Automated Container Deployment and Administration in the Cloud
This assessment focuses on the practical application of network systems administration, cloud infrastructure and automation technologies. The assignment requires students to design and implement an automated deployment process for a server running a Docker container on a cloud platform such as AWS, Azure or GCP. The assessment develops practical understanding of infrastructure automation, configuration management, containerisation and continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD). The project requires the integration of at least two automation tools from technologies such as Terraform, AWS CloudFormation, Ansible, Azure DevOps, GitHub and GitHub Actions. The first stage involves provisioning the required cloud infrastructure, including a server instance, networking components and appropriate security configurations. Students must provide Terraform scripts, CloudFormation templates or equivalent infrastructure-as-code configurations together with an architecture diagram showing the deployed resources. The second stage focuses on configuration management. Ansible or an equivalent automation tool is used to configure the server environment, including installing and configuring Docker and ensuring that the required services start automatically. Students must provide the relevant playbooks or configuration scripts and a README explaining the overall automation flow. The assessment then requires students to containerise a sample web application using a Dockerfile and automate the deployment of the resulting Docker container to the provisioned cloud server. A CI/CD pipeline must also be implemented using Azure DevOps or another suitable CI/CD platform. The pipeline should automatically build and deploy the Docker container whenever changes are pushed to a version-control repository such as GitHub. The final stage requires comprehensive technical documentation and reflection on the complete automation process. Students must document the different phases of deployment, explain the rationale for the selected tools, discuss alternative solutions and identify the challenges encountered and how they were addressed. The final report must include a detailed architecture diagram, a GitHub repository containing the required scripts and configurations, and a working link to a demonstration video of the end-to-end deployment. The technical report should be approximately 2,000–2,500 words and include a title page, summary, introduction, main content, conclusions, references and appropriate appendices. The report should use Times New Roman 12-point font with 1.5 line spacing, clear headings, diagrams or flowcharts where appropriate, and Harvard referencing. The assessment is evaluated through the demonstration, report quality and reusable deployment artifacts, with the marking scheme allocating 40% to the demo, 50% to report quality and 10% to artifacts.
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