This project is for setting up remote development environments in AWS using EC2 and EBS. It can easily be expanded to incorporate other AWS services.

This script will setup a dedicated VPC, VPC links, instances and storage within that VPC. You will need an amazon account, and credentials stored within $HOME/.aws/credentials.

Build the docker container

All dependencies are installed via docker container and bash script. You will need, at minimum docker installed. If you want to use encrypted terraform values, then you will need sops. This run script will handle descrypting the file for you. I recommend AWS KMS for the encryption key.

docker build -t dev-env .

Build the amazon image

Once the docker image is built, you may shell into the container.

docker run --rm -it  -v <path to .aws folder>:/root/.aws -v $PWD:/workspace dev-env bash

Once inside the container you can build the development image. This image is setup for some basic depenendcies including, Ruby, NodeJS, and Docker. It is setup with SSH access and uses Google Authenticator and private keys to handle authentication. This image is built using packer, and can be customized, or new custom images can be defined and built.

cd /workspace/ami-image
packer init .
packer build -var prefix=<uniq prefix> .

# ...
# ==> Wait completed after 9 minutes 31 seconds
# ==> Builds finished. The artifacts of successful builds are:
# --> amazon-ebs.amd64: AMIs were created:
# us-west-2: ami-...

Launch the environment

Before launching the environment create a file in terraform/terraform.tfvars, or if you prefer to have an encrypted version you can create a file in terraform/secrets/<workspace>.tfvars and encrypt it using sops.

The file should look like the following, you can customize as necessary:

prefix = "<unique index>"
user = {
  ssh_key       = "<public SSH key>"
  instance_type = "t2.micro"
  volume_size   = 500
}

To launch the development environment first run a plan.

./terraform/run plan

If everything looks good apply the plan.

./terraform/run apply

# ...
# Apply complete! Resources: 32 added, 0 changed, 0 destroyed.
# Outputs:
# ip_address = "100.21.83.78"

Connect to the environment

Once the environment is up, you can connect to the environment via SSH. Upon first connection, you will be shows a QR code and emeergency codes. Scan the code and enter the initial code. You will be disconnected, just reconnect again and you're good to go.

It is recommended to use VSCode Remote SSH plugin to interact with the environment.