⚙️ From Code to Cloud: My DevOps + DevSecOps Journey

August 29, 2025

This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Akingbade Omosebi

Part 2 – Automating the Pipeline

In Part 1
of this series, I explained how I wanted my personal portfolio to be more than just a few HTML files sitting on GitHub Pages.

I wanted it to behave like a production-grade application: built, scanned, and deployed automatically with security woven into the process.

This is the part where things got interesting — the pipeline.

The App Itself

Let’s keep it real: my app is not a full-stack system.

It’s a portfolio website — plain and simple.

HTML for structure
CSS for styling
JavaScript for a little interactivity

That’s it.

But what made it special was how I treated it:

I Dockerized it using an NGINX base image to serve static files.
I pushed that image to AWS Elastic Container Registry (ECR).
Then, I deployed it to Azure Container Apps using Terraform.

Even though the app was static, the pipeline was dynamic.

The Pipeline Workflow

Here’s how the GitHub Actions workflow was designed:

Checkout code from GitHub
Build Docker image (NGINX serving my HTML/CSS/JS)
Tag and push the image to AWS ECR
Run security scans:
- Trivy → scan Docker image for vulnerabilities
- TFSEC → scan Terraform code
- SonarCloud → check code quality
Deploy with Terraform to Azure Container Apps

The Roadblocks

It wasn’t smooth sailing at first.
Here are some of the biggest challenges I hit:

SonarCloud Failures

Initially it was configuration issue, till i understood it clearly and passed its project key, token, and needs into Repo-Env-Secrets & Variables.
Then next; SonarCloud kept failing the Quality Gate.
Why? Because my project had no backend logic — just HTML, CSS, and JS.
That meant 0% test coverage (and SonarCloud hates that).

My fix: I kept SonarCloud in the pipeline, but marked it so failures didn’t block the build.
That way, I still got visibility on quality checks, but my deployments weren’t stopped.

2.** Docker “latest” Tag Problem**

At first, I tagged my image as latest.
The issue? If nothing in the image changed, ECR wouldn’t show a new version.
It felt like my push was “skipped,” even though the workflow ran.

My fix: I switched to unique tags using Git commit SHA.
Here is my code block for that from my actions.

docker build -t my-portfolio:${{ github.sha }} .
docker push my-portfolio:${{ github.sha }}

This way, every commit created a brand new image version in ECR.
No confusion, easy rollback.

Trivy Misconfiguration

My first Trivy scan failed with an invalid image reference error.
I had forgotten to include the repository name before the image hash.

My fix: I updated the scan step to reference the full ECR image path.
Once fixed, Trivy scanned the image and reported vulnerabilities clearly.

Terraform Secrets

Terraform needed my ECR token and Azure credentials.
Storing them in plain text was not an option.

My fix: I stored them securely in Terraform Cloud as sensitive variables. That way, I avoided exposing secrets in GitHub Actions or in my repo.

The Working Pipeline

After fixing those issues, my pipeline looked like this:

Commit to GitHub
       ↓
 GitHub Actions kicks off
       ↓
 Build Docker image (NGINX + portfolio files)
       ↓
 Push image to AWS ECR (tagged with commit SHA)
       ↓
 Run scans (SonarCloud, TFSEC, Trivy)
       ↓
 Deploy with Terraform to Azure Container Apps

And the best part? Every push = automatic build + scan + deploy.

Why This Matters

Even though my app is just static HTML/CSS/JS, the pipeline is enterprise-grade.
It shows that:

I can build CI/CD pipelines from scratch
I can integrate security tools (DevSecOps mindset)
I can work across AWS + Azure
I can solve real-world problems like failing quality gates, versioning issues, and secret management.

This is the stuff hiring managers love to see — not just “I can write code,” but “I can run a secure DevOps workflow.”

** Next Up**

In Part 3, I’ll walk through the Terraform setup and how I provisioned Azure Container Apps with IaC.

Spoiler: Terraform Cloud made my life much easier, but it came with its own surprises.

Stay tuned.