What is a Reference Architecture?
The Gruntwork Reference Architecture has been superseded by the AWS Platform Architecture component of Gruntwork AWS Accelerator. New customers should use Gruntwork AWS Accelerator for the latest best practices and features.
The Gruntwork Reference Architecture is an implementation of best practices for infrastructure in the cloud. It is an end-to-end tech stack built on top of our Gruntwork AWS IaC Library, deployed into your AWS accounts.
The Reference Architecture is opinionated, and delivered as code. It is written in Terragrunt, our thin wrapper that provides extra tools for managing remote state and keeping your configurations DRY. Our _envcommon pattern reduces the amount of code you need to copy from one place to another when creating additional identical infrastructure.
Components
The Reference Architecture has three main components — Gruntwork AWS Account Factory, Gruntwork Pipelines, and a Sample Application.
Gruntwork AWS Account Factory
Gruntwork AWS Account Factory is a Terraform-native approach to AWS Landing Zone / Control Tower. This uses Terragrunt to quickly create new AWS accounts, configure them with a standard security baseline, and defines a best-practices multi-account setup.
Gruntwork Pipelines
Gruntwork Pipelines makes the process of deploying infrastructure similar to how developers often deploy code. It is a code framework and approach that enables the customer to use your preferred CI tool to set up an end-to-end pipeline for infrastructure code.
Sample Application
Our sample application is built with JavaScript, Node.js, and Express.js, following Twelve-Factor App practices. It consists of a load balancer, a front end, a backend, a cache, and a database.