Deploy Django on Linode

Template to deploy Django with a PostgreSQL database on Linode with GitHub Actions, Terraform, Ansible and Docker. I did this for a client but the project fell flat in the end, but at least i can salvage some parts. In the end this will deploy a Django project with 1 or more Django instances behind a load balancer connected to a managed PostgreSQL database cluster on Linode with seperate instances for Redis caches which are also used as a broker for the dedicated Celery workers. Uses netdata for monitoring, ufw/iptables and Linodes managed firewall for security and S3-compatible object storage for files. Based on the awesome eBook "Understanding Databases" by the guys at Coding For Entrepreneurs (the corresponding Repo is located here) and extended by me.

Original Features

• CI/CD with Git, GitHub, and GitHub Actions
• Django on Docker and DockerHub (as well as using WatchTower for automated container updates)
• Load balancing with Nginx
• Production databases with managed MySQL by Linode
• Local/development use of production-like databases
• Terraform to provision Infrastructure on Linode
• Ansible to configure infrastructure on Linode (in tandem with Terraform)
• Django-based file uploads and Django static files on Linode Object Storage

Extended Features

• Changed from (self-hosted) NGINX Load Balancer to a managed Load Balancer from Linode (NodeBalancer)
• Changed to a managed PostgreSQL database from Linode (only available for a short time, before it was MySQL only on Linode)
• Everything behind the Load Balancer uses internal IPs to communicate
• Added Firewall rules (Linodes managed Firewall via Terraform and ufw on all instances)
• Added netdata for monitoring
• Configures PostgreSQL database on first execution/provisioning (see caveat below)

Known Problems & Missing Features

• There are some GitHub Actions deprecation warnings when running the complete workflow
• The extraction of private IPs relies on a positional argument and should probably be replaced by some awk magic
• Only rudimentary integration of logging features
• No automatic Let's Encrypt integration
• "Hardcoded" for usage with eu-central-1 (Frankfurt) Linode region
• At the moment the SQL code that configures the PostgreSQL database also wipes it everytime it is executed
• When it becomes available on Linode i will switch to a managed Redis Cache

Works in 4 stages:

1. Tests the Django project in a GitHub Actions instance by running a test suite (Django's internal testing tools atm)
2. Collects all static files and copies them to the S3 Object Storage/Linode Bucket
3. Creates a Docker Container from the GitHub Repo and pushes it to Docker Hub
4. Provisions the infrastructure on Linode with Terraform and configures it with Ansible