Virtualization-Agnostic Training and Evaluation Range (VATER)
The goal of VATER is to develop an interactive range that can be utilized by students, with a focus on making the range solution resilient and sustainable in the face of anticipated changes. This range will be created using Infrastructure As Code (IAC) principles.
Infrastructure As Code
Infrastructure As Code is the managing and provisioning of infrastructure through code, either with scripts or declarative definitions, instead of through manual processes.
Some benefits of implementing with IAC design principles include:
Infrastructure automation: IAC enables speed through faster execution when configuring the infrastructure and removes the risk associated with human error, like manual configuration.
Range content maintenance: Instructors and range scenario developers make changes in one centralized location in a way that removes any ambiguity or need for interpretation on the part of those who inherit the range years down the road.
Consistent student experience: By documenting your configuration specification, IAC aids configuration management and helps avoid undocumented, ad-hoc configuration changes. As a result, students will have the same environment every time.
Theory of VATER
VATER should be a server that hosts containerized services for the automated management of virtual ranges. In a production environment, taking a content repo as a exact IAC description of the desired training environment.
VATER provides the ability to build and destroy individual vms, individual networks (students), and groups of networks (classes) as well as interact granularly with the environment.
Key VATER Components
With IAC, the IT infrastructure managed includes physical equipment, such as bare-metal servers, virtual machines, and associated configuration resources.
Ansible: can be used to describe the desired state of the infrastructure, which the tool can then provision. Ansible Automation can also be used for configuration management to maintain the systems in the desired state.
Gitea: is an open-source software package for hosting software development version control using Git as well as other collaborative features like bug tracking, wikis, and code review.
Packer: is an IAC tool that enables the developer to define a virtual machine purely in a code-based configuration file. This provides an alternative to the traditional model of building and maintaining virtual machine snapshots.
Terraform: is an IAC tool that allows the user to build, change, and version infrastructure safely and efficiently. Terraform uses a high-level configuration language in human-readable, declarative configuration files.
