In this project, a Packer and a Terraform templates were create to deploy a customizable, and scalable Web Server on Microsoft Azure Cloud Platform.

1. Create an Azure Account
2. Install the Azure command line interface
3. Install Packer
4. Install Terraform

In order to initialize the infrastructure, there are two scenarios:

• You can start the building of the Infrastructure by either running the Policy, Packer, and Terraform codes on Azure Cloud CLI, or
• Off the Azure Cloud CLI.
• Whichever the case maybe, ensure to select the number of Virtual Machines (VM) you intend creating by modifying the count_on variable in the variables.tf file.
• NOTE: The highest number of Virtual Machines that can be specified is 3, in this scenario as we are limited by the resources provided to us by Udacity.
• If you intend to run this code on your own Microsoft Azure's account, then you can feel free to experiment with more than 3 VMs.

For Scenario one

• Initiate the Infrastructural build with this comman: sh azure_starter_and_policy.sh and press Enter key.

For Scenario two

• Open the azure_starter_and_policy.sh bash script file and uncomment the Login Section of the file and specify the parameters as requested by the code before running the command, and once that is accomplished, you can then initiate the infrastructure building like specified in Scenario one.

To have further insight on how the Packer and Terraform commands were initiated, kindly checkout the azure_starter_and_policy.sh bash script file for details, please. And in order to clean-up after building the infrastructures and creating different resources, kindly refer to the Clean-up and Maintenance section of this README file.

Clean-up and Maintenance

• When all is done and set, the resources created can be deleted and destroyed by running the bash script file named cleanUp_and_maintenance.sh thus: sh cleanUp_and_maintenance.sh.
• This operation will delete and destroy all the created resources after we are done with it.

That's all in a nutshell, Enjoy!!!

• main.tf
• variables.tf
• server.json
• requested snapshots
• solution.plan
• Other useful files