Setup on Amazon Web Services
We recommend creating a new subaccount, so that AWS billing gives an easy insight into the costs, and also so our engineers don't have overly broad access to your other infrastructure.
Amazon's documentation for subaccounts is at https://docs.aws.amazon.com/organizations/latest/userguide/orgs_manage_accounts_create.html.
Aspect will need to share our terraform module and base AMI with your org.
We'll need your AWS account ID, as well as the role you use to run terraform operations like plan and apply.
Granting permissions
First, we need to grant permission for Aspect engineers to perform setup and maintenance.
Create a role to hold our policies. You can do this in Terraform, or in the AWS console:
Navigate to IAM > Roles > Create role
- Select trusted entity
- Trusted entity type: AWS account
- Another AWS account:
302232432727 - Require MFA: enable (our engineers are required to use multi-factor auth)
- Add permissions: search for the following policies and add them:
- CloudWatchLogsReadOnlyAccess
- AutoScalingConsoleReadOnlyAccess
- Name, review, and create
- One choice for the name is
aspect-workflows-comaintainers. We'll need to know the name in order to assume the role.
- One choice for the name is
If Aspect engineers will perform the terraform apply then we need more permissions:
Permissions required for terraform apply
Create an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) (optional)
Aspect Workflows runs on EC2 instances, not Kubernetes pods. Therefore the base image uses an AMI. We provide one that has our dependencies, and if your build is fully hermetic, this will work fine.
This bit of terraform can be used to locate our AMI at plan/apply-time:
# Find the AMI shared from the Aspect account.
data "aws_ami" "aspect_worker_ami" {
most_recent = true
# Owner is aspect-build AWS org
owners = ["302232432727"]
filter {
name = "name"
# Replace XXX with one of gha, cci, bk
values = ["aspect-ci-XXX-worker-*"]
}
}
If your build is not hermetic, for example some C++ dynamic-linked library needs to be on the machine, you can use Packer to make a reproducible build of a custom AMI.
More docs on packer coming soon.
Add the terraform module
Our terraform module is currently delivered in an S3 bucket. You add it to your existing Terraform setup.
Here's an example:
module "aspect_workflows" {
# Replace 5.x.x with an actual version:
source = "s3::https://aspect-artifacts.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/5.x.x/workflows/terraform-aws-aspect-workflows.zip"
customer_id = "MyCorp"
vpc_id = data.terraform_state.outputs.circleci_vpc.vpc_id
vpc_subnets = [data.terraform_state.outputs.circleci_vpc.private_subnets[0]]
# Replace XXX with one of gha, cci, bk
hosts = ["XXX"]
# Define Bazel states we know how to warm up
warming_sets = {
default = {}
}
resource_types = {
"default" = {
instance_type = "i4i.xlarge"
image_id = data.aws_ami.aspect_worker_ami.id
}
}
# Replace XXX with one of gha, cci, bk
XXX_runner_groups = {
default = {
max_runners = 10
min_runners = 0
resource_type = "default" # Corresponds to a resource_types entry above
warming = true
warming_set = "default" # Corresponds to a warming_sets entry above
...
}
default-warming = {
max_runners = 1
min_runners = 0
resource_type = "default" # Corresponds to a resource_types entry above
policies = {
# "default" key in warming_management_policies corresponds to a warming_sets entry above
warming_manage : module.aspect-workflows.warming_management_policies["default"].arn
}
...
}
}
}
Applying custom security groups to runners
It might be required to add custom security groups to the runners that are managed by Aspect workflows.
This can be achieved by setting the security_groups attribute on the runners or queue configuration object.
This is a map from string -> AWS Security Group ID (the name is not currently used by Workflows).
runners = {
default = {
...
security_groups = {
vpn_access : aws_security_group.vpc_access.id
}
...
}
}
Allowing Aspect read-only support access
The Workflows module exposes an IAM policy document that provides read-only access to key logs, metrics and configuration values. This policy document can be used to create a new IAM policy and role attachment to provide Aspect engineers the read only access.
Specifically, the policy defined in this document allows:
- Read / List on all
/awSSM parameter store keys - Describe on all ASGs and their associated instances and the scaling activity
- Get on log streams and log events with the
aw_prefix - SSM access to running instances and port forwarding for Grafana
For example, it could be extended via:
data "aws_iam_policy_document" "support" {
source_policy_documents = [
module.aspect-workflows.support_policy.json
]
statement {
...
}
}
Or attached directly to an IAM policy:
resource "aws_iam_policy" "aspect_support" {
name = "AspectSupportReadPolicy"
description = "Allows read only access to areas of Aspect Workflows required for support"
policy = module.aspect-workflows.support_policy.json
}
SSM access must be enabled on the aspect-workflows module to allow SSM access via the support policy.
Allowing SSM access
By default, SSM access to all running instances is disabled. To enable access, set the following on the aspect-workflows
module.
enable_ssm_access = true
Alerting
- Navigate to AWS Console > AWS Secrets Manager > Secrets,
- Locate the key starting
aw_pd_routing_key_ - Set the value to a PagerDuty Integration Key provided by Aspect.
Alternatively, you can supply the value using Terraform. We expose the AWS Secrets Manager Secret Id via an output from the Workflows terraform module.
resource "aws_secretsmanager_secret_version" "this" {
secret_id = module.aspect-workflows.pagerduty_routing_secret_id
secret_string = "my-value"
}
The secret_string value should be supplied using whatever mechanism you already use for managing secrets.
Cost allocation tagging
To tag all resources created by the Workflows module with cost allocation tags, default tags can be set on the AWS provider that is passed to the module. Workflows also supports overriding the default cost allocation tag, and its value.
provider "aws" {
alias = "workflows"
default_tags {
tags = {
(module.workflows.cost_allocation_tag) = module.workflows.cost_allocation_tag_value
}
}
}
module "workflows" {
providers = {
aws = aws.workflows
}
# To override the values of the cost allocation tag and tag value
cost_allocation_tag = "MyCustomCostAllocationTag"
cost_allocation_tag_value = "MyCustomCostAllocationTagValue"
}
To apply additional tags to build resources, see the section below.
Adding custom tags to build resources
It may be required to add custom tags to the instances that are running builds, for example for security auditing or cost tracking.
To add additional tags to any EC2 resources Workflows creates from the ASGs to run builds, set the tags attribute on the resource:
resource_types = {
"default" = {
...
tags = {
CustomTag : "CustomValue"
}
}
}
Adding additional tags to builds resource is not yet supported on Buildkite agents
These tags will always propagate to the runners, in addition to the existing cost allocation tag settings.
Apply
Run terraform apply, or use whatever automation you already use for your Infrastructure-as-code such as Atlantis.
You'll get a resulting infrastructure like the following:
Next steps
Continue by choosing which CI platform you plan to interact with, and follow the corresponding installation steps.