Creating environments in the Modernisation Platform
Overview
In the Modernisation Platform, we define environments (AWS accounts) via a JSON file in the environments directory of the Modernisation Platform repository.
When we receive your request we will create a new JSON file and submit a pull request to the Modernisation Platform repository. On merging the Modernisation Platform will automatically provision your environments. Each environment defined represents an AWS account, see the example below for more information.
Requesting an environment
To request a new environment, simply create an issue using the New Modernisation Platform Environment template.
This issue will go into the Modernisation Platform backlog and be prioritised along with other issues. Normally new environment requests are taken into the next sprint (we work in 2 week sprints) and once picked up are completed within a day. You can see which sprint your issue has been assigned to on the issue, and follow progress once it is in a sprint here
This will ask you for the following information:
Application name
Please follow MoJ guidance for naming things
The name must be in lowercase and a maximum of 30 characters. If you need to use a separator use -.
SSO group name
This is the name of the Identity Center group used for SSO, which can be a GitHub team name that will be accessing the environment. Environments are accessed via single sign-on (SSO), so to give people permissions to access your environment you just have to add them to your GitHub team.
Users who are not part of the MoJ GitHub organisation will need to be added as collaborators separately once the account has been created. Please contact the Modernisation Platform team to do this.
If you wish to add additional deployment reviewers from outside your GitHub team you can specify these per an environment in the application.json file (See: “additional_reviewers” in Another example for an example).
GitHub code owner team slug
By default members of the GitHub team/s specified can both access the AWS environments and approve pull requests to release changes.
If required you can separate the permissions so that a different GitHub team acts as a code owner, this way PRs will require a review from this team before changes are released.
GitHub action reviewers team slug
By default all teams listed in the access blocks for an environment can approve the corresponding GitHub action runs.
If required you can separate the permissions so that a different GitHub team is the approver. In this case all Github action runs requiring approval, such as terraform applies, will need to be approved by a member of the team provided.
Access
This is the level of access for the GitHub team to the Modernisation Platform. A full list of permissions for the different access levels can be found here (previously within bootstrap/delegate-access) You can read documentation on available roles here.
Environment name
Which environments you wish to use, we provide core networking for up to 4 accounts as standard. Usually, two environments per application will be enough, a production account and a development account.
- development
- test
- preproduction
- production
As these environments are identical, and controlled via code, we would recommend you try to use as few environments as possible. We can provide more environments if there is a genuine need for them.
Tags
These will be used to tag your AWS resources, for further guidance on tagging please see here
The is-production tag will be inferred if the environment is production.
| tag | value |
|---|---|
| application | Find a solicitor |
| business-unit | LAA |
| owner | find-a-solicitor@ministryofjustice.gov.uk |
Valid business-unit values HQ,HMPPS,OPG,LAA,HMCTS,CICA,Platforms,CJSE
For the “owner” tag, we will contact you periodically using this address to confirm whether it and any other contact details remain current. If they have changed, please do let us know as soon as possible.
Additional features
In addition to the core networking provided, you can request bastion access, additional VPC endpoints, extended DNS zones or an isolated network environment.
See creating networking for more information on additional features.
Architecture
You can view our architecture for Environments (AWS accounts) on the dedicated Environments (AWS accounts) architecture page, which also explains what you get by doing this.
Example JSON files
Here are some examples of the environments JSON file that the Modernisation Platform team will create.
Schema
account-typedetermines if this is a core modernisation platform account or a user member account.isolated-networkis an optional field which can be set to ‘true’ if you require an isolated environment with no internet or shared network connectivity.codeownersis an optional list of GitHub slugs if you want specific teams to review code changes before they are released into environments. It is NOT generally used. Compare the Blank example with Another example below, to see it is unused.environmentsshould be an array of objects for environments required. If the environment isproduction, retention periods, backup frequency, and similar will be different compared to non-production environments.- the
namekey andaccessobject are required, see: Another example github_action_revieweris an optional true/false for each team listed and determines if the team should be the approver for GitHub action runs.- the
nukekey is optional and is only read if theaccess.levelissandbox. tagsshould be an object of the mandatory tags defined in the MoJ Tagging Guidance. You can omitis-productionas we infer this from the environment name. Note that theinfrastructure-supporttag must contain a valid email address.
Blank example
filename: application-name.json
{
"account-type": "",
"isolated-network": "",
"codeowners": [""],
"environments": [
{
"name": ""
"access": [
{
"sso_group_name": "",
"level": "",
"nuke": "",
"github_action_reviewer": "true"
}
]
}
],
"tags": {
"application": "",
"business-unit": "",
"infrastructure-support": "",
"owner": ""
},
"github-oidc-team-repositories": [""],
"go-live-date": ""
}
Another example
An JSON definition for a nonsensical application called glados, that needs two environments: development with sandbox permissions and production, and want to give the GitHub team glados-team access to each environment. If a develoment account with sandbox permissions has no nuke key defined, it will automatically be wiped on a weekly basis. The nuke value of rebuild indicates that the development account will be automatically rebuilt from code after it is nuked.
filename: glados.json
{
"account-type": "member",
"environments": [
{
"name": "development",
"access": [
{
"sso_group_name": "glados-team",
"level": "sandbox",
"nuke": "rebuild"
}
],
"additional_reviewers": ["GitHubUsername1", "GitHubUsername2"]
},
{
"name": "production",
"access": [
{
"sso_group_name": "glados-team",
"level": "view-only"
}
],
"additional_reviewers": ["GitHubUsername3", "GitHubUsername4"]
}
],
"tags": {
"application": "GLaDOS",
"business-unit": "Platforms",
"infrastructure-support": "aperture-science@digital.justice.gov.uk",
"owner": "GLaDOS (Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System): aperture-science@digital.justice.gov.uk"
},
"github-oidc-team-repositories": [""],
"go-live-date": ""
}
This will provision two AWS accounts, which will be called: glados-development, and glados-production.