Building a scalable learning platform

Behind the scenes of how we built a scalable learning platform on Google Cloud Platform, with Terraform and Kubernetes.

Transcript

1. Building a scalable learning platform “how to make scaling the cloud’s problem” instruqt
2. I like building and learning new things, and sharing knowledge with others. ERIK VELD 2 instruqt
3. Founder of instruqt, focussing mostly on the technical side. ERIK VELD 3 instruqt
4. What is instruqt? 4 instruqt
5. Hands-on challenges that build skills on DevOps and cloud. WHAT IS INSTRUQT 5 instruqt
6. Each user gets real infrastructure to complete the challenges in. WHAT IS INSTRUQT 6 instruqt
7. Solutions are validated against the user infrastructure. WHAT IS INSTRUQT 7 instruqt
8. Enough talking, demo time. 8 instruqt
9. 9 DEMO PLATFORM
10. HOW IT STARTED 10 2016 2017 2018 HashiConf EU instruqt
11. 11 instruqt
12. 12 instruqt
13. HOW IT STARTED 13 2016 2017 2018 HashiConf EU HashiConf US instruqt
14. 14 instruqt
15. HOW IT STARTED 15 2016 2017 2018 HashiConf EU HashiConf US Google Cloud Next instruqt
16. 16 instruqt
17. HOW IT STARTED 17 2016 2017 2018 HashiConf EU HashiConf US Google Cloud Next Current iteration instruqt
18. How did we build this platform? 18 instruqt
19. HOW IT IS BUILT 19 Google Cloud Platform Terraform Golang instruqt
20. Entirely on Google Kubernetes Engine. GOOGLE CLOUD PLATFORM 20 instruqt
21. GKE gives us resilience, isolation, service discovery and scaling for free. GOOGLE CLOUD PLATFORM 21 instruqt
22. Everything as a service from Google. GOOGLE CLOUD PLATFORM 22 instruqt
23. GOOGLE CLOUD PLATFORM 23 more Container Registry Datastore Kubernetes Engine Cloud SQL Cloud PubSub Cloud Storage Compute Engine Cloud Functions Firebase instruqt
24. GOOGLE CLOUD PLATFORM 24 more Container Registry Datastore Kubernetes Engine Cloud SQL Cloud PubSub Cloud Storage Compute Engine Cloud Functions Firebase instruqt
25. GOOGLE CLOUD PLATFORM 25 more Container Registry Datastore Kubernetes Engine Cloud SQL Cloud PubSub Cloud Storage Compute Engine Cloud Functions Firebase instruqt
26. Terraform manages our platform and all of the services we use. TERRAFORM 26 instruqt
27. TERRAFORM 27 Describe what the desired state is, don’t worry about how it’s achieved. instruqt
28. GOLANG 28 With the small footprint and fast start time we scale in seconds not minutes. instruqt
29. GOLANG 29 With many interdependencies, a monorepo solves a lot of problems. instruqt
30. Tool inception. 30 instruqt
31. Let’s take a look behind the scenes. 31 instruqt
32. Terraform creates environments on the fly, inserting variables where needed. BEHIND THE SCENES 32 instruqt
33. 33 DEMO BEHIND THE SCENES
34. BEHIND THE SCENES 34 > PODS SERVICES CONFIG SECRETS PROXY TRACK NAMESPACE OTHER INFRA instruqt
35. Any container will work, platform dependencies are injected at runtime. BEHIND THE SCENES 35 instruqt
36. # The volume is mounted in the pod from a git repository. volume { name = "bootstrap" git_repo { repository = "https://url-to-git-repo/bootstrap.git" } } volume_mount { name = "bootstrap" mount_path = "/opt/bootstrap" } # Wait until the volume is mounted, then execute the setup script. args = ["until [ -d /opt/bootstrap/ ]; do sleep 1; done; /opt/bootstrap/setup.sh"] 36 instruqt
37. Because terraform stores the state of each user environment, cleanup is easy. BEHIND THE SCENES 37 instruqt
38. 38 DEMO BEHIND THE SCENES
39. How does terraform know what to build? 39 instruqt
40. The SDK creates a skeleton, which is then filled out and sent to the pipeline. TRACK PIPELINE 40 instruqt
41. 41 DEMO CONTENT CREATION
42. Golang templates generate terraform code that creates user environments. TRACK PIPELINE 42 instruqt
43. # The variables that need to go into the template. data := struct { Containers Container }{ … } # Create the destination file. f, err := os.Create(outputPath) # Parse the templates. t := template.New(templateName) _, err = t.ParseFiles(inputPath) # Execute the template with the data. for _, tmpl := range t.Templates() { tmpl.ExecuteTemplate(f, tmpl.Name(), data) } 43 instruqt
44. # Loop over the containers in the config.yml file. {{range .Containers}} resource "kubernetes_replication_controller" "{{.Name}}" { spec { template { container { name = "{{.Name}}" image = "{{.Image}}" } # Etc. } } } {{- end}} 44 instruqt
45. 45 DEMO GENERATOR
46. Because of Container Builder we do not have to run a build server anymore. TRACK PIPELINE 46 instruqt
47. 47 DEMO CONTAINER BUILDER
48. The platform and build pipeline are scalable. The challenge is scaling ourselves. LESSONS LEARNED 48 instruqt
49. Stand on the shoulders of giants and use this to focus on your product. 49 LESSONS LEARNED instruqt
50. Migrating to a different cloud provider is not as much work as you might think. LESSONS LEARNED 50 instruqt
51. 51 Thank you! Erik Veld @erikveld instruqt.com