acm-server

acm-server contains the Terraform deployment files for ACM at CSUF. It uses Terraform and Nix to orchestrate cloud servers.

What is?

Terraform

Terraform is a tool that allows us to declare infrastructure as code (IaC). In other words, it allows us to declare what we want cloud providers (e.g. AWS) to do for us in code without having to touch buttons.

The entire process of orchestrating cloud servers is automated using this tool, and any changes are done on these version-controlled text files, not any UI.

Nix

Nix (used here) is a declarative package manager. Unlike any traditional package manager, Nix is used as a programming language capable of reproducing package builds in a sane manner with everything written in files.

Similarly to Terraform, Nix's input files will help us manage the servers in a more automatic fashion by allowing us to declare what we want on the servers and have everything else handled automatically.

Project Structure

acm-server has several root directories:

• nix/ contains internal Nix files, such as the sources for some of our packages.
• packages/ contains our own Nix package files.
• scripts/ contains utility scripts. See the "Quick Tasks" section.
• secrets/ contains deployment secrets such as tokens. This should never be pushed decrypted.
• servers/ contains all the files that define servers.
  • servers/base.nix is the base Nix server declaration.
  • servers/cirno/* contains the files for just the cirno server.
• main.tf declares the root Terraform module. Applying this file will deploy all of our servers.

Setting Up

You need Terraform, Nix and git-crypt to develop and deploy. It's most recommended if you have nix-shell.

For instructions on how to install Nix, see Nix > Download. It should just be one command.

To set up git-crypt, run:

git-crypt init

Afterwards, initialize the local Terraform workspace:

terraform init

Deploying

Important

The only way to deploy to our servers is via Terraform, either done locally or through GitHub Actions. Do not manually change anything on the servers without going through Terraform.

Deploy locally

To deploy locally, ensure you have Nix installed and have loaded the Nix shell. Then, run:

terraform apply

Deploy using GitHub Actions

To deploy using GitHub Actions, push to the main branch. This will trigger the GitHub Actions workflow, which will deploy the servers.

Documentation

For more detailed documentation, see the Documentation folder.