Automating cloud infrastructure with GitLab and Terraform

During this hands on Virtual Lab, you will need Qwiklabs access to provision a pre-configured hands on learning lab environment. An instructor will guide students through configuring GitLab, Terraform, and Vault together for an automated GitOps-based workflow on Google Cloud Platform.

GitLab is a single application that provides an entire DevOps platform out-of-the-box for a seamless, low maintenance, just-commit-code software development, and delivery experience. GitLab enables flexible automation workflows that are complementary to other tools like Terraform and Vault.

Terraform is a tool for building, changing, and versioning infrastructure safely and efficiently. The infrastructure Terraform can manage includes low-level components such as compute instances, storage, and networking, as well as high-level components such as DNS entries, SaaS features, etc. Together, GitLab and Terraform can be configured to provide infrastructure teams the capability to manage their cloud infrastructure, continuously and reliably.

Google Cloud provides scalable cloud infrastructure with managed services for various forms of compute, storage, networking, etc. With extensive open APIs, almost any and every aspect of the API can be automated and managed via code the proper tools. Organizations looking to adopt cloud native solutions in an agile way need a better way to manage the inherent complexities when elastically scaling their services, breaking up monolithic applications, and securely operating at speed through cross functional teams.

Key learnings in this Virtual Hands on Lab will include:

• Configuring relevant CI/CD environment variables within GitLab to provide the appropriate runtime information for Terraform cli.
• Adding an existing Kubernetes cluster as a deployment target in GitLab via GitLab’s Kubernetes integration.
• Triggering parent-child CI/CD pipelines through new Merge Requests that call on pre-defined CI templates and evoking an Infrastructure as Code workflow via Terraform.
• Learn how to organize GitLab Groups with multiple projects per microservice when developing and operating an N-Tier cloud native application.