platform-code-test

A live coding to test for potential platform engineers.

Environments

Production

This is where the candidate will be working during the test, it should be destroyed and recreated between tests.

Common

This contains resources that should persist between tests, will need to be applied before the production env

Usage

Requirements

• tfenv - brew install tfenv
• pwgen - brew install pwgen

Setup

AWS creds need to be setup outside of this repo, a simple way is to use env vars like so (sample file - .aws_creds):

# File w/Access Keys
export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=""
export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=""
export AWS_REGION="eu-west-1"

Then you can source this file before running any commands.

How to Provision Pre-Interview

Before an interview (at least half an hour before) the following actions should be performed:

• Clone this repo
• Setup CLI creds
• Update the INTERVIEW_TYPE file to reflect the flavour of interview (ECS or EKS), by removing the comment on the relevant line
• Apply production infra - make tf-apply
• Create a user for the candidate - make user-generate USERNAME=[USER.NAME]
• For EKS interviews only, check that the cluster is configured correctly for the candidate:
  • Run make eks-config to generate a Kubeconfig
  • Run kubectl get po -A - all pods should be running, healthy, and not restarting.

How to Tear Down Post-Interview

Post interview everything should be taken down:

• Update the INTERVIEW_TYPE file to reflect the flavour of interview (ECS or EKS), by removing the comment on the relevant line
• IMPORTANT for Kubernetes interviews only, run this before destroying Terraform:
  • run make eks-config
  • run kubectl delete ingress platform-code-test-app -n default
• Destroy like so - make tf-destroy
• Remove candidate user - make user-delete USERNAME=[USER.NAME]

Makefile

A simple Makefile is provided for running some common commands:

Terraform

Use these commands to provision and destroy infrastructure before and after tests:

# Plan production before a test
make tf-plan
# Provision production before a test
make tf-apply
# Destroy production before a test
make tf-destroy

These commands can be applied to the common env as well:

# Run terraform cmds against the common env
make tf-plan ENV=common
make tf-apply ENV=common

Users

To create and remove a candidate the following commands are available:

# Create new user for candidate
make user-generate USERNAME=[USER.NAME]
# Delete user for candidate
make user-delete USERNAME=[USER.NAME]

It's also possible to create a new user for interviewers like so:

# Create new user for candidate
make user-generate USERNAME=[USER.NAME] INTERVIEWER=1