This GitHub repository contains multiple use cases of working with Terraform to provision Amazon EC2 instances. Specific Git branches separate these use cases. To read more about that, click here.
Just because an application is hosted on a virtual machine does not mean that installing software, enabling features, and converting it to a useable component of an environment has to happen manually and, in the process, take longer. Over the last few years, I have learned of a few tools like Terraform that would help manage a cloud resource (like Amazon EC2) with a few lines of HCL code. But what after that? Merely provisioning a virtual machine is not enough. Without installing specific software and/or enabling certain features (I’m talking about Windows OS here), the provisioned virtual machine won’t be usable.
That is when UserData comes into the picture.
User data is the answer to automating all (or as much as possible) the manual steps applied once an Amazon EC2 is provisioned to host an application.
I have supporting documentation on my note at: working-with-aws-ec2-user-data-and-terraform
I installed terraform before I worked on this repository. Installation information is available in the install guide.
I used the access_key and the secret_key of an IAM user that had permission to create all the resources managed via this terraform code.
I created a terraform.tfvars file to store them.
I created an Amazon EC2 key pair (format: pem) for Windows Instance by following the guidance at -create ec2-key-pair.
Ensure that the IAM user whose credentials are being used in this configuration has permission to create and manage all the resources that are included in this repository.
Review the code, especially the user_data.tpl file to understand the idempotent approach towards every step, whether it is creating a folder, renaming the virtual machine or installing a windows feature.
Next, run terraform init
Then run terraform plan
And finally run terraform apply
There are ten other branches in this repository discussing other use-cases:
This code is released under the Unlincse License. See LICENSE.