First Terraform Script

🚀 Introduction to Your First Terraform Script

Terraform is a popular Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tool developed by HashiCorp. It enables you to define and provision infrastructure using a high-level configuration language called HCL (HashiCorp Configuration Language). In this blog, we’ll walk through creating your first Terraform script to provision a basic EC2 instance on AWS. If you’re just starting out, this will give you hands-on experience with the Terraform workflow.

🛠️ Prerequisites

• Terraform installed on your local machine (terraform -v to verify)
• A configured AWS CLI or AWS credentials in ~/.aws/credentials
• Basic knowledge of AWS (specifically EC2)

📂 Step 1: Create the Project Directory

Start by creating a new directory for your project and navigate into it:

mkdir first-terraform-script
cd first-terraform-script

📝 Step 2: Write Your First Terraform Script

Create a file named main.tf. This will contain the core configuration for provisioning an EC2 instance:

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

resource "aws_instance" "example" {
  ami           = "ami-0c55b159cbfafe1f0"  # Amazon Linux 2 AMI (Change if needed)
  instance_type = "t2.micro"

  tags = {
    Name = "MyFirstEC2"
  }
}

📌 What Does This Script Do?

• provider — Specifies AWS as the cloud provider and defines the region.
• aws_instance — Provisions an EC2 instance using the specified AMI and instance type.
• tags — Adds a tag to the instance for easy identification.

🧪 Step 3: Initialize the Project

Before Terraform can be used, it needs to initialize the working directory to download provider plugins.

terraform init

🔍 Step 4: Preview the Execution Plan

Run the following command to see what Terraform plans to do:

terraform plan

This step is crucial because it allows you to verify the resources that will be created before actually applying the changes.

⚙️ Step 5: Apply the Terraform Script

Once you're satisfied with the plan, apply it to create the resources:

terraform apply

Terraform will prompt for confirmation. Type yes to proceed.

🧹 Step 6: Clean Up Resources

To avoid incurring AWS charges, you should destroy the resources once you're done testing:

terraform destroy

🧠 Tips for Beginners

• Always run terraform plan before apply.
• Use terraform fmt to format your code.
• Use version control (like Git) to manage your configuration files.

🔐 Security Note

Avoid hardcoding sensitive information like AWS access keys into your Terraform files. Use environment variables, the AWS CLI, or AWS Vault for secure credential management.

📘 Summary

Congratulations! You've successfully written and executed your first Terraform script. You've learned how to set up a basic configuration, initialize a Terraform project, preview changes, apply infrastructure, and clean up afterward. As you continue exploring Terraform, try expanding your script by adding resources like VPCs, security groups, or S3 buckets. The more you practice, the more powerful and efficient your cloud infrastructure management will become.