Moving a WordPress-based application from on-premise to a cloud-hosted solution

Table of Contents

• About The Project
  • Solution Diagram
  • Technologies
• Documents Index
• Getting Started
  • Prerequisites
• Usage
• How To's
  • Initiate the infrastructure
  • Update the docker image in the ECR
  • Deploy a new docker image to the ECS
  • Remove the resources created
  • Change the name of the project
  • Change the name of the ECR repository
  • Change the ECR repository location to another AWS account
  • Use S3 as terraform backend
• Roadmap
• Contributing
• License
• Contact

About The Project

This project aims to move a web application from on-premise to a cloud-hosted solution.

Currently, the WordPress-based application uses LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP) and the solution is hosted in a single server (application and database) where the deployments are made through FTP transfers to the server.

This cloud migration is designed to comply with the following requirements:

• The application must be containerized;
• The application must to be secure (all data encrypted at rest and in transit)
• The application must to be highly available.
• The application must to support peaks of up to 10 times the average load (scalability).
• The infrastructure must to be reproducible and version-controlled in case the CEO decides to expand the business to other parts of the world (consider infra as code).
• There must be an easy and secure way of developing, with fast feedback (consider CI/CD practices or at least automation scripts)

Solution Diagram

Technologies

• Github - version control
• Terraform - infra as code
• Github actions CICD pipeline
• Docker - containerisation
• Docker-compose - containerisation
• Amazon Aurora - database
• Amazon Elastic Container Service - container orchestrator
• Amazon EFS - file storage
• Make - automation

Documents Index

• Docker Wordpress - How to use
• Scripts Usage
• GitHub Actions/Workflows
• Terraform Modules
  • VPC
  • ECS Cluster
  • ECR - Container Registry
  • Load Balancer
  • RDS Database
  • ECS Task and Service
  • EFS

Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Create a Github account: https://github.com/join

• Create your AWS account: https://aws.amazon.com/free/start-your-free-trial/

• Install AWS cli: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/userguide/cli-chap-welcome.html

• Install Terraform cli: https://learn.hashicorp.com/terraform/getting-started/install.html

• Install Docker cli: https://docs.docker.com/install/

• Install Make: https://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/html_node/index.html#toc-Overview-of-make

Usage

🔥🔥🔥 TL;DR; 🔥🔥🔥
GRAB THE POPCORN 🍿
RUN make kick-n-run (docker daemon must be running)
ENJOY THE SHOW 😎 🎦

Clone or download the repository to your machine:

git clone https://github.com/devopsacademyau/2020-jun-project1-group1.git

Set up your AWS credentials:

aws configure

Decide on where you want the terraform state files to be stored. local is fine, but s3 is recommened (https://www.terraform.io/docs/backends/types/s3.html)

vim ./terraform/_backend.tf

• Template file: .github/terraform/_backend.tf.template

• Create S3 and dynamodb: run make tf-backend-storage

Review and update the main.tfvars file with your variables

vim ./terraform/main.tfvars

(Optional) plan the terraform build

make tf-ci-plan

Run below from your root directory

make kick-n-run

Destroy the infrastructure

make tf-ci-remove

How To's

Initiate the infrastructure

• Run make tf-all

it will create the infrastructure commands only, it will not push the wordpress docker image.

Quickest way:

• Run make kick-n-run

Update the docker image in the ECR

• Run make update-wp

Deploy a new docker image to the ECS

• Run make deploy-wp

Remove the resources created

• Run make tf-ci-remove

Change the name of the project

• Edit main.tfvars file and change the variable project.
• Edit .env file in the root directory (create if doens't exists) and change the variable PROJECT_NAME

Change the name of the ECR repository

• Edit main.tfvars and change the variable repository_name.
• Edit .env file in the root directory (create if doens't exists) and change the variable DOCKER_REPOSITORY

Change the ECR repository location to another AWS account

• Edit .env file in the root directory (create if doens't exists) and change the variable DOCKER_REGISTRY_URL

Use S3 as terraform backend

• Use template file .github/terraform/_backend.tf.template to create the _backend.tf file into terraform folder.

• Create S3 and dynamodb: run make tf-backend-storage

Roadmap

See the open issues for a list of proposed features (and known issues).

Contributing

Contributions are what make the open source community such an amazing place to be learn, inspire, and create. Any contributions you make are greatly appreciated.

1. Fork the Project
2. Create your Feature Branch (git checkout -b <branch-name>)
3. Commit your Changes (git commit -m 'Add a new contribution')
4. Push to the Branch (git push origin <branch-name>)
5. Open a Pull Request

License

Distributed under the Creative Commons Public Licenses. See LICENSE for more information.

Contact

TBC