terraform-aws-docker-jenkins

A simple example of using Terraform to provision Jenkins (CI/CD) using its official Docker image in a Docker container on an AWS EC2 instance.

Going beyond this example, it would be important to structure the Terraform files and think carefully about where secrets were stored.

Instructions for use

1. Ensure you have a valid AWS account, including an access_key and secret_key for a user with permissions to create the necessary resources.
   If you don't have an AWS account you can sign up to the Free Tier here: https://aws.amazon.com/free/
   Export your access_key and secret_key:

export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID="access_key"
export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY="<secret_key>"

2. Download Terraform if you don't already have it installed:
   https://www.terraform.io/intro/getting-started/install.html

3. Populate terraform.tfvars with relevant values, using terraform.tfvars.example as an example.

4. Create a key pair for use on the AWS EC2 instances and put the public/private keys in .private/aws-key.pem.pub/.private/aws-key.pem.

5. Use Terraform to check how the services will be provisioned:

terraform plan

6. Provision using Terraform:

terraform apply

7. Check the output of the provision and access the server via SSH and/or your web browser.

## Provision output...
...
Apply complete! Resources: 11 added, 0 changed, 0 destroyed.

Outputs:

aws_instance-ci-public_dns = <hostname>.compute-1.amazonaws.com
aws_platform-name = okappy-global-us-east-1
...

## Access server via SSH and Docker
ssh -i .private/aws-key.pem ubuntu@<hostname>.compute.amazonaws.com
sudo docker ps
sudo docker exec -it <container-id> bash

## Access server via HTTP
lynx http://<hostname>.compute.amazonaws.com:8080/

8. Complete Jenkins setup by finding the /var/jenkins_home/secrets/initialAdminPassword file via SSH and entering the contents in the HTTP interface (the HTTP interface should prompt you to do this). Then follow the instructions provided, installing standard plugins and creating the first admin account.

9. Try out Jenkins, by adding a Multibranch Pipeline job such as: https://github.com/zhibek/behat-example.git
   This job type relies on the Jenkinsfile inside the git repo, therefore no additional config is required in the Jenkins UI.

10. If there is a need to re-stage the server at any point, taint and re-apply via Terraform:

terraform taint aws_instance.ci
terraform apply