scottylogan/terraform1-code

Terraform Tutorial

This is a short tutorial on using Terraform with AWS. It assumes some basic knowledge of Terraform.

Requirements

You'll need an [Amazon Web Services account][https:/aws.amazon.com/), the AWS CLI, Git, and Terraform.

You'll also need something to edit Terraform files, preferably with some syntax highlighting, etc. Some plugins / modes / extensions for common editors:

• Atom
• Emacs
• JetBrains Editors (IntelliJ IDEA, PyCharm, WebStorm, PhpStorm, etc.)
• Nano
• Sublime Text 3
• TextMate
• VIM
• Visual Studio Code

Tools Setup

You'll need to install some tools before starting this tutorial:

• aws - the Amazon command line client is useful for configuring AWS profiles, credentials, and options
• git - version (source code) tool
• jq - command line JSON tool
• terraform - command line tool for managing infrastructure resources

Mac Setup

• Install Homebrew
• Use Homebrew to install Terraform, the AWS CLI, jq, and a newer version of git

% brew update
% brew install awscli git jq terraform

Linux Setup

1. Install curl, git, groff, jq, pip3 (Python3), and unzip

   • APT based

     % sudo apt-get update
     % sudo apt-get install curl git groff jq python3-pip unzip

   • YUM based

     % sudo yum update
     % sudo yum install curl git groff-base jq python3-pip unzip

   • Alpine

     % sudo apk update
     % sudo apk add curl git groff jq python3 unzip

2. Install the AWS CLI

   % sudo pip3 install awscli

3. Install Terraform

   % cd /usr/local/bin
   % curl -so /tmp/terraform.zip https://releases.hashicorp.com/terraform/0.12.26/terraform_0.12.26_linux_amd64.zip
   % sudo unzip /tmp/terraform.zip
   % rm /tmp/terraform.zip

   • You can find the latest version of Terraform for 64 bit Linux at https://releases.hashicorp.com/terraform/

Windows Setup

I rarely use Windows, but here are some starting points

• GUI or CLI Git client
• AWS CLI
• Terraform
• jq

AWS Setup

You should create a Terraform IAM User in your AWS account, and grant that user full admin rights. This video shows the steps to take in the AWS Console to create a new IAM user with credentials and the correct policy:

1. Create new IAM user (called terraform)
2. Attach the AdministratorAccess policy to the user
3. Create and download credentials for the user