Automated Infrastructure Provisioning

Automated Infrastructure Provisioning

At TT Global Consulting, we use Terraform and Ansible to fully automate how infrastructure is created, configured, and maintained — both for our own environments and for clients. This approach replaces manual setup with code-driven provisioning, ensuring consistency, security, and traceability across every environment. Infrastructure changes are planned, reviewed, and deployed through GitLab CI/CD pipelines, the same way we handle application releases.

# Use Cases Oct. 23, 2025 Author: Tom

The Problem We Solve

Environment setups often drift over time, causing inconsistencies and failed deployments
Manual configuration across multiple cloud consoles increases human error and slows delivery
Teams lack a single, reliable source of truth for infrastructure and system settings
Meeting security and compliance requirements is hard without clear, auditable change history

Our Approach

  • Terraform builds your cloud foundation — networks, servers, databases, and storage — all defined as version-controlled code.
  • Ansible takes over once the infrastructure is live, installing packages, securing systems, and configuring applications automatically.
  • Pipelines in GitLab or Jenkins manage every change through plan, review, and deploy stages with required approvals.
  • Secrets are stored safely in Vault, SSM, or environment variables, following the principle of least privilege.
  • State is stored remotely and locked, ensuring consistent and conflict-free deployments across all environments.

Architecture at a glance

  • Git mono-repo or split repos
    • /envs/{dev,staging,prod}: per-environment variables and backend config
    • /modules/*: reusable Terraform modules (vpc, k8s, vm, rds, cdn)
    • /ansible/{inventories,roles,playbooks}: inventories map to Terraform outputs
  • CI/CD stages
    1. Validate & Lint → terraform fmt/validate, ansible-lint
    2. Plan → store plan artifact, require approval for prod
    3. Apply → apply plan with state lock
    4. Configure → Ansible against fresh inventory from Terraform outputs
    5. Smoke tests → health checks and CIS spot checks
  • Observability: basic logs/metrics wired on day one

What You Get (Deliverables)

  • Production-ready Terraform modules tailored to your cloud
  • Ansible roles for baseline hardening, Docker/Podman, Nginx, PostgreSQL, app runtime
  • GitLab or Jenkins pipeline with plan-review-apply, drift detection, and environment promotion
  • Remote state backend with locking and retention
  • Access model and RBAC for infra changes
  • Runbooks: “Add a service,” “Rotate secrets,” “Disaster recovery”
  • Compliance pack: change history, approvals, and tagging standards

Implementation Plan

Phase 0 — Discovery (2–3 days)
Current infra map, compliance constraints, desired environments

Phase 1 — Foundations (1–2 weeks)
Backend state, core networking, IAM model, golden image or hardened base OS

Phase 2 — Services (1–2 weeks)
App VMs or Kubernetes cluster, data stores, ingress, object storage, CDN as needed

Phase 3 — Configuration & Hardening (3–5 days)
Ansible roles, secrets wiring, baseline CIS checks

Phase 4 — CI/CD Integration (3–5 days)
Plans, approvals, policy as code, smoke tests, documentation

Phase 5 — Handover (1–2 days)
Pair-drives, training session, backlog for future iterations

Measurable Outcomes

  • Provisioning time: days → hours
  • Change lead time: >1 week → <1 day for non-prod, <2 days for prod
  • Drift incidents: ad-hoc → detected via terraform plan in scheduled pipelines
  • Compliance evidence: manual → automatic through MR history and pipeline logs
  • Rollbacks: risky → reproducible with versioned plans and inventories

Security and Compliance Guardrails

  • Separate state and workspaces per environment
  • Least-privilege service accounts with short-lived tokens
  • Secrets never in repos; templated at deploy time
  • Tagging and cost allocation on every resource
  • Policy checks (e.g., required encryption, no public S3, restricted CIDRs)

FAQ

Why both Terraform and Ansible?
Terraform handles infrastructure lifecycle. Ansible handles system and app configuration. Together they eliminate drift.

Will this work on OpenStack as well as AWS?
Yes. We target your provider’s official Terraform modules and adapt Ansible roles to your images.

Do we need Kubernetes?
Not required. Many teams start with hardened VMs, then graduate to K8s using the same pipeline patterns.

What about costs?
We tag all resources and can add budgets with alerts. Terraform plans make changes explicit before spend occurs.

Optional Add-Ons

  • Policy as Code with Open Policy Agent or Checkov
  • Golden AMIs with Packer
  • Blue-green or canary infrastructure promotions
  • Secrets management with HashiCorp Vault

Pricing & Packaging (indicative)

  • Starter (2 weeks): Single environment, core modules, baseline roles, CI plan/apply
  • Growth (4–5 weeks): Dev/Staging/Prod, data services, observability, policy checks
  • Enterprise (6–8 weeks): Multi-account/tenant landing zone, K8s, SSO, advanced compliance

Ready to replace manual builds with fully automated version-controlled provisioning?

Let’s scope your Terraform + Ansible rollout for your target cloud and timeline.

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