AWS VPC Creation

Overview
Installation Prerequisites
Requirements
Features
Future Enhancements
How to Install
How to Run
- Subnets and Tags
Components
Metrics

Overview

The AWS VPC Creation artifact enables users of the Itential Automation Platform to leverage the power of Amazon Web Services to create a virtual private cloud. The artifact allows users to select the desired size of the VPC by specifying the CIDR block size, as well as specify a list of public and private subnets to create within the VPC.

Estimated Run Time: 2 min.

Installation Prerequisites

Users must satisfy the following prerequisites:

Itential Automation Platform
- ^2019.3.2
App-Artifacts
- ^4.0.0
EC2 Adapter
- ^0.6.0

Requirements

This artifact requires the following:

Access to an Amazon Web Services account.
EC2 Adapter instance for the region within which to create the VPC.

Features

The main benefits and features of the artifact are outlined below.

Allows creation of a single custom sized VPC, with an allowable CIDR block size of 16 / 24 / 28. This allows for a total address space size of 65536, 256 and 16 IP addresses, respectively.
Enables creation of multiple subnets within the VPC. For each subnet the user may select a CIDR block size, availability zone, and designate the subnet as public or private. Public subnets will be connected to an internet gateway.
Provides error handling for the failed creation of subnets. This gives the user an opportunity to adjust the CIDR block size and availability zone, and retry.
Provides support for tagging all created resources with custom tags.
Shows the pre/post diffs of information gathered from all VPCs in a selected region.
Leverages AWS EC2 API, without any external dependencies like Ansible or Terraform.

Future Enhancements

In the future, this artifact may be expanded to allow the creation of multiple VPCs within multiple regions.

How to Install

To install the artifact:

Verify you are running a supported version of the Itential Automation Platform (IAP) as listed above in the Requirements section in order to install the artifact. If you do not currently have App-Artifacts installed on your server, please download the installer from your Nexus repository. Refer to the install instructions included in the App-Artifacts README.
The artifact can be installed from within App-Artifacts. Simply search for the name of your desired artifact and click the install button (as shown below).

Alternatively, you may clone this repository and run npm pack to create a tarball which can then be installed via the offline installer in App-Artifacts. Consult the documentation for App-Artifacts for further information.

How to Run

Use the following to run the artifact:

This artifact may be run from Automation Catalog by clicking Run for the AWS VPC Creation item. The user will be presented with a form to select options to customize the VPC that will be created.
Select the EC2 Adapter instance to use with the automation. The adapter instance that is selected will determine the AWS region within which the VPC will be created.
Specify the first IPv4 address for the range of addresses to associate with the VPC.
Select the CIRD block size, which may be one of three values:
- 16: 65,536 total addresses
- 24: 256 total addresses
- 28: 16 total addresses
The number of available addresses may be smaller than listed above, as AWS reserves some addresses for internal use.

Subnets and Tags

Subnets

To create a subnet, click the + button (bottom right-hand corner) of the Subnets table.

For each subnet, specify the CIDR block size. The CIDR block size may be one of three values:

16: 65,536 total addresses
24: 256 total addresses
28: 16 total addresses

Of note, the total number of addresses allocated to the VPC cannot be exceeded. For example, if the VPC has a CIDR block size of 16, then only a single subnet with a CIDR block size of 16 may be created. The created subnets will be allocated and arranged so that the address spaces do not overlap.

Select whether the subnet is to be public or private. Public subnets will be associated with a route table attached to an internet gateway, while private subnets will be associated with the default route table for the VPC.

Optionally, an availability zone may be provided for each subnet. Check the availability zone offerings for the region in which the VPC is created.

Components

The workflow for creating a VPC is broken up into child workflows for each stage of the creation process after the VPC itself has been created.

Create Subnets

This workflow will create the specified public and private subnets. The address spaces for all subnets will be allocated so as not to overlap based upon the CIDR block size.

Error Handling

If a subnet fails to be created, the user will be presented with a form pre-populated with the CIDR block size and availability zone originally specified. The user may choose to either change the CIDR block size and / or availability zone to retry, or simply ignore the error to continue with the automation.

Create Public Route Table

This workflow will create a new route table which will be associated with all created public subnets.

Create Internet Gateway

This workflow will attach an internet gateway to the previously created route table. This will allow all designated public subnets to be reachable outside of the VPC over the internet.

Create Tags

This workflow will tag all resources created throughout the automation with the provided tags.

Metrics

When the automation has finished running, the user will be provided with a diff that displays information about all VPCs in the region.

npm

@itentialopensource/aws-vpc-creation