Deploying Data as Code (Delphix + Terraform + Amazon RDS)

Architecture diag from delphix.

Last year Delphix blogged about how the Dynamic Data Platform can be leveraged with Amazon's RDS (link here).  Subsequently, they released a knowledge article outlining how the solution can be accomplished (link here).

I thought I would take the work I have been doing in developing terraform plugin and create a set of blueprints that could easily deploy a working example of the scenario. I also took that a step further and created some docker containers that would package up all of the requirements to make this as simple as possible.

This demonstration requires the Delphix Dynamic Data Platform and Oracle 11g. You will need to be licensed to use both.

TLDR;

1. Build the packer template delphix-centos7-rds.json via the instructions found here:  https://github.com/delphix/packer-templates
2. Via terraform, build the blueprints found here:  https://github.com/delphix/delphix-terraform-blueprints-rds

Walk Through

This example automates the deployment of the solution described in KBA1671

This example requires that you posses the proper privileges in an AWS account, access to Oracle 11g software, and access to version 5.2 of the Delphix Dynamic Data Platform in AWS.

Consult https://github.com/delphix/delphix-terraform-blueprints-rds details on the prerequisties.

Automation products used:

• Ansible
• Packer
• Terraform
• Docker
• Delphix Dynamic Data Platform

Building the AMI

In this example, we will be using a simple configuration using Oracle 11g as the backend. 

We will first create an Amazon AMI that is configured with Oracle 11g and ready to use with Delphix.

We will build the image using a docker container running Packer and Ansible.

We will follow the instructions here to build the delphix-centos7-rds.json template

We will be using the cloudsurgeon/packer-ansible docker container to build our ami.

See the full description on https://hub.docker.com/r/cloudsurgeon/packer-ansible for usage details.

1. First we clone the repo, then navigate into the directory.
2. Next, copy the .example.docker file to .environment.env and edit the values to reflect our environment
3. Now we run the docker container against the delphix-centos7-rds.json template to create our AMI.
   Details of the command:
   
   • docker run – invoking docker to run a specified container
   
   
   • --env-file .environment.env –passing in a file that will be instantiated as environment variables inside the container
   • -v pwd:/build – mount the current working directory to /build inside the container
   • -i - run the container in interactive mode
   • -t – run a seudo tty
   • cloudsurgeon/packer-ansible:latest - use the latest version of this image
4. When the container starts, it will download the necessary Ansible roles required to build the image.
   
   
5. After downloading the Ansible roles, the container executes Packer to start provisioning the infrastructure in AWS to prepare and create the machine image. This process can take around 20 minutes to complete. 

Build the Demo environment with Terraform

Now that we have a compatible image, we can build the demo environment.

1. First we clone the repo, then navigate into the directory.
2. Next, copy the .example.docker file to .environment.env and edit the values to reflect our environment.
3. See the Configuring section of the README for details on the variables.
4. We will be using the cloudsurgeon/rds_demo docker container to deploy our demo environment. See the full description on https://hub.docker.com/r/cloudsurgeon/rds_demo for usage details.
   
5. run the rds_demo container to initialize the directory.
   docker run — env-file .environment.env -i -t -v $(pwd):/app/ -w /app/ cloudsurgeon/rds_demo init
6. run the rds_demo container to build out the environment.
   Details of the command:
   • docker run – invoking docker to run a specified container
   • --env-file .environment.env – passing in a file that will be instantiated as environment variables inside the container
   • -v $(pwd):/app – mount the current working directory to /app inside the container
   • -w /app/ - use /app as the working directory inside the container 
   • -i - run the container in interactive mode
   • -t – run a seudo tty
   • cloudsurgeon/rds_demo:latest – use the latest version of this image
   • apply –auto-approve – pass along the apply flag to terraform and automatically approve the changes (avoids typing yes a few times)

This is repo is actually a set of three terraform blueprints that build sequentially on top of eachother, due to dependencies.

The sequence of automation is as follows:

Phase 1 - Build the networking, security rules, servers and RDS instance. This phase can will take around 15 minutes to complete, due to the time it takes AWS to create a new RDS instance

Phase 2 - Configure DMS & Delphix, Start the DMS replication task.

Phase 3 - Create the Virtual Database copy of the RDS data source.

Using the Demo

Once phase_3 is complete, the screen will present two links. One is to the Delphix Dynamic Data Platform, the other link is to the application portal you just provisioned.

1. Click the “Launch RDS Source Instance” button. The RDS Source Instance will open in a new browser tab.
2. Add someone, like yourself,  as a new employee to the application
3. Once your new record is added. Go back to the application portal and launch the RDS Replica Instance
4. You are now viewing a read-only replica of our application data. The replica is a data pod running on the Delphix Dynamic Data platform. The data is being sync’d automatically from our source instance in RDS via Amazon DMS.
   
5. Go back to the application portal and launch the Dev Instance.
   The backend for the Dev Instance is also a data pod running on the Delphix Dynamic Data Platform
   It is a copy of the RDS replica data pod.
   Notice we don’t see our new record.
   That is because we provisioned this copy before we entered our new data.
   If we want to bring in the new data, we just need to simply refresh our Dev data pod.
   While we could definitely easily do that using the Dynamic Data Platform web interface, let’s do it via terraform instead.
   
6. In the terminal, we will run our same docker command again, but with a slight difference in the end. 
   This time, instead of apply --auto-approve, we will pass phase_3 destroy –auto-approve
   Details of the new parts of the command:
   • phase_3 – apply these actions only to phase_3
   • destroy – destroy the assets 
   • --auto-approve – assume ‘yes’
   
   
   Remember, phase_3 was just the creation of our virtual copy of the replica. By destroying phase_3, Terraform is instructing the DDP to destroy the virtual copy.
   
7. If you login to the DDP (username delphix_admin/password is in your .environment.env file), you will see the dataset being deleted in the actions pane.
8. If you close and relaunch the Dev Instance from the application portal again, you will see that the backend database is no longer present.
   
   
   
9. Now we run our Docker container again with the apply command. And it rebuilds phase_3
   
   
   
10. If you close and relaunch the Dev Instance from the application portal again, you will see that the backend database is present again and this time includes the latest data from our environment.
    
11. When you are finished playing with your demo, you can destroy all of the assets you created with the following docker command:
    docker run --env-file .environment.env -i -t -v $(pwd):/app/ -w /app/ cloudsurgeon/rds_demo destroy -auto-approve
12. It will take about 15-20 minutes to completely destroy everything.