Terraform

What is Terraform?

Terraform is a tool for building, changing, and versioning infrastructure safely and efficiently. Terraform can manage existing and popular service providers as well as custom in-house solutions. Configuration files describe to Terraform the components needed to run a single application or your entire datacenter.

# Configure the AWS Provider
terraform {
  required_providers {
    aws = {
      source  = "hashicorp/aws"
      version = "~> 4.16"
    }
  }
  required_version = ">= 1.2"
}

provider "aws" {
  region = "us-west-2"
}

# Create a VPC
resource "aws_vpc" "main" {
  cidr_block           = "10.0.0.0/16"
  enable_dns_hostnames = true
  enable_dns_support   = true

  tags = {
    Name = "main-vpc"
  }
}

# Create an Internet Gateway
resource "aws_internet_gateway" "main" {
  vpc_id = aws_vpc.main.id

  tags = {
    Name = "main-igw"
  }
}

# Create a subnet
resource "aws_subnet" "public" {
  vpc_id                  = aws_vpc.main.id
  cidr_block              = "10.0.1.0/24"
  availability_zone       = "us-west-2a"
  map_public_ip_on_launch = true

  tags = {
    Name = "public-subnet"
  }
}

# Create an EC2 instance
resource "aws_instance" "web" {
  ami           = "ami-0c02fb55956c7d316"
  instance_type = "t2.micro"
  subnet_id     = aws_subnet.public.id

  tags = {
    Name = "web-server"
  }
}

# Output the public IP
output "instance_public_ip" {
  value = aws_instance.web.public_ip
}
                

Key Features

• Infrastructure as Code: Define infrastructure using declarative configuration files
• Execution Plans: Preview changes before applying them
• Resource Graph: Build a graph of all resources and parallelize creation/modification
• Change Automation: Apply complex changesets with minimal human interaction
• Multi-Cloud: Support for multiple cloud providers and services
• State Management: Keep track of resource metadata and improve performance
• Modules: Reusable configurations for common infrastructure patterns

Career Impact

Learning Path

1. Learn cloud computing basics
2. Understand Infrastructure as Code concepts
3. Practice with Terraform syntax (HCL)
4. Master state management
5. Learn modules and best practices
6. Explore advanced features and providers