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MakendranG
MakendranG

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🚀 Deploying AWS Infrastructure with Pulumi: Secrets, Security & Automation!

#devchallenge #pulumichallenge #webdev #cloud

This is a submission for the Pulumi Deploy and Document Challenge: Shhh, It's a Secret!

Pulumi AWS Infrastructure as Code (IaC) Setup

What I Built

This project automates AWS infrastructure provisioning using Pulumi and Python. It sets up an Amazon RDS instance, an S3 bucket, and security groups, following best practices for managing secrets and configurations.

Demo

Project Repo

📂 GitHub Repository

The repository includes:

  • Pulumi configuration and secrets management
  • AWS infrastructure code for RDS, S3, and Security Groups
  • Step-by-step setup instructions

My Journey

Challenges Faced

  1. Managing AWS credentials securely - Resolved using Pulumi secrets.
  2. Ensuring modularity - Organized infrastructure into separate Python files.
  3. Handling provider conflicts - Used a single AWS provider instance.
  4. Fixing dependency issues - Ensured pulumi_aws was installed correctly.

Key Learnings

  • Using Pulumi Config to store and retrieve secrets securely.
  • Automating resource provisioning using Python modules.
  • Troubleshooting errors with pulumi logs and pulumi refresh.

Using Pulumi ESC

This project utilizes Pulumi ESC (Environment Secrets Configuration) to securely manage AWS credentials and database passwords. The pulumi config set command ensures sensitive values remain encrypted.

Pulumi Copilot Assistance

Prompts used:

  • "How to store secrets in Pulumi securely?"
  • "Best way to structure a Pulumi project with multiple AWS resources?"
  • "How to resolve provider mismatch errors in Pulumi?"

How to Deploy This Project

1️⃣ Create and Initialize the Project 

mkdir esc-challenge && cd esc-challenge
pulumi new aws-python -y
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2️⃣ Clone and Setup Infra Code 

git clone https://github.com/MakendranG/pulumi-aws-iac.git
mv pulumi-aws-iac/infra .
rm -rf pulumi-aws-iac
echo 'import infra.main' > __main__.py
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3️⃣ Configure Pulumi Secrets 

pulumi config set dbPassword 'my-secret-password' --secret
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4️⃣ Deploy the Infrastructure 

pulumi refresh
pulumi preview
pulumi up
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5️⃣ Connect to RDS Instance

Once pulumi up successfully completes, retrieve the RDS endpoint using:

pulumi stack output RDSInstanceEndpoint
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Then connect using MySQL:

mysql -h <your-rds-endpoint>.com -u admin -p
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Next Steps

✅ Explore Pulumi Automation API for further automation.

✅ Implement Pulumi ESC best practices for multi-environment deployments.

✅ Share insights in a technical blog post on Dev.to.

Thanks for reading! 🚀 Let’s keep building!

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