Merge pull request #31 from helpfulengineering/document-procedure-for-provisioning-aws-accounts

Going ahead and merging.  Will add some additional details regarding other groups once created.

Author: imonthercks

documentation/howto-provision-aws-accounts.md

@@ -0,0 +1,89 @@
+# Howto: Provision AWS Accounts
+
+This document describes how to provision AWS accounts within the Helpful Engineering organization.  This procedure
+will focus on the accounts for a project, but should apply fairly generally.
+
+Ironically, Control Tower does not have good automation support.  This procedure will be performed in the AWS console. 
+
+## Steps
+
+### Preparation
+
+Prepare to provision the account by
+
+* determining the 'official' name of the project, its Helpful Engineering Slack channel, and the project leaders' Slack 
+handles
+* asking the project team leads and DevOps team liaison whether the project has network dependencies that require a VPC  
+* logging into the AWS SSO portal and verify you can use the `AWSAdministratorAccess` role of the `he-master` account; 
+if you do not have this role, request assistance in the `#skill-software-devops` slack channel
+
+### Provision
+
+Log in to the `he-master` account with the `AWSAdministratorAccess` role.
+
+Navigate to the [Control Tower console](https://us-east-2.console.aws.amazon.com/controltower/home?region=us-east-2).
+
+Switch to the `us-east-2` region if you are not already there.  Note: Control Tower and the underlying Service Catalog
+and CloudFormation services and account management resources are region-specific.  The necessary Service Catalog 
+resources will not be found outside of `us-east-2`.
+
+Select the 'Account Factory' option in Control Tower's left-hand navigation.
+
+If the project requires a VPC, you will need to edit the factory's network configuration.  Click 'Edit.'  
+
+First, increase the VPC address range's second octet by 1.  For example `172.17.0.0/16` should be 
+incremented to `172.18.0.0/16`. The intended result is to provision non-overlapping /16-sized VPCs for each account.
+
+Second, select one and only one region to deploy the VPC into.  Prefer the following regions:
+
+* North America: US East Ohio (`us-east-2`)
+* Europe: EU Ireland (`eu-west-1`)
+* Asia: Asia Pacific Sydney (`ap-southeast-2`)
+
+Now, save the configuration.
+
+Construct the AWS account name from one of the following forms, all lower case: 
+
+* project delivery account: `he-project-<project name>-<env name>`.  For example, the account for the 
+'Monitoring O2' project's development environment is: `he-project-monitoring-o2-dev`
+* another use case: `he-<usecase>`.  For example the sandbox's name is `he-sandbox2`
+
+Back at the 'Account Factory' screen, click 'Quick Account Provisioning'.
+
+Configure the account's root user email to the devops team email address plus the AWS account name: `devops+he-project-<project name>-<env name>@qualimente.com`
+
+Configure the display name to the AWS account with `<project name>-<env name>`.
+
+Set the AWS SSO user name to first name 'Admin', last name '`<project name>`'
+ 
+Select the 'Project Delivery' OU for a project delivery account, Custom otherwise.
+
+Click 'Create Account'.
+
+WAIT.
+
+Wait until the account creation is done before trying to provision another account.  Control Tower can only provision
+one account at a time and concurrent executions will fail.
+
+Consider getting a beverage or taking a nap because account provisioning takes 20-40 minutes with Control Tower.
+
+All done?  Let's see!
+
+Navigate to the 'Accounts' section and check for a 'Ready' State for the newly provisioned account.   
+
+### Provision Team Access to the Account
+
+Navigate to the [AWS SSO console](https://us-east-2.console.aws.amazon.com/singlesignon/home?region=us-east-2#/dashboard).
+
+Switch to the `us-east-2` region if you are not already there because AWS SSO is region-specific.
+
+Create `he-<project name>-admins` and `he-<project name>-developer` groups in SSO if they do not already exist.  Assign
+the DevOps liaison and project leaders to the admins group.  Assign all project team members that need access to the 
+developer group. 
+
+### Communicate
+
+Jump into the project team's slack channel and tell the project leaders the accounts have been created.
+ 
+Tell the project team how to login via AWS SSO.
+