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Table Of Contents

Getting Started with Terraform - Second Edition

By : Kirill Shirinkin

2.7 (3)

Buy this Book

Getting Started with Terraform

2.7 (3)

By: Kirill Shirinkin

Buy this Book

Overview of this book

Terraform is a tool used to efficiently build, configure, and improve the production infrastructure. It can manage the existing infrastructure as well as create custom in-house solutions. This book shows you when and how to implement infrastructure as a code practices with Terraform. It covers everything necessary to set up the complete management of infrastructure with Terraform, starting with the basics of using providers and resources. It is a comprehensive guide that begins with very small infrastructure templates and takes you all the way to managing complex systems, all using concrete examples that evolve over the course of the book. The book ends with the complete workflow of managing a production infrastructure as code—this is achieved with the help of version control and continuous integration. The readers will also learn how to combine multiple providers in a single template and manage different code bases with many complex modules. It focuses on how to set up continuous integration for the infrastructure code. The readers will be able to use Terraform to build, change, and combine infrastructure safely and efficiently.

Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Free Chapter

Infrastructure Automation

What is Infrastructure as Code and why is it needed?

Declarative versus procedural tools for Infrastructure as Code

Infrastructure as Code in the Cloud

Requirements for infrastructure provisioner

Which tools exist for infrastructure provisioning?

A short overview of Terraform

Journey ahead and how to read this book

Summary

Deploying First Server

History of Terraform

Preparing work environment

The many Terraform providers

Short introduction to AWS

Using Elastic Compute Cloud

Configuring AWS provider

Creating an EC2 instance with Terraform

Working with state

Handling resource updates

Destroying everything we've built

Summary

Resource Dependencies and Modules

Creating an AWS Virtual Private Cloud

Understanding dependency graph

Playing with Terraform graphs

Controlling dependencies with depends_on and ignore_changes

Making sense of our template

Removing duplication with modules

Configuring modules

Retrieving module data with outputs

Using root module outputs

Summary

Storing and Supplying Configuration

Understanding variables

Configuring data sources

Exploring Terraform configuration resources

Taking a quick look at Consul

Summary

Connecting with Other Tools

Returning data with outputs

Testing servers with Inspec

Provisioners

Reprovisioning machines with null_resource

Using third-party plugins

Summary

Scaling and Updating Infrastructure

Counting servers

Bringing in high availability

Load balancing and simulating conditionals

Immutable infrastructure

Baking images with Packer

Rolling out AMI upgrades with Terraform

Performing blue-green deployments

Refreshing infrastructure

Importing resources

Summary

Collaborative Infrastructure

Version control with Git 101

Moving templates to Git

Protecting secrets in a Git repository

Storing state files remotely

Connecting remote states together

Storing modules remotely

Locking state files with Terragrunt

Moving infrastructure updates to the CI pipeline

Integration testing of Terraform modules

Summary

Future of Terraform

Infrastructure as code and Terraform replacements

Learning AWS and compiling Terraform

Learning Consul

Provisioning and configuration management

Immutable infrastructure

Collaboration and CI/CD

The many tools around Terraform

The rapid development of Terraform

Closing thoughts on the future of Terraform

Summary

Creating an AWS Virtual Private Cloud

Perhaps one of the best features of AWS is Virtual Private Cloud (VPC).

In essence, VPC is a virtual network that you can divide into subnets. Some subnets can be public (with access to the internet), and some are private. You can define routing between subnets, and by default, they can freely access each other. You can also create VPN to your VPC, add NAT gateways, manage DHCP options, and define ACLs for your networks. VPC is a complex service with many subtools and options. For our purpose, we will use only a subset of them though.

Typical use case for VPC: Keeping publicly accessible web servers in public subnets and database servers in private ones, and enabling a secure connection between cloud resources and on-premise machines.

Security groups are also a part of AWS VPC. With security groups, you can define inbound and outbound firewall...

Tech Concepts

Programming languages

Tech Tools