First Demo: Implementing Docker's Example Voting App

[ned-si]

Hey there!

We're excited to kickstart our first demo project, and we'd love to involve everyone in the planning and development process. Our choice for this demo is the example-voting-app from Docker. Here's why we think it's a great fit and some key points we'd like to discuss:

Why the Example Voting App?

• Complexity and Relevance: This app is complex enough to showcase a real-world scenario while being simple enough for educational purposes. It's a great example to demonstrate how various components of a cloud-native ecosystem can work together.
• Microservices Architecture: It's built with a microservices architecture, offering a practical insight into handling multiple services in a cloud-native environment.

Tooling Choices

• We plan to use a range of cloud-native tools to implement, deploy, and manage this application. Our goal is to demonstrate a best-practice setup.
• [List of proposed tools]:
  • GCP as provider
  • GitOps
  • Multicluster deployment
    • OpenTofu to deploy:
      • A management cluster
      • HashiCorp Vault
      • Harbor
      • Prometheus
      • Grafana
      • ArgoCD
      • Crossplane, which will deploy child clusters with:
        • The example app
        • Prometheus
        • Grafana

Other considerations:

• Port to have a nice frontend?
• GitLab for "internal" VCS?

Workflow Description

1. Local Setup: Developer uses OpenTofu locally to initiate and configure the management cluster.
2. Management Cluster: This cluster serves as the control plane, managing deployments, and operations across child clusters.
3. Code and Configuration Sync: Changes pushed to a GitHub repository trigger the GitOps workflow.
4. ArgoCD: It continuously synchronizes the deployed applications with the desired state defined in the Git repository.
5. Deployment via Crossplane: Crossplane handles the deployment of the example voting app and necessary tooling (like Prometheus and Grafana) in child clusters.
6. Monitoring and Management: Prometheus and Grafana in the management and child clusters provide monitoring capabilities, ensuring performance and reliability.

Focus on Best Practices and Security

• Best Practices: Our aim is to implement this demo adhering to cloud-native best practices, ensuring scalability, resilience, and maintainability.
• Security: While we are focusing on security best practices, our initial goal isn't to achieve compliance with highly stringent standards but to maintain a strong baseline of security measures.

Open for Suggestions and Contributions

• Your Input: What are your thoughts on this choice of demo? Are there any specific tools or technologies you'd like to see included?
• Contributions: We encourage everyone to contribute ideas, expertise, and even code. This project is an opportunity for learning and collaboration.

Next Steps

• Based on the feedback and discussions here, we will outline the development phases and tasks. Stay tuned for more updates and opportunities to contribute.

We're looking forward to your insights and contributions to make this demo a success!