Terraform with AWS Examples

Pre-requisites

An AWS Account

You will need to sign up for an AWS account. These examples are meant for Free Tier (the 12-month free trial in AWS). You will need to go in the IAM console and create a user account and download the credentials. From these credentials, you will need the Access Key ID and Secret Access Key in the next step.

AWS CLI - Windows

• Download the CLI from here: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/userguide/install-cliv2-windows.html
  

• Go into PowerShell (Run Elevated)

• Run the following command: aws configure

• Enter in your Access Key ID and Secret Access Key.

• Enter your region: us-east-1 for example

• Enter your output format: json

Git-SCM

• Install Git-SCM: https://git-scm.com/download/win

• You will now need to generate a ssh keypair with the following command in Git Bash: ssh-keygen.exe -t rsa

• You should name the keypair terraform or whatever you like. It should save two files in the .ssh directory in your home folder.

• It will save a public key called terraform.pub and a private key called terraform.

• Make sure that you modify the path of the location for your ssh public and private keys in your terraform scripts.

Terraform

• To download terraform: https://www.terraform.io/downloads.html
  

• Follow the install instructions here (Manual Install): https://learn.hashicorp.com/terraform/getting-started/install.html
  

• Make sure you set the path for your terraform.exe file. Here are some instructions: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1618280/where-can-i-set-path-to-make-exe-on-windows
  

Running Terraform Scripts

• If it is your first time running a particular terraform script, navigate to the directory to where your script is located and execute the following command in PowerShell or CMD: terraform init
  

• If you want to format your .tf file you can use the following command: terraform fmt
  

• To create the terraform plan, run: terraform plan

• To execute the terraform plan, run: terraform apply

  • Type yes at the prompt to confirm the launch of cloud resources.
    

• After you run terraform apply I recommend going into the AWS console and visually make sure that all the resources specified in your script have been launched.
  

• Always remember to destroy your resources, so that you do not get charged excessively by your cloud provider
  

  • To do this, run: terraform destroy

  • Type yes at the prompt to confirm the destroy.

• Go into the AWS console to make sure that all the resources have been destroyed