Use the Terraform provider

The Constellation Terraform provider allows to manage the full lifecycle of a Constellation cluster (namely creation, upgrades, and deletion) via Terraform. The provider is available through the Terraform registry and is released in lock-step with Constellation releases.

Prerequisites

• a Linux / Mac operating system (ARM64/AMD64)
• a Terraform installation of version v1.4.4 or above

Quick setup

This example shows how to set up a Constellation cluster with the reference IAM and infrastructure setup. This setup is also used when creating a Constellation cluster through the Constellation CLI. You can either consume the IAM / infrastructure modules through a remote source (recommended) or local files. The latter requires downloading the infrastructure and IAM modules for the corresponding CSP from terraform-modules.zip on the Constellation release page and placing them in the Terraform workspace directory.

1. Create a directory (workspace) for your Constellation cluster.

mkdir constellation-workspace
cd constellation-workspace

2. Use one of the example configurations for using the Constellation Terraform provider or create a main.tf file and fill it with the resources you want to create. The Constellation Terraform provider documentation offers thorough documentation on the resources and their attributes.
3. Initialize and apply the Terraform configuration.

Azure

When creating a cluster on Azure, you need to manually patch the policy of the MAA provider before creating the Constellation cluster, as this feature isn't available in Azure's Terraform provider yet. The Constellation CLI provides a utility for patching, but you can also do it manually.

terraform init
terraform apply -target module.azure_iam # adjust resource path if not using the example configuration
terraform apply -target module.azure_infrastructure # adjust resource path if not using the example configuration
constellation maa-patch $(terraform output -raw maa_url) # adjust output path / input if not using the example configuration or manually patch the resource
terraform apply -target constellation_cluster.azure_example # adjust resource path if not using the example configuration

Optionally, you can prefix the terraform apply command with TF_LOG=INFO to collect Terraform logs while applying the configuration. This may provide helpful output in debugging scenarios.

Use the following policy if manually performing the patch.

version= 1.0;
authorizationrules
{
    [type=="x-ms-azurevm-default-securebootkeysvalidated", value==false] => deny();
    [type=="x-ms-azurevm-debuggersdisabled", value==false] => deny();
    // The line below was edited to use the MAA provider within Constellation. Do not edit manually.
    //[type=="secureboot", value==false] => deny();
    [type=="x-ms-azurevm-signingdisabled", value==false] => deny();
    [type=="x-ms-azurevm-dbvalidated", value==false] => deny();
    [type=="x-ms-azurevm-dbxvalidated", value==false] => deny();
    => permit();
};
issuancerules
{
};

AWS

Initialize the providers and apply the configuration.

terraform init
terraform apply

Optionally, you can prefix the terraform apply command with TF_LOG=INFO to collect Terraform logs while applying the configuration. This may provide helpful output in debugging scenarios.

GCP

Initialize the providers and apply the configuration.

terraform init
terraform apply

Optionally, you can prefix the terraform apply command with TF_LOG=INFO to collect Terraform logs while applying the configuration. This may provide helpful output in debugging scenarios.

4. Connect to the cluster.

terraform output -raw kubeconfig > constellation-admin.conf
export KUBECONFIG=$(realpath constellation-admin.conf)

Bringing your own infrastructure

Instead of using the example infrastructure used in the quick setup, you can also provide your own infrastructure. If you need a starting point for a custom infrastructure setup, you can download the infrastructure / IAM Terraform modules for the respective CSP from the Constellation GitHub releases. You can modify and extend the modules per your requirements, while keeping the basic functionality intact. The module contains:

• {csp}: cloud resources the cluster runs on
• iam/{csp}: IAM resources used within the cluster

When upgrading your cluster, make sure to check the Constellation release notes for potential breaking changes in the reference infrastructure / IAM modules that need to be considered.

Cluster upgrades

tip

Also see the general documentation on cluster upgrades.

The steps for applying the upgrade are as follows:

1. Update the version constraint of the Constellation Terraform provider in the required_providers block in your Terraform configuration.
2. If you explicitly set any of the version attributes of the provider's resources and data sources (e.g. image_version or constellation_microservice_version), make sure to update them too. Refer to Constellation's version support policy for more information on how each Constellation version and its dependencies are supported.
3. Update the IAM / infrastructure configuration.
   • For remote addresses as module sources, update the version number inside the address of the source field of the infrastructure / IAM module to the target version.
   • For local paths as module sources or when providing your own infrastructure, see the changes made in the reference modules since the upgrade's origin version and adjust your infrastructure / IAM configuration accordingly.
4. Upgrade the Terraform module and provider dependencies and apply the targeted configuration.

  terraform init -upgrade
  terraform apply