Base Beacon Bundle

[!NOTE] A set of base CDKTF constructs for Environment Toolkit Beacon development.

The purpose of this repository is to provide handcrafted, "AWS CDK"-like, DevX on top of the auto generated L1 resources in providers such as @cdktf/provider-aws.

This repository defines the core contracts for:

• Beacon: The implementation of a higher level (L2+) User Pattern for underlaying (L1) provider resources. (i.e. TerraformElement in CDKTF)
• Spec: The composition of Beacons. (i.e. TerraformStack in CDKTF). Running et up against a spec config file, instantiates it as a single terraform state in the E.T. Grid.

This repository also provides cloud specific implementations for the above core entities:

• AwsSpec: An Environment Toolkit Spec for AWS (single AWS Account / Region).
• AwsBeacon: An Environment Toolkit Beacon implementing a user pattern using AWS Resources.

Restrictions

[!IMPORTANT] An AwsBeacon can only be created in the scope of an AwsSpec.

An AwsSpec is limited to a single AWS Account/Region

This allows a close mapping between Environment Toolkit specs for AWS and AWS CDK concepts. This is an acceptable simplification leveraging the advanced multi-spec orchestration features provided by the other utlities within the Environment Toolkit.

For each target AWS Account + Region (a.k.a Environment in AWS CDK), you must define a separate AwsSpec. This works exactly in the same way AWS CDK Stacks are limited to a single Environment.

Due to this, the AwsSpec has a single terraform-provider-aws configuration which must be provided directly in its constructor:

new AwsSpec(scope, "MySpec", {
  providerConfig: {
    region: "us-east-1",
  },
  gridUUID: "12345678-1234",             // immutable UUID maintained by E.T. for the lifetime of the spec instance
  environmentName: "Gibraltar-Staging",  // mutable description for resource discovery
});

Moreover, the alias configuration property of the Terraform provider has been stripped out given only a single provider may exist per Spec.

Due to JSII Typescript Restrictions upstream @cdktf/provider-aws.provider.AwsProviderConfig is programatically modified via ./projenrc/aws-provider-struct-builder for ease of future maintenance.

Resource Identifiers are managed by et

The Environment Toolkit is heavily focused on providing experienced Cloud adoption following hard earned lessons for long term "Day 2" operations. As such, the et CLI and Beacon Bundles primarly aim to decouple Resource identity from Resource discovery.

Examples of problems when trying to couple resource identity and discovery:

• The AWS Security Group description argument forces resource re-creation when changed. Using its description property to record information that is desired for resource discovery but subject to change over time therefor forces security-groups to be destroyed and recreated. Information such as Team or Product Name can change over time (Org chart changes or rebranding). Re-creating resources such as security groups causes significant IaC ripples and are often simply impossible or usually avoided (voiding the utility of description as a means for discovery).
• Many AWS Resources simply do not allow user-provided identifiers (i.e. Instance ID, Cloudfront Distribution ID, ... ) and Resource Identity is by design decoupled from Discovery.

Note: The right way for resource discovery on AWS is by using Resource Tags and Resource Tag Manager. NOT Resource Identifiers.

To ensure a consistent user experience for Beacon Bundle consumers, the Environment Toolkit recommends all resource identifiers depend on a GridUUID, generated and passed in by the environment toolkit CLI or similar tool. It is the responsibility of the tool to keep these identifiers unchanged across the lifecycle of a Beacon (and all the cloud resources provisioned by the Beacon).

Refer to the Integration testing section to see how Beacon Bundle authors can ensure their Beacons behave as expected when discovery properties are changed over time.

IBeacon Attributes vs the IBeacon outputs Attribute

Beacon classes implementing the Beacon interface expose following information:

Example:

A certificate may expose it's Status, ARN and domain validation Options through the E.T. Grid:

export interface CertificateOutputs {
  /**
   * Status of the certificate.
   */
  readonly status: string;

  /**
   * The ARN of the certificate.
   */
  readonly arn: string;

  /**
   * Set of domain validation objects which can be used to complete certificate validation.
   * Can have more than one element, e.g., if SANs are defined.
   *
   * Only set if DNS-validation was used.
   */
  readonly domainValidationOptions?: acmCertificate.AcmCertificateDomainValidationOptionsList;
}

A beacon implementing the ICertificate Beacon interface, will expose strongly typed outputs as well as the domainName and certificateArn attributes.

export interface ICertificate extends IAwsBeacon {
  /** Strongly typed certificate outputs */
  readonly certificateOutputs: CertificateOutputs;
  /**
   * Domain name of the certificate.
   */
  readonly domainName: string;
  /**
   * The ARN of the certificate.
   */
  readonly certificateArn: string;
}

This allows other Spec files to read the Certificate Outputs while providing an intuitive way to build higher level beacons using the ICertificate interface.

Note: The Certificate arn is exposed both as cert.certificateArn as well as cert.certificateOutputs.arn.

When implementing a Beacon, it is a good practice to link outputs fields to the underlaying Terraform resource attributes (Tokens) while linking interface fields to known values (non-Tokens).

This implies the convention of using outputs to create implicit dependencies between beacons.

Integration testing

E.T. Beacon Bundles are validated using gruntwork-io/terratest.

A major part of building reliable beacons involves verification of `Day 2"-type operations such as:

• Renaming Environment, ... and other dimensions used for discovery, cost aggregation or infra analysis commonly required by organisations over time.
• Adding or removing properties to existing resources with clear expectations of the blast radius.

As such, the integration framework provided by E.T. provides utility functions to test for these scenarios.

Refer to integ/ for further details.