Dell Infrastructure-as-a-code: Busting the regressive myth around on-premises infrastructure., GitHub Actions pipeline for Dell platforms.

This blog is part of the Dell Infrastructure-as-a-code saga series.

Cloud-like agility for on-premises infrastructure is multifaceted and usually combines a strong consumption-based model, ability to scale around dynamic requirements and most importantly the technological integration for modern Infrastructure-as-a-code pipelines.

Dell’s offerings encompass all of the above to ensure a true DevOps ready and cloud-native experience is made available to all., even to born-in-the-cloud personas. At the same token, I have always been intrigued when someone thinks of on-premises/co-located infrastructure as a rather traditional footprint., one that is for some reason excluded from cloud-native ways of running things.

In this blog, we will., as the title suggests bust this regressive myth by a practical demo that builds upon a scalable GitHub Actions IaC pipeline across Dell’s leading storage platforms (PowerFlex-on prem and as APEX Block for AWS, PowerScale and PowerStore).

Most importantly the environmental constraints in the demo such as a fully private environment make a further appeal to the agility by instilling security-first approach.

Let’s view this in action. The below visual is an end-to-end capture of the demo-context and the following video demonstrates all of this in a greater detail.

The template for the GitHub actions pipeline is provided below. The terraform templates are derived from my other blogs in the infrastructure as a code saga series.

GitHub Actions YAML

name: csc-ireland

on:
  workflow_dispatch:
    inputs:
      # Terraform action you want to perform
      action:
        description: 'Terraform Action to Perform'
        type: choice
        options:
        - Terraform_apply
        - Terraform_destroy

jobs:
  plan_and_apply:
    name: Plan and Apply
    if: ${{ github.event.inputs.action == 'Terraform_apply' }}
    runs-on: [self-hosted, csc-ireland]
    strategy:
      fail-fast: false
      matrix:
        path:
          - powerflex-equinix-ireland
          - powerflex-aws-ireland
          - powerstore-equinix-ireland
          - powerscale-equinix-ireland

    steps:
      - name: Check out code
        uses: actions/checkout@v2
        
      - name: Setup Nodejs
        uses: actions/setup-node@v1

      - name: Setup Terraform
        uses: hashicorp/setup-terraform@v1
        with:
          terraform_version: 1.0.9

      - name: Initialize Terraform
        run: |
          cd ${{ matrix.path }}
          terraform init && terraform plan && terraform apply -auto-approve        

  terraform_destroy:
    name: Terraform destroy
    if: ${{ github.event.inputs.action == 'Terraform_destroy' }}
    runs-on: [self-hosted, csc-ireland]
    strategy:
      fail-fast: false
      matrix:
        path:
          - powerflex-equinix-ireland
          - powerflex-aws-ireland
          - powerstore-equinix-ireland
          - powerscale-equinix-ireland
    steps:
      - name: Check out code
        uses: actions/checkout@v2
        
      - name: Setup Nodejs
        uses: actions/setup-node@v1

      - name: Setup Terraform
        uses: hashicorp/setup-terraform@v1
        with:
          terraform_version: 1.0.9

      - name: Initialize Terraform
        run: |
          cd ${{ matrix.path }}
          terraform init && terraform plan && terraform destroy -auto-approve  

Happy automating Dell platforms,

cheers,

Ambar@thecloudgarage

#iwork4dell