๐งช Rapid-Provisioning with Aria Assembler: Disposable Infrastructure at Scale
A few months back, I found myself with some rare downtime—so naturally, I returned to experimenting with Aria Assembler’s more advanced provisioning capabilities. There’s something elegant about temporary infrastructure that fulfills its purpose and then disappears. The concept: build what’s needed, let it serve, and allow Aria to automate its own teardown.
๐ฏ Use Case
My first goal was to develop a disposable environment that end-users could spin up at will and retire just as easily. By letting Aria handle both provisioning and decommissioning, we eliminate orphaned resources and ensure clean exits.
⚙️ What This Template Does
- Creates a new
/28
subnet for isolation (approx. 14 usable IPs) - Deploys a Windows virtual machine with elastic scaling configured
- Places a load balancer in front of the VM for basic traffic distribution
This ephemeral environment lives for the duration of its TTL (time-to-live). Once expired, Aria deletes all associated components without human intervention.
๐งฑ Prerequisites
- AWS Cloud Account and Project: Ready and authorized for resource deployment.
- Custom Network Profile: Tagged for unique network constraints:
project:projectname
andnetwork:Dynamic28
- Isolation Policy: On-demand network
- Network Domain: AWS default VPC
- External Subnet: selected from a
/20
block - Subnet Size:
/28
- Image and Flavor Profiles: Configured to deploy a Windows-based VM
๐ ️ Suggestions for Making It Functional
This is a concept template, but here’s how it could evolve:
- Add Security Groups: Ensure appropriate access controls and network protection.
- Add Inputs
: Introduce dynamic variables (e.g., project name, image type) for repeatable deployments. - Auto-Tag Resources: Help with auditability and lifecycle tracking.
- Lifecycle Hooks: Optional alerts or logic before deletion.
๐ Why Disposable Infrastructure Matters
Ephemeral environments like these promote resource efficiency, sandbox agility, and cleaner cloud hygiene. With Aria handling both launch and sunset operations, teams can iterate rapidly while maintaining control and governance.
Thinking about scaling this concept further? I’ve got a few ideas, maybe a series around intelligent disposability, runtime flexibility, and audit-forward automation.
<code>
'formatVersion': 1
inputs: {}
resources:
front-end-load_balancer1:
type: Cloud.LoadBalancer
properties:
internetFacing: false
network: ${resource.dynamic-network.id}
instances: ${resource["web_vm"].id}
routes:
- protocol: HTTP
port: '80'
instanceProtocol: HTTP
instancePort: '80'
healthCheckConfiguration:
protocol: HTTP
port: '80'
urlPath: /index.pl
intervalSeconds: 60
timeoutSeconds: 30
unhealthyThreshold: 5
healthyThreshold: 2
web_vm:
type: Cloud.Machine
properties:
image: Windows 2022
flavor: t3.small
constraints: # tags define multiple projects, might break if associated with both.
- tag: project:MyAriaProject
- tag: az:a
autoScaleConfiguration:
policy: Metric
minSize: 1
maxSize: 10
desiredCapacity: 1
metricScaleRules:
- action:
type: ChangeCount
value: -2
cooldown: 60
trigger:
metric: CPUUtilization
period: 60
operator: LessThan
statistic: Average
threshold: 3
evaluationPeriods: 1
- action:
type: ChangeCount
value: 2
cooldown: 60
trigger:
metric: CPUUtilization
period: 60
operator: GreaterThan
statistic: Average
threshold: 1
evaluationPeriods: 3
networks:
- network: ${resource.dynamic-network.id}
securityGroups: []
dynamic-network: # network profile will create a /28 subnet, see profile for where.
type: Cloud.Network
properties:
networkType: private
name: esw-dyna-app
tags:
- key: placement
value: new-dynaNetwork
- key: deployment
value: ${env.deploymentName}
constraints:
- tag: project:MyAriaProject
- tag: network:Dynamic28
</code>