vultr-terraform-example

Example demonstrating how to deploy an Apache 2 instance on Vultr using terraform. This terraform deployment will create a cheap Vultr instance complete with DNS and firewall, as well as an Apache 2 installation.

Additional information can be found here:

• Terraform Registry
• Official GitHub

Information

Startup Script

Because Vultr expects the script to be passed in Base64 encoding, we can use Terraform's filebase64 functionality to automatically encode a file in base64 and pass it to this instance, like so:

resource "vultr_startup_script" "standup" {
    name = "apache2-deploy"
    script = filebase64("startup.sh")
    type = "boot"
}

The startup script is applied to the instance (referenced by id) with this line in the main instance resource:

script_id = vultr_startup_script.standup.id

SSH Keys

This terraform deployment will also add an authorized SSH key to the root account. The relevant provider is as follows, and is self-explanatory:

resource "vultr_ssh_key" "my_user" {
  name = "Root SSH key"
  ssh_key = "${file("sshkey.pub")}"
}

The SSH key is applied to the instance in the main instance provider as follows:

ssh_key_ids = ["${vultr_ssh_key.my_user.id}"]

DNS Records

The provider for DNS records creates a new DNS entry and ties it to the instance's IP address. In this provider entry, vultr_instance.web.main_ip will become the web instance's IP address as soon as terraform knows what it is.

resource "vultr_dns_domain" "my_domain" {
    domain = "example.com"
    ip = vultr_instance.web.main_ip
}

tfvars

The file terraform.tfvars contains all of the variable assignments listed in variable.tf. To obtain these values, use vultr-cli, which can be found here. We see these values applied to the main instance provider as shown below:

plan = var.plan
region = var.region
os_id = var.os
label = var.label
hostname = var.hostname

Firewall

This deployment creates a firewall group, adds rules to this group, and assigns the group to the instance. It first creates the group as follows:

resource "vultr_firewall_group" "my_firewall_grp" {
    description = "Webserver Firewall"
}

This group is then applied to the main instance:

firewall_group_id = vultr_firewall_group.my_firewall_grp.id

Output

The output provider in output.tf simply prints the instance's final IP address after the deployment is complete.

Deploying

To deploy this instance, simply issue the following commands:

terraform init
terraform plan
terraform apply