastructure-as-Code for VoteApp — provisions the Kubernetes cluster(s) and bootstraps the GitOps platform used to deploy the application.

This repository contains the Terraform configuration and CI automation used to provision cluster, networking, and bootstrap Argo CD so the argocd-voteapp repository can manage application delivery.

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🔎 What this repo is / why it exists

provisioning-voteapp is the infrastructure foundation for VoteApp. Its primary responsibilities are:

• Provision a Kubernetes cluster and supporting cloud resources
• Create environment-specific namespaces (dev, stg, prd)
• Bootstrap Argo CD and wire it to the application deployment repo (argocd-voteapp)
• Provide kubeconfig and access to CI/CD systems (optionally storing kubeconfig in a secret manager)
• Run Terraform validation & automation through GitHub Actions

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🛠️ Tools & Technologies

• Terraform – Infrastructure as Code (IaC) to provision cloud and Kubernetes resources.

• Terraform Cloud – Used for:

  • Remote state storage
  • State locking
  • Collaborative runs

• Kubernetes – Cluster for running application workloads.

• Helm – For deploying certain components (optional depending on modules used).

• GitHub Actions – CI/CD automation for Terraform runs.

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📂 Repo layout (high level)

.
├── .github/
│ └── workflows/ # CI: terraform fmt/validate/plan/apply workflows
├── terraform/ # Terraform configuration (modules, environment stacks)
│ └── ...
├── .gitignore
└── README.md

Terraform code lives under terraform/ (module structure + environment configs). The repo has GitHub Actions workflows under .github/workflows/.

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🔁 Typical GitOps bootstrapping flow

1. Run terraform apply to create the cluster and network.
2. Terraform bootstraps Argo CD.
3. Argo CD is configured to watch the argocd-voteapp repository and sync manifests to the cluster.
4. Application images pushed by vote-app CI are promoted using Renovate PRs in the argocd-voteapp repo; Argo CD then reconciles the cluster state.

This separation keeps infrastructure provisioning (this repo) independent from application delivery (argocd-voteapp) and application code (vote-app).

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📈 Observability & Monitoring (bootstrapped separately)

This repo provisions the cluster and usually bootstraps the observability stack via GitOps (Argo CD) — e.g., Prometheus, Grafana — by ensuring the monitoring namespace and RBAC exist. The actual monitoring manifests can be kept in the argocd-voteapp repo under monitoring/ so Argo CD can deploy/upgrade them.

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✅ CI practices and safety

• Format & lint: terraform fmt -recursive runs in CI.
• Validate & plan: terraform validate and terraform plan run in PRs.
• Plan approvals: terraform apply only runs automatically on main (or through manual approval) — adjust per your org policy.
• State locking: use remote backend with locking to prevent concurrent applies.

(There are GitHub Actions workflows in this repo for validation and plan/apply automation.)

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🔐 State Management with Terraform Cloud

This repository uses Terraform Cloud for remote state storage and locking, which provides:

• Centralized State Storage – No local state files to lose or corrupt.
• Concurrency Control – Prevents multiple people from making conflicting changes.
• Version History – Tracks all state changes over time.
• Secure Storage – Protects sensitive outputs from leaking.

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📜 Example Workflow

# Initialize Terraform with remote backend in Terraform Cloud
terraform init

# Review the plan
terraform plan

# Apply infrastructure changes
terraform apply

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🚩 Troubleshooting pointers

• If Argo CD reports CRDs missing during manifest apply, ensure CRDs are created first (apply CRDs or deploy Helm chart that includes them prior to resources relying on them).
• For provider-specific auth errors, verify environment variables/TF_VAR_* are set in the workflow runner.

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📌 Why This Project Stands Out

This repository demonstrates:

• IaC discipline: modular Terraform, formatting/linting, remote state recommendations
• Platform mindset: bootstrapping GitOps (Argo CD) to enable self-service application delivery
• Security-first approach: recommended use of secret managers and least-privilege service accounts
• Automated validation: GitHub Actions for fmt, validate, plan and gated apply

These are the behaviours and practices expected of platform/SRE engineering at scale.

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🔗 Related Repositories

• vote-app - Source code and CI/CD pipeline
• argocd-voteapp – GitOps deployment definitions managed by Argo CD