Form3 Platform Interview

🧪 Sample application

The sample application consists of three services:

┌─────────────┐     ┌──────────────┐    ┌──────────────┐
│             │     │              │    │              │
│   payment   │     │   account    │    │   gateway    │
│             │     │              │    │              │
└─────────┬───┘     └──────┬───────┘    └──────┬───────┘
          │                │                   │
          │                │                   │
          │                ▼                   │
          │         ┌──────────────┐           │
          │         │              │           │
          └────────►│    vault     │◄──────────┘
                    │              │
                    └──────────────┘

Each service connects to vault to retrieve database credentials.

The project structure is as follows:

.
├── README.md
├── Vagrantfile
├── docker-compose.yml
├── services
│   ├── account
│   ├── gateway
│   └── payment
├── tf
│   ├── main.tf

1. The tf\main.tf is the sole focus of this test.
2. The Vagrantfile and docker-compose.yml is used to bootstrap this sample application and can be ignored.
3. The services code is used to simulate a micro services architecture that connects to vault to retrieve database credentials. The code and method of connecting to vault can be ignored for the purposes of this test.

👟 Running the sample application

• make sure you have installed the vagrant prerequisites
• in a terminal execute vagrant up
• once the vagrant image has started you should see a successful terraform apply:

default: vault_audit.audit_dev: Creation complete after 0s [id=file]
    default: vault_generic_endpoint.account_production: Creation complete after 0s [id=auth/userpass/users/account-production]
    default: vault_generic_secret.gateway_development: Creation complete after 0s [id=secret/development/gateway]
    default: vault_generic_endpoint.gateway_production: Creation complete after 0s [id=auth/userpass/users/gateway-production]
    default: vault_generic_endpoint.payment_production: Creation complete after 0s [id=auth/userpass/users/payment-production]
    default: vault_generic_endpoint.gateway_development: Creation complete after 0s [id=auth/userpass/users/gateway-development]
    default: vault_generic_endpoint.account_development: Creation complete after 0s [id=auth/userpass/users/account-development]
    default: vault_generic_endpoint.payment_development: Creation complete after 1s [id=auth/userpass/users/payment-development]
    default: 
    default: Apply complete! Resources: 16 added, 6 changed, 0 destroyed.
    default: 
    default: ~

Verify the services are running

• vagrant ssh
• docker ps should show all containers running:

CONTAINER ID   IMAGE                         COMMAND                  CREATED          STATUS          PORTS                                       NAMES
94cc6d5f03bf   vagrant_account-production    "/go/bin/account"        16 minutes ago   Up 15 minutes                                               vagrant_account-production_1
0db8a7d9ba16   vagrant_payment-production    "/go/bin/payment"        16 minutes ago   Up 15 minutes                                               vagrant_payment-production_1
7c40ee590685   vagrant_gateway-production    "/go/bin/gateway"        16 minutes ago   Up 15 minutes                                               vagrant_gateway-production_1
e3a3d67b4c95   vagrant_payment-development   "/go/bin/payment"        16 minutes ago   Up 15 minutes                                               vagrant_payment-development_1
f5e64123c033   vagrant_account-development   "/go/bin/account"        16 minutes ago   Up 15 minutes                                               vagrant_account-development_1
c42e3e7193bf   vagrant_gateway-development   "/go/bin/gateway"        16 minutes ago   Up 15 minutes                                               vagrant_gateway-development_1
fb29bd20f3d0   vault:1.8.3                   "docker-entrypoint.s…"   16 minutes ago   Up 16 minutes   0.0.0.0:8201->8200/tcp, :::8201->8200/tcp   vagrant_vault-development_1
ca8c824503c4   vault:1.8.3                   "docker-entrypoint.s…"   16 minutes ago   Up 16 minutes   0.0.0.0:8301->8200/tcp, :::8301->8200/tcp   vagrant_vault-production_1

⚙️ Task

Imagine the following scenario, your company is growing quickly 🚀 and increasing the number services being deployed and configured. It's been noticed that the code in tf/main.tf is not very easy to maintain 😢.

The team would like to work on the following problems:

• Improve the terraform code to make it easier to add/update/remove services.
• Do not worry about the values in the secret files, they can be anything
• Add a new environment called staging that runs each microservice.
• Add a README detailing your design decisions
• Think about how your code would fit into a CI/CD pipeline

📝 Candidate instructions

1. Create a private GitHub repository
2. Copying all files from this repository into your new private repository
3. Complete the Task 🎉
4. Invite @form3tech-interviewer-1 to your private repo
5. Let us know you've completed the exercise using the link provided at the bottom of the email from our recruitment team