Launching my first Aws Ec2 instance with Terraform
Recently I have started working as a Sr DevOps engineer and as a part of my day 2-day work where I got a chance to work with different cloud providers and automate the boring manual task of creating and destroying resources such as VMs, Users, Storage, cloud provider configurations, etc. So, to automate the daily manual repetitive work I started my journey with one of the IAC tool named terraform.
Through this series of terraform articles, I am going to share my learning with you all. In this article we are going to create an AWS EC2 instance using terraform.
I am using VSCODE editor to write my terraform scripts and the only prerequisite for creating an instance in the aws is that you need to have a user account, so let's start with our steps to create our first EC2 instance.
Before moving to steps the i need to add one thing is that i have not included the installation part of tools needed to setup terraform, aws-cli, vscode. You all can refer youtube or any documentation link for that, but if you want me to add that part too. please do comment and let me know so i can make a seperate article on it.
Steps:-
- In the vscode editor or whichever editor you prefer, create a folder named [ec2 instance], you can add any name you want. Inside that folder create your terraform file example: - first_ec2.tf.
- Once you create the .tf file inside the file you need to add the following code.
provider "aws" {
region = "ap-south-1"
access_key = "your-access-key"
secret_key = "your-secret-key"
}To explain the above parameters let's start with the first one.
provider “aws” {} -> the provider aws is used to interact with the resources associated with aws such as iam role, users, s3.
The region,access_key,secret_key are the authentication credentials you can define in terraform.
3. Now we will add the EC2 instance details which will create a new instance for us.
resource "aws_instance" "myec2" {
ami = "ami-0d13e3e640877b0b9"
instance_type = "t2.micro"
tags = {
Name = "ec2-created-from-terraform"
}
}In the above code you can see the resource is aws_instance.
“myec2” -> you can give any name but make sure that you do not change the aws_instance as this parameter will help us to create an ec2 instance.
ami -> this is the id of amazon machine image which you select during manual instance creation. You can check the below snapshot for reference.
instance_type = “t2.micro" -> instance type that meets your computing, memory, networking, or storage needs. While manual creation of the instance below is the GUI window where we select the instance type.
4. So this is the full code in the tf file which I used to create my first ec2 instance automatically with use of terraform. Also to mention about the “tags” parameter this is the parameter using which you can give a tag to your instance, can also be called as a short name although there is no compulsion to use this parameter.
5. Now we will proceed towards the execution of the code from the terminal window.
6. Our first step is open the terminal window from the folder so that we are directed to the absolute path in which are tf scripts been located.
A small note:- My base system is Windows from which i am writing the code and executing the terraform scripts.
Run terraform init ←- this command should always run from the working directory as it initialized the current working directory consisting of the terraform configuration files and download the plugins associated with the provider. You can see below what happens when i run the terraform init command.
C:\Users\Admin\Desktop\hasicorp-terraform> terraform init
Initializing the backend...
Initializing provider plugins...
- Finding latest version of hashicorp/aws...
- Installing hashicorp/aws v5.8.0...
- Installed hashicorp/aws v5.8.0 (signed by HashiCorp)
Terraform has created a lock file .terraform.lock.hcl to record the provider
selections it made above. Include this file in your version control repository
so that Terraform can guarantee to make the same selections by default when
you run "terraform init" in the future.
Terraform has been successfully initialized!
You may now begin working with Terraform. Try running "terraform plan" to see
any changes that are required for your infrastructure. All Terraform commands
should now work.
If you ever set or change modules or backend configuration for Terraform,
rerun this command to reinitialize your working directory. If you forget, other
commands will detect it and remind you to do so if necessary.7. Once initialized now run the command terraform plan.
this command will give you a preview of what the code written in the terraform file will do, in our scenario our code will create the EC2 instance. You can check from the below output of terraform plan.
