Skip to main contentIBM Cloud Patterns

IBM Cloud Toolchain- Managed Devops for Schematics/Terraform

IBM Cloud Toolchain: Managed Devops for Schematics/Terraform

IBM Cloud Schematics uses the open source Terraform provisioning engine to do Infrastructure as Code (IaC). One of the features of IBM Cloud Schematics is the ability to link an IBM Cloud Toolchain to the Schematics workspace which will enable continious delivery. By enabling continious delivery we enable a GitOps workflow- the git source repository which holds our terraform code defines the desired state of our infrastructure/applications. Changes to this repository will trigger immediate action to adjust the actual state of our infrastructure/applications to match the updated desired state in our git repository.

For more information on Schematics workspace on IBM Cloud, visit the IBM Cloud Schematics section.

In this section we will outline the process to enable continuous delivery and GitOps for an IBM Cloud Schematics workspace.

Fork Terraform Scripts

  • Fork a copy of https://github.com/jzaccone/iac-pattern-guide/ to your own github account. You will edit this code later to trigger a kickoff of the CD pipeline

Create Schematics Workspace

  • From the upper lefthand menu, go to Schematics
Schematics Menu
  • On the Workspaces page, click Create workspace
Schematics Menu
  • Fill out values for Workspace name, Resource group, and Location. Then click Create
Schematics Menu
  • Once you create your schematics workspace, you will be redirected to the settings page. Scroll down to the Import your Terraform Template section.
  • Provide the fork you created earlier for the Github or Gitlab repository URL.
  • Select terraform_v0.12 for Terraform version
  • Click Save template information
Schematics Import

Once the page refreshes, you should see a Variables section. You will need to provide values for each of these.

  • For environment, put any value
  • For public_key, copy and paste a ssh public key that you will use to access your VSIs. For mac:
ssh-keygen -t rsa # If you need a new key
cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub # Copy and paste this value
  • Select Sensitive box next to the public_key field to treat that data as Sensitive
  • Leave port blank to keep the default 8080 port
  • Set any value for project_name
  • Click Save changes
Schematics Variables

To test your Schematics workspace, click on the Apply Plan button

Schematics Apply

You should see an update to your workspace Activity page with a new entry for Applying plan

Schematics Activity

Click View log to see the progress. Once the plan has been successfully applied, find the entrypoint to the hello world application this terraform deploys.

Schematics Logs Schematics helloworld

Enable Continuous Delivery for Schematics

Next we will enable GitOps for our schematics/terraform by enabling Continuous delivery for our workspace. GitOps is a practice that uses git source repository as the declarative source of truth for the state of our applications. Meaning that if change something in the code and commit it, a terraform apply will be triggered, and our application state will be updated.

  • To enable continious delivery for our Schematics workspace, from the workspace page, go to Settings
Schematics Settings
  • Scroll down to Details and click the link that says Enable continuous delivery
Schematics Enable CD
  • Name your toolchain, and accept the default values for everything in the GitHub section
  • Under Delivery Pipeline, add the IBM Cloud API Key you created before, or click New to generate a new one.
  • Click Create
Schematics API Key

Voila! You have a pipeline for your Schematics project. Click on Delivery Pipeline to see the different stages created for your project.

Schematics Pipeline

  • Once finished, click on the Apply Plan stage to find the logs and entrypoint to the application just as before.

Triggering a Change

Now we will change our source code to trigger a pipeline execution.

  • Find your source control repo and navigate to 02-schematics/main.tf
  • Edit “Hello World” text to say something different. Like “Hello beautiful world”
  • Commit the change

Schematics Change Source

  • Navigate back to your pipeline to see your changes taking place. You should be able to see your commit under Last Input in the Update stage.

Schematics Change Source

  • Once the Apply stage has finished, refresh the page for your app to see the deployed changes

Schematics App After

Previous
CI/CD: Cloud Toolchain- Cross-account
Next
CI/CD: Cloud Toolchain- SDLC/Tests