Dale's Interview Challenge

A Django web application deployed on AWS EKS using Terraform for infrastructure management. Features a one-click deployment script that provisions infrastructure with Terraform, builds and pushes Docker images from your local machine, and deploys the application to Kubernetes.

I chose Django as the front-end because it is a relatively batteries-included framework and is in Python since I likely know that best. I have worked with Vue, Next, and React with TypeScript in the past but that would require a lot more upfront work in a situation where I do not need to be extensible.

The oneclick.sh script was written to be as easy to use as possible, with safeguards around pre-run checks and validation. It could very easily be ported to run in CI/CD on any major platform and broken up in to seperate steps. From my testing, the script is able to recover from failures in execution mainly due to TerraForms resilience; the rest of the steps are mostly idempotent or are simply re-run such as the Docker image build.

Integrating with ECR was a no-brainer, if this were production I would use a better tagging scheme but in this case I simply want the latest to run.

For the EKS cluster, I manually configured the basic required addons from what I've seen and used in my production clusters. There are more configurations I would want to do around the metrics, logging, and observability but since we're not integrating it with anything else at this stage it's unnecessary.

Features

• Django 5.2 - Modern Python web framework
• AWS EKS - Managed Kubernetes cluster with auto-scaling
• Terraform IaC - Complete infrastructure as code
• One-Click Deployment - Automated build, push, and deploy
• ECR Integration - Private Docker registry with lifecycle policies
• ALB Ingress - AWS Load Balancer Controller for external access

Prerequisites

Required Tools

• Docker - For building container images
• Terraform (>= 1.13.3) - Infrastructure provisioning
• AWS CLI - AWS authentication and operations

AWS Requirements

• AWS account with appropriate permissions:

  • VPC, EC2, EKS
  • ECR (Elastic Container Registry)
  • IAM roles and policies
  • Application Load Balancer

• AWS CLI configured with credentials:

  aws configure

Quick Start: One-Click Deployment

The oneclick.sh script handles everything from infrastructure provisioning to application deployment.

Deploy Everything

./oneclick.sh

What it does:

1. Validates prerequisites (Docker, Terraform, AWS CLI)
2. Provisions AWS infrastructure (VPC, EKS cluster, ECR repository)
3. Builds Docker image for linux/amd64
4. Pushes image to ECR with unique timestamp tag
5. Deploys application to Kubernetes
6. Waits for ALB to be ready (up to 5 minutes)
7. Outputs the application URL

Expected output:

Checking prerequisites...
Verifying AWS credentials...
Stage 1: Provisioning infrastructure...
[Terraform output showing infrastructure changes]
Building and pushing Docker image...
Deploying application to Kubernetes...
[Terraform output showing deployment changes]
Waiting for ALB (up to 5 minutes)...
Application URL: http://k8s-default-interview-xxxxx.us-west-2.elb.amazonaws.com

Destroy Everything

./oneclick.sh --delete

What it does:

1. Removes Kubernetes workloads (deployment, service, ingress)
2. Empties ECR repository (deletes all images)
3. Destroys all AWS infrastructure (EKS, VPC, subnets, etc.)

Alternative flags:

./oneclick.sh -d
./oneclick.sh delete
./oneclick.sh --destroy
./oneclick.sh destroy

Local Development

Run Django Locally

cd django-site
./run-local-django.sh

This script:

• Creates a Python virtual environment
• Installs dependencies from requirements.txt
• Collects static files
• Starts Django development server on http://127.0.0.1:8000

Manual Local Setup

cd django-site/interview_challenge
python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate
pip install -r ../requirements.txt
python manage.py collectstatic --noinput
python manage.py runserver

Build Docker Image Locally

cd django-site
docker build -t interview-challenge:latest .
docker run -p 8000:8000 interview-challenge:latest

Access at http://localhost:8000

Infrastructure Details

AWS Resources Created

• VPC - 10.0.0.0/16 with public/private subnets across 3 AZs
• EKS Cluster - Kubernetes 1.33 with managed node group
• ECR Repository - Private Docker registry with lifecycle policies
• ALB - Application Load Balancer via AWS Load Balancer Controller
• IAM Roles - Service accounts and node permissions
• Security Groups - Network access controls

Terraform Configuration

Default configuration (in terraform/terraform.tfvars):

• Region: us-west-2
• Node Instance Type: t3.medium
• Node Group Size: 1-3 nodes (desired: 2)
• EKS Version: 1.33

To customize, edit terraform/terraform.tfvars before running oneclick.sh.

Kubernetes Resources

• Deployment: 1 replica, 256Mi-512Mi memory, 250m-500m CPU
• Service: ClusterIP on port 80 → container port 8000
• Ingress: ALB with internet-facing scheme, HTTP on port 80
• Probes: Liveness and readiness checks on /

Manual Operations

Access the EKS Cluster

aws eks update-kubeconfig --region us-west-2 --name interview-challenge-eks
kubectl get pods
kubectl get ingress

View Application Logs

kubectl logs -l app=interview-challenge

Scale the Deployment

kubectl scale deployment interview-challenge --replicas=3

Update Application

After making code changes:

./oneclick.sh

The script automatically:

• Builds a new image with a unique timestamp tag
• Pushes to ECR
• Updates the Kubernetes deployment (triggers rollout)

Check Deployment Status

kubectl get deployment interview-challenge
kubectl rollout status deployment/interview-challenge

Application Pages

• Home (/) - Welcome page with feature cards
• About (/about/) - Project information and technology stack

Testing

Test Django Application

cd django-site/interview_challenge
source venv/bin/activate
python manage.py test

Validate Terraform

cd terraform
terraform validate
terraform fmt -check

Technology Stack

Application

• Django 5.2.7 - Web framework
• Gunicorn 23.0.0 - WSGI server
• WhiteNoise 6.11.0 - Static file serving

Infrastructure

• Terraform ~> 1.13.3 - Infrastructure as Code
• AWS EKS - Managed Kubernetes
• AWS ECR - Container registry
• AWS VPC - Network isolation
• AWS ALB - Load balancing

Kubernetes

• Deployment - Application workload
• Service - Internal networking
• Ingress - External access via ALB
• Helm - AWS Load Balancer Controller