Introduction

BoardGameNerd is site for board gaming enthusiasts to see the current hotness in board games.

BoardGameNerd is an online resource and community that aims to be the definitive source for board game and card game content.

BoardGameNerd features reviews and ratings from board game nerds around the world.

BoardGameNerd would like to get a better understanding of what it would take to containerize their applications and explore container hosting options in Azure.

Comparing Container Apps with other Azure container options

Learning Objectives

• Containerize .NET Core apps
• Deploy containers with GitHub Actions to different container hosting options in Azure :
  • App Services for Containers
  • Azure Container Instances (ACI)
  • Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
  • Azure Container Apps (ACA)
• Choose the right hosting option for your containers

Projects

BoardGameNerd.Shared

Shared classes used by both the Client and the Server.

BoardGameNerd.Client

Front-end web application.

BoardGameNerd.Server

Back-end web api.

Setup

Create a Resource Group

az account set --subscription "{SUBSCRIPTION_ID}"

az group create -n "{RESOURCE_GROUP_NAME}" -l "{LOCATION}"

Create a Service Principal

See https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/architecture/devops-for-aspnet-developers/actions-deploy#create-an-spn for more information.

az ad sp create-for-rbac --name "{SERVICE_PRINCIPAL_NAME}" --sdk-auth --role owner --scopes "/subscriptions/{SUBSCRIPTION_ID}/resourceGroups/{RESOURCE_GROUP_NAME}"

{
  "clientId": "",
  "clientSecret": "",
  "subscriptionId": "",
  "tenantId": "",
  ...
}

Copy the output, this will be the value used for the GitHub secret AZURE_CREDENTIALS.

Add GitHub Secrets

In the GitHub portal add the following GitHub secrets:

• AZURE_SUBSCRIPTION_ID Your Azure Subscription ID
• AZURE_CREDENTIALS The output from the Create Service Principal step
• ENV_FILE The name of that holds the environment variables, e.g. .github/workflows/.env

You can do this in the GitHub Portal.

For more information on adding secrets see https://cli.github.com/manual/gh_secret_set.

Update .env File

Provide names for the Azure resources that will be created.

RESOURCE_GROUP_NAME=
ACR_NAME=
ACR_LOGIN_SERVER=
ACR_SERVER_IMAGE_NAME=
ACR_CLIENT_IMAGE_NAME=
STORAGE_ACCOUNT_NAME=
DEMO_APP_NAME=
LOG_ANALYTICS_WORKSPACE_NAME=
APP_SERVICE_PLAN_NAME=
APP_SERVICE_SERVER_NAME=
APP_SERVICE_CLIENT_NAME=
APP_SERVICE_APP_INSIGHTS_NAME=
APP_SERVICE_CONTAINER_SERVER_NAME=
APP_SERVICE_CONTAINER_CLIENT_NAME=
APP_SERVICE_CONTAINER_APP_INSIGHTS_NAME=
ACI_SERVER_NAME=
ACI_CLIENT_NAME=
ACI_APP_INSIGHTS_NAME=
ACA_SERVER_NAME=
ACA_CLIENT_NAME=
ACA_APP_INSIGHTS_NAME=
ACA_KUBE_ENVIRONMENT_NAME=
AKS_NAME=
AKS_NAMESPACE=
AKS_PIP_NAME=

Save and commit your changes.

Here is a diagram of the pipeline dependencies & order of operations.

Deploy Base Infrastructure

From the GitHub Portal, select Actions from the Repository screen.

Select the 01-base-infra workflow and select Run workflow.

Create GitHub Secret for Azure Container Registry Password

From the Azure Portal, Navigate to the Azure Container Registry created in the previous step.

Click Access Keys.

Copy one of the displayed passwords.

From the GitHub Portal, navigate to Secrets and add secret called ACR_PASSWORD and paste in the value copied in the previous step.

Execute GitHub Actions to Deploy Infrastructure and Code

From the GitHub Portal, select Actions from the Repository screen.

Execute the following actions one at a time:

1. Run the 02-app-service-infra workflow to deploy the infrastructure for hosting the web app & API on App Service, then run the 03-app-service-code workflow to deploy the web app & API.

2. Run the 04-containers workflow to build the web app & API images and store them in the Azure Container Registry.

3. Run the 05-app-service-container-infra workflow to deploy the infrastructure for hosting the web app & API on App Service, then run the 06-app-service-container-code workflow to deploy the web app & API.

4. Run the 07-aci-infra-and-code workflow to deploy the infrastructure for hosting the web app & API on App Service & deploy the web app & API.

5. Run the 08-aca-infra-and-code workflow to deploy the infrastructure for hosting the web app & API on App Service & deploy the web app & API.

6. Run the 09-aks-infra workflow to deploy the infrastructure for hosting the web app & API on App Service, then run the 10-aks-code workflow to deploy the web app & API.

7. Run the 11-demo-infra workflow to deploy the infrastructure for hosting the demo web app & API on App Service, then run the 12-demo-code workflow to deploy the demo web app & API.

Links

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/architecture/devops-for-aspnet-developers/actions-build
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/architecture/devops-for-aspnet-developers/actions-deploy
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/container-instances/container-instances-github-action

Thanks to https://github.com/roberto-mardeni/azure-containers-demo for the inspiration.