Chapter 1: Setting Up the AWS Environment

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has changed the way we do system administration. Think of a pre-cloud era where if we planned to set up a new data center, it would go through a month of planning, which would involve choosing the location, ordering hardware, setting up the networking infrastructure (such as routers and switches); and the list goes on and on. With AWS, setting up a new data center can be performed with the help of few clicks or can be done with the help of application programming interface (API) calls.

This chapter will start by setting up the environment. We will begin by installing and configuring the AWS command-line interface (CLI), which we will use throughout the book. Next, we will install Boto3, a Python software development kit (SDK), and a feature-rich object-oriented API that provides low-level access to AWS services. Then, we will look at setting up CloudFormation and Terraform. Both these tools can be used to automate your AWS infrastructure, but there is a subtle difference between them. CloudFormation, on the one hand, is an AWS proprietary solution, whereas Terraform is an open source project. The other key difference between the two is that Terraform supports other cloud providers such as Google Cloud and Azure, whereas CloudFormation is native to AWS. The question of which one to use depends on your use case and requirement and your expertise.

Before we get our hands dirty with various AWS offerings, let's set up tools that we will use to interact with various AWS services and build the infrastructure.

In this chapter, we're going to cover the following main topics:

• Setting up the environment
• Introducing Python Boto3
• Introducing CloudFormation
• Introducing Terraform
• Installing tools in an automated way