PS C:\Users\Admin\Desktop\hasicorp-terraform> terraform plan
Terraform used the selected providers to generate the following execution plan. Resource actions are indicated with the
following symbols:
+ create
Terraform will perform the following actions:
# aws_instance.myec2 will be created
+ resource "aws_instance" "myec2" {
+ ami = "ami-0d13e3e640877b0b9"
+ arn = (known after apply)
+ associate_public_ip_address = (known after apply)
+ availability_zone = (known after apply)
+ cpu_core_count = (known after apply)
+ cpu_threads_per_core = (known after apply)
+ disable_api_stop = (known after apply)
+ disable_api_termination = (known after apply)
+ ebs_optimized = (known after apply)
+ get_password_data = false
+ host_id = (known after apply)
+ host_resource_group_arn = (known after apply)
+ iam_instance_profile = (known after apply)
+ id = (known after apply)
+ instance_initiated_shutdown_behavior = (known after apply)
+ instance_lifecycle = (known after apply)
+ instance_state = (known after apply)
+ instance_type = "t2.micro"
+ ipv6_address_count = (known after apply)
+ ipv6_addresses = (known after apply)
+ key_name = (known after apply)
+ monitoring = (known after apply)
+ outpost_arn = (known after apply)
+ password_data = (known after apply)
+ placement_group = (known after apply)
+ placement_partition_number = (known after apply)
+ primary_network_interface_id = (known after apply)
+ private_dns = (known after apply)
+ private_ip = (known after apply)
+ public_dns = (known after apply)
+ public_ip = (known after apply)
+ secondary_private_ips = (known after apply)
+ security_groups = (known after apply)
+ source_dest_check = true
+ spot_instance_request_id = (known after apply)
+ subnet_id = (known after apply)
+ tags_all = (known after apply)
+ tenancy = (known after apply)
+ user_data = (known after apply)
+ user_data_base64 = (known after apply)
+ user_data_replace_on_change = false
+ vpc_security_group_ids = (known after apply)
}
Plan: 1 to add, 0 to change, 0 to destroy.
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Note: You didn't use the -out option to save this plan, so Terraform can't guarantee to take exactly these actions if
you run "terraform apply" now.8. Now we will run our final command that is terraform apply -> This will apply our desired changes and create an ec2 instance.
C:\Users\Admin\Desktop\hasicorp-terraform> terraform apply
Terraform used the selected providers to generate the following execution plan. Resource actions are indicated with the
following symbols:
+ create
Terraform will perform the following actions:
# aws_instance.myec2 will be created
+ resource "aws_instance" "myec2" {
+ ami = "ami-0d13e3e640877b0b9"
+ arn = (known after apply)
+ associate_public_ip_address = (known after apply)
+ availability_zone = (known after apply)
+ cpu_core_count = (known after apply)
+ cpu_threads_per_core = (known after apply)
+ disable_api_stop = (known after apply)
+ disable_api_termination = (known after apply)
+ ebs_optimized = (known after apply)
+ get_password_data = false
+ host_id = (known after apply)
+ host_resource_group_arn = (known after apply)
+ iam_instance_profile = (known after apply)
+ id = (known after apply)
+ instance_initiated_shutdown_behavior = (known after apply)
+ instance_lifecycle = (known after apply)
+ instance_state = (known after apply)
+ instance_type = "t2.micro"
+ ipv6_address_count = (known after apply)
+ ipv6_addresses = (known after apply)
+ key_name = (known after apply)
+ monitoring = (known after apply)
+ outpost_arn = (known after apply)
+ password_data = (known after apply)
+ placement_group = (known after apply)
+ placement_partition_number = (known after apply)
+ primary_network_interface_id = (known after apply)
+ private_dns = (known after apply)
+ private_ip = (known after apply)
+ public_dns = (known after apply)
+ public_ip = (known after apply)
+ secondary_private_ips = (known after apply)
+ security_groups = (known after apply)
+ source_dest_check = true
+ spot_instance_request_id = (known after apply)
+ subnet_id = (known after apply)
+ tags_all = (known after apply)
+ tenancy = (known after apply)
+ user_data = (known after apply)
+ user_data_base64 = (known after apply)
+ user_data_replace_on_change = false
+ vpc_security_group_ids = (known after apply)
}
Plan: 1 to add, 0 to change, 0 to destroy.
Do you want to perform these actions?
Terraform will perform the actions described above.
Only 'yes' will be accepted to approve.
Enter a value: yes
aws_instance.myec2: Creating...
aws_instance.myec2: Still creating... [10s elapsed]
aws_instance.myec2: Still creating... [20s elapsed]
aws_instance.myec2: Creation complete after 22s [id=i-0da860a00548cb469]
Apply complete! Resources: 1 added, 0 changed, 0 destroyed.
You can veriy from your EC2 instance console window if the ec2 is been created or not.
So this is how I created my first instance. See you soon in my next learning on terraform. If you feel to share your thoughts on this article or on terraform, please do comment or ping me on my LinkedIn profile.