Terraform

Immutable declarative versioned Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and Policy as Code provisioning into AWS, Azure, GCP, and other clouds using Terragoat, Bridgecrew, and Atlantis team versioning GitOps

This tutorial is a step-by-step hands-on deep yet succinct introduction to learn to use HashiCorp’s Terraform to build, change, and version resources running in multiple cloud platforms. The sequence of topics has been carefully arranged for quicker learning, based on various tutorials on this topic.

NOTE: Content here are my personal opinions, and not intended to represent any employer (past or present). “PROTIP:” here highlight information I haven’t seen elsewhere on the internet because it is hard-won, little-know but significant facts based on my personal research and experience.

What is Terraform?

terraform.io (HashiCorp’s marketing home page) says the product is a “tool for building, changing, and versioning infrastructure safely and efficiently”.

“Terraform makes infrastructure provisioning: Repeatable. Versioned. Documented. Automated. Testable. Shareable.”

Secure Learning Tools and Ecosystem

Here is my proposal to ensure that cloud resources are secure when created, the first time and every time.

Although Terraform works on multiple clouds, to simplify the explanation here, we’ll focus on AWS for now.

Resources in AWS can be created and managed using several tools: manually using the AWS Management Console GUI or manually invoking on a Terminal running CLI (Command Line Interface) shell scripts or programs written to issue REST API calls. But many enterpise AWS users avoid using GUI and CLI and instead use an approach that provides versioning of Configuration as Code (IaC) in GitHub repositories, so you can go from dev to qa to stage to prod more quickly and securely.

Although AWS provides their own Cloud Formation language to describe what to provision in AWS, for various reasons, many prefer Terraform. Terraform files are commonly run within an automated CI/CD pipeline so that it is repeatable. Having configurations documented in GitHub enables drift detection which identifies differences between what is defined versus what is actually running.

The AWS Config service logs every change in configuration of resources. The AWS Security Hub service looks in logs for vulnerabilities to issue Findings based on its own “AWS Foundations” set of policies. AWS provides a webpage of recommendations for remediation, but only by using its own GUI or CloudFormation code, not Terraform coding.

More importantly, findings from AWS are raised for resource which have already been manifested on the internet, and thus vulnerable to public attack. In today’s hostile internet, we can’t risk an incremental approach to achieving the security needed. We really need to achieve full “security maturity” in our Terraform code the first time we deploy it onto the internet.

PROTIP: We prevent vulnerabilities before</strong> they are created as vulnerable resources by finding violations in Infrastructure definition code, using a CI/CD pipeline to run static scans referencing Policies as Code.

Several vendors have created static scan programs. Checkov and TFSec have an interface to the popular VSCode text editor on laptops, which “shifts left” the work of security earlier in the development lifecycle.

The crucial skill needed today is expertise at manually editing Terraform files which are “bulletproof”.

One way to climb this steep learning curve is learning to fix known-bad sample Terraform code which are accompanied with policies used to detect violations. It’s even better to have each policy be associated with recommendations for remediating the Terraform code, along with tutorials about configuration options.

Because cloud services change all the time, a policy creator helps to keep up with all the polices needed. In the Terraform Cloud, policies are defined in the Sentinel language. Other vendors define policies in the Rego language processed by the OPA engine.

When a community of Terraform developers have policies which attest that Terraform code is known good, their templates can be Shareable and thus reduce both risk and much effort by others.

PROTIP: This approach is essentially TDD (Test Driven Development) applied to infrastructure code.

Atlantis provides a mechanism like GitHub Dependabot, which automatically creates Pull Requests containing remediations. Terraform Cloud provides a GUI to display them.

So here it is, our ecosystem your you to create secure Terraform, the first time and every time.

Recap

Core Workflow

The traditional core Terraform “happy path” workflow consists of these steps:

1. Obtain the set of Terraform-related files (from GitHub).
2. Navigate to the folder where .tf files are located.
3. Scan Terraform files for violation of policies (running Atlas, TFSec, etc.)
4. Obtain cloud (AWS) credentials.
5. Define values for variables (AWS credentials and other secrets) or retrieve a variables file from a vault.
6. terraform init
7. terraform plan -out plan_file
8. terraform apply plan_file
9. If defined, run local and/or remote provisioners (such as Ansible) to configure servers deployed.
   
   

PROTIP: Run a shell/Python file to automate the above.

Atlantis on Terraform

* ensure code reviews.

Atlantis was created in 2017 by Anubhav Mishra and Luke Kysow. Before they joined HashiCorp in 2018, they saw Hootsuite use their github.com/runatlantis/atlantis, a self-hosted golang application that listens for Terraform pull request events via webhooks. It can run as a Golang binary or Docker image deployed on VMs, Kubernetes, Fargate, etc.

Read the description and benefits at runatlantis.io:

Developers and Operations people type atlantis plan and atlantis apply in the GitHub GUI to trigger Atlantis invoking terraform plan and terraform apply in the CLI.

Atlantis-based workflow with Terraform Enterprise

1. In your GitHub account Developer settings, generate a Personal Access Token (named “Terraform Atlantis”) and check only repo scope (to run webhooks).

   CAUTION: This is a static secret which should be updated occassionally.

   Click the clipboard icon. On your MacOS Terminal, within a project folder, install Atlantis bootstrap locally and provide the GitHub PAT.

   Atlantis creates a starter GitHub repo, then downloads the ngrok utility to fork an “atlantis-example” repo under your account. It sets up a server at ngrok.io.

2. Copy in base Terraform configuration files.

   Within files are references to reusable modules used by other projects.

   An atlantis.yaml file specifies projects to be automatically planned when a module is modified.

3. Manually run tf init to install cloud provider plug-ins.

4. In main.tf add a null resource as a test: from perhaps https://github.com/jnichols3/terraform-envs

   resource "null_resource" "demo" {}

5. Anyone can open up a pull request in the GitHub repo holding your Terraform configuration files.

   This ensures that other team members are aware of changes pending. When plan is run, the directory and Terraform workspace are Locked until the pull request is merged or closed, or the plan is manually deleted. With locking, you can ensure that no other changes will be made until the pull request is merged. https://www.runatlantis.io/docs/locking.html#why

6. Instead of manually invoking terraform plan, Atlantis invokes them when atlantis planis typed in GitHub GUI which triggers the Atlantis server to run. Atlantis can be invoked automatically on any new pull request or new commit to an existing pull request.

   and adds comments on the pull request in addition to creating an execution plan with dependencies.

   atlantis plan can be for a specific directory or workspace

   https://www.runatlantis.io/docs/autoplanning.html#example

   Sentinal apply

7. Those licenced to use Terrform Cloud as a remote backend provisioner, sentinel apply is also invoked to create cost projections and policy alerts based on sentinel policy definitions.

8. Someone else on your team reviews the pull request, makes edits and rerun atlantis plan several times before clicking approve PR.

9. In a GitHub GUI comment, type atlantis apply to trigger Atlantis to run terraform apply and add comments about its provisioning of resources. Atlantis makes output from apply visible in GitHub.

   Atlantis can be configured to automatically merge a pull request after all plans have been successfully applied.*

   https://www.runatlantis.io/docs/security.html#mitigations

   Note that apply creates tfstate files.

10. Optionally, a “local-exec” provisioner can invoke Ansible to configure programs inside each server.

Links to Certification Exam Objectives

Pluralsight has a 20-question assessment: Managing Infrastructure with Terraform Skill IQ” covering (Google):

• Add Terraform to a CI/CD Pipeline
• Automate infrastructure deployment
• Create and import Modules
• Implement Terraform with AWS
• Implement Terraform with Google Cloud