Terraform Workshop

This is the code for my Terraform Workshop.

Please note that I routinely make destructive changes (a.k.a git push -f) to this repository. If you wish to keep a copy around, I highly recommend you fork this, and git pull upstream judiciously.

Agenda

The place for, and benefits of "Everything as Code" alongside GitOps
Terraform's architecture
Terraform 101
- Introduction to HCL
- What are providers?
- Initializing terraform and providers
Dive right in! Creating your first resource in AWS using Terraform
Understanding references, dependencies
apply-ing terraform
Using output and data in your terraform scripts
Variables and the HCL type-system
DRY with Terraform modules
Understanding how Terraform manages state
Using S3 as a backend
Collaboration using Terraform
Terraform ecosystem, testing, and GitOps
Closing arguments, final Q/A, discussion

Setup

AWS Account Setup

I HIGHLY recommend NOT using your company (assuming you have one) account credentials for this workshop. If you do not have a personal AWS account see below on how to set it up.

Secondly, if you already have an AWS account, then please make sure you have a Default VPC. If you do not have one, see this on how to create one.

If you don't already have an AWS account, head over to https://aws.amazon.com/ and create an account
- NOTE — This account will have admin privileges, and you do not want to use this on a day-to-day basis! Store these credentials securely.
- Please look over Security Best Practices in IAM and make sure you are following best practices here (Be sure to set up MFA as well)
Once you have done that (or if you already have an admin account), then you will need to create a special user that you will use for this workshop.
Log into the AWS Console using your admin credentials and follow the steps here
- Be sure to check the Programmatic access and AWS Management Console access boxes on the first screen
- For Step No.6 — Use the Attach existing policies directly tab and search for AdministratorAccess — Use that
- (Optional) I generally Tag this user with something like Key = bot-user, Value = true
On the Success page capture
- User
- Access key ID
- Secret access key
- Password
- AWS Management Console access URL (Looks something like https://641995674308.signin.aws.amazon.com/console)
- Follow the AWS Management Console access URL and login — It will ask you to change your password. Do that.
- Use your password manager, or wherever you store credentials, and tuck the User, Access key ID, Secret access key and Password away

Once again, save ALL credentials SAFELY!

I cannot emphasize this enough! Both the admin and the newly created user have the ability to create infrastructure on your behalf. Treat these with care!

Install Terraform

Follow the steps here

Clone this repository

Go to the location where you cloned this repository
Modify 0000-setup/main.tf and modify the provider block with your Access key ID and Secret access key like so

# Be sure to use "double-quotes" around your keys
provider "aws" {
  access_key = "YOUR_AWS_KEY_ID_HERE"
  secret_key = "YOUR_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY_HERE"
  region     = "us-east-1"
}