Terraform for Beginners: Infrastructure as Code on AWS

Terraform Basics for AWS

Manage infrastructure as code with Terraform.

Installation & Setup

# Install Terraform
brew install terraform

# Configure AWS credentials
export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID="your-key"
export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY="your-secret"

Basic Configuration

# main.tf
terraform {
  required_providers {
    aws = {
      source  = "hashicorp/aws"
      version = "~> 5.0"
    }
  }
}

provider "aws" {
  region = "us-east-1"
}

# Create VPC
resource "aws_vpc" "main" {
  cidr_block = "10.0.0.0/16"

  tags = {
    Name = "main-vpc"
  }
}

# Create EC2 instance
resource "aws_instance" "web" {
  ami           = "ami-0c55b159cbfafe1f0"
  instance_type = "t3.micro"

  tags = {
    Name = "web-server"
  }
}

Variables and Outputs

# variables.tf
variable "environment" {
  description = "Deployment environment"
  type        = string
  default     = "dev"
}

variable "instance_type" {
  type = map(string)
  default = {
    dev  = "t3.micro"
    prod = "t3.large"
  }
}

# outputs.tf
output "instance_ip" {
  value = aws_instance.web.public_ip
}

Terraform Commands

# Initialize project
terraform init

# Preview changes
terraform plan

# Apply changes
terraform apply

# Destroy infrastructure
terraform destroy

State Management

# Use remote state with S3
terraform {
  backend "s3" {
    bucket = "my-terraform-state"
    key    = "prod/terraform.tfstate"
    region = "us-east-1"
  }
}

Terraform enables reproducible, version-controlled infrastructure deployments.