DEV Community

Cover image for Terraform: Enviroment Setup
marvintowett
marvintowett

Posted on

Terraform: Enviroment Setup

#30dayterraformchallenge #eveops #awsusergroupkenya #terraform

Today is day 2 of the 30 Day Challenge actually day 3 of the challenge i seem to have slacked a bit but we are here for the task: Environment setup.
In todays task we are going to cover the following:

  1. Set Up AWS Account
  2. Install and Configure the AWS CLI
  3. Install Terraform
  4. Connect Terraform to AWS

These are our matching orders and we are going to tackle them one after the other ensuring that i show you each and every step while explaining exactly what is happening as simple as i can get.

SETUP AWS ACCOUNT

In order to create this account you will need to have:

  • valid email address
  • phone number for verification
  • credit or debit card (for this series we will not exceed the free tier. best believe we will not fall prey to AWS charges only if you follow my guide step by step -- also terraform address resource creation and management to mitigate running unused resource that may be forgotten in the event of clickOps)

REGISTRATION STEPS

  1. Go to AWS Sign-Up page: visit url https://aws.amazon.com and click Create AWS Account
  2. Enter Root Email and Account Name
  3. Verify Your Email
  4. Set a Strong Root Password
  5. Enter Contact Information
  6. Verify Your Identity
  7. Choose a Support Plan

INSTALL AND CONFIGURE AWS CLI

In order for terraform to authenticate it use's AWS CLI's credentials. Below are the steps to configure it.

Install AWS CLI

macOS

# Using Homebrew 
brew install awscli

# Verify installation
aws --version
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Linux (ubuntu/Debian)

# Download and install 
curl 'https://awscli.amazonaws.com/awscli-exe-linux-x86_64.zip' -o 'awscliv2.zip' unzip awscliv2.zip sudo ./aws/install

 # Verify 
 aws --version
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Windows

Download the MSI installer from https://aws.amazon.com/cli/ and run the installer, then verify in

aws --version
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

CONFIGURE AWS CLI

  • We shall head over to AWS and navigate to IAM.
  • Here we shall navigate to Users.
  • Where we are going to click on Create user

  • Enter a username and select checkbox - Provide user access to the AWS Management Console
  • You will then proceed to Set Permissions
  • Select Attach policies directly
  • In the Permissions Policies add AdministratorAccess

  • Click Create User and you will be given a password that you will need to save to be used later on.
CREATE ACCESS KEYS
  • Select you created user in the Users list
  • Click Create access key in the Summary box or Select Security credentials and scroll to Access Keys
  • Select Command Line Interface under use case

  • add description and confirm
  • you will be shown the in the next view Access key and Secret Access key that you will save.

CONFIGURE AWS CLI

  • Run command below to configure CLI 
  aws configure
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode
  • You will be prompted with the following 
AWS Access Key ID [None]: AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE 
AWS Secret Access Key [None]: wJalrXUtnFEMI/K7MDENG/bPxRfiCYEXAMPLEKEY 
Default region name [None]: us-east-1 
Default output format [None]: json
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode
  • Verify configs 
aws sts get-caller-identity
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Note: your credentials will be stored in two files on your machines

  • ~/.aws/credentials — stores your keys
  • ~/.aws/config — stores region and output format

INSTALL TERRAFORM

Once you have successfully installed and configured AWS CLI we will proceed with the start of the show Terraform.
In order to install terraform run the commands below

macOS

brew tap hashicorp/tap
brew install hashicorp/tap/terraform
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Linux

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y gnupg software-properties-common

wget -O- https://apt.releases.hashicorp.com/gpg | \
  gpg --dearmor | \
  sudo tee /usr/share/keyrings/hashicorp-archive-keyring.gpg

echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/hashicorp-archive-keyring.gpg] \
  https://apt.releases.hashicorp.com $(lsb_release -cs) main" | \
  sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hashicorp.list

sudo apt update && sudo apt install terraform
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Windows - use chocolatey (recommended)

choco install terraform
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Confirm installation:

terraform -version

You should see something like: 
 Terraform v1.7.5 on linux_amd64
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

CONNECT TERRAFORM TO AWS

First of all you are almost done this is where the magic happens. Connecting Terraform to AWS.
We are going to create an EC2 instance on amazon using terrafrom.

  1. Create a new project on visual studio.
  2. Create a file called main.tf and add the following code 
    provider "aws" {
     region = "us-west-2"
    }

    resource "aws_instance" "name-example" {
        ami = "ami-0735c191cf914754d"   
        instance_type = "t3.micro"

    }
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

The above code creates a simple instance of a linux box in the region us-west-s.
Note: different regions have different resource id so if you change the region you will need to search the corresponding ami

The table below shows the command you need to run to initialize and create an instance on AWS

Command Description
terraform init Initialize a working directory
terraform plan Preview changes before applying
terraform apply Apply the infrastructure changes
terraform destroy Tear down all managed resources
terraform fmt Format your .tf files
terraform validate Check config for errors

Now we you head over to AWS you will see you instance initalized and running

Just like that you have created your first instance programatically!

i'll see you on Day 3

Part of the #30DayTerraformChallenge | #Terraform | #IaC | #HashiCorp | #AWSUserGroupKenya | #EveOps

Top comments (0)