Using Terraform launch a NGINX server on EC2 with Elastic IP - Lab 72

I want to learn Terraform since that many say that it’s widly used in Cloud community even though

that AWS has it’s IaC solution SAM.

Services Covered

Terraform
EC2 Instance
S3

Lab description

I’m learning the automation type of deployment in AWS, and even though that AWS has it’s SAM tool I wanted to try something that’s apparently more widely used and more powerful then that, that is Terraform. In my first attempt I will create a terraform deployment using a NGINX server from AWS Marketplace.

Create a Terraform template
Deploy Security Group, S3 bucket, EC2 Instance running NGINX
Attach Elastic IP to the Instance

Lab date

20-10-2021

Prerequisites

AWS account
A IAM User with programmatic access
Terraform installed and on path

Lab steps

Create a credentials file (no extension) in the same terraform folder and save it.
```
[default]
aws_access_key_id=YOUR_KEY
aws_secret_access_key=YOUR_SECRET_KEY
```
Create a folder for you Terraform code. Create a terraform file with .tf extension (a tip: use Terraform extension in VSC, it will help you with proper formatting). I’ll start small with deploying a S3 bucket:
```
provider "aws" {
 profile = "default"
 region  = "<<YOUR_REGION>>"
}

resource "aws_s3_bucket" "prod_tf_course" {
 bucket = "tf-course-2021-10-20"
 acl    = "private"
}
```
In terminal (assuming that Terraform is on path) in the working folder run:
```
terraform init
```
and then apply it which deploy the resource (a S3 bucket in this case):
```
terraform apply
```
then answer yes.

Now let’s add more resources. I need a Security Group in my default VPC, allowing traffic on HTTPHTTPS, add this code:

resource "aws_default_vpc" "default" {}

resource "aws_security_group" "prod_web" {
 name        = "prod_web"
 description = "allow standard http and https ports inbound everything outbound"

 ingress {
   from_port   = 80
   to_port     = 80
   protocol    = "tcp"
   cidr_blocks = ["0.0.0.0/0"]
 }
ingress {
   from_port   = 443
   to_port     = 443
   protocol    = "tcp"
   cidr_blocks = ["0.0.0.0/0"]
 }
 egress {
   from_port   = 0
   to_port     = 0
   protocol    = "-1"
   cidr_blocks = ["0.0.0.0/0"]
 }

and then run apply command that will show which additional resources will be created:

terraform apply

Go to the AWS Marketplace and search for NGINX server, choose the one from Bitnami and copy the AMI ID:
Now let’s add Instance resource to terraform template, for the Instance type choose the one that’s Free Tier eligible in you region:
```
resource "aws_instance" "prod_web" {
   ami           = "ami-0a98eef3c13e97cd2"
   instance_type = "t3.micro"

   vpc_security_group_ids = [
     aws_security_group.prod_web.id
   ]

   tags = {
   "Terraform" : "true"
 }
}
```
After adding those lines run
```
terraform plan
```
Which will present the changes made since last terraform apply it won’t deploy the resources. To do that you run terraform apply
If you run terraform show it will print the deployed resources. Then under Instances public IP

if you copy it and paste it in your browser you’ll see NGINX server running:

Let’s add an Elastic IP to the instance:

resource "aws_eip" "prod_web" {
 instance = aws_instance.prod_web.id

 tags = {
   "Terraform" : "true"
 }
}

And apply. Then run

terraform show

to get the elastic IP address.

In order to destroy the resource you might want to run plan and see what’s needed to be done by terraform, and save the output to a file:
```
terraform plan -destroy -out destroy.plan
```
Then apply that plan:
```
terraform apply destroy.plan
```

Lab files

terraform template

Acknowledgements