Building "Project Nexus": A DevSecOps API Pipeline with Terraform, k3s, and GitHub Actions on AWS
A practical guide on transitioning from local Linux setups to a fully automated cloud environment. This article breaks down how to provision AWS infrastructure with Terraform and deploy a containerized API to a lightweight Kubernetes cluster.
Moving from Manual to Automated
When moving from local testing on distros like Fedora or NixOS to live AWS environments, manual configuration quickly becomes a bottleneck. To streamline this in a recent build—Project Nexus—I shifted entirely to Infrastructure as Code and automated pipelines.
The Core Architecture
Instead of clicking through the AWS Management Console, the entire setup is version-controlled and deployed via GitHub Actions. The stack relies on:
- Terraform: To provision the foundational AWS networking and compute resources reliably.
- AWS Systems Manager: To securely manage environment variables and configuration secrets without hardcoding them.
- Docker & k3s: The API is containerized with Docker and orchestrated on a lightweight k3s Kubernetes cluster, keeping overhead low while maintaining robust deployment capabilities.
Why This Matters
Building this kind of end-to-end CI/CD pipeline eliminates configuration drift and makes deployments predictable. For anyone focusing on cloud engineering or working towards an AWS Solutions Architect certification, getting hands-on with these tools provides much more value than just reading the documentation.
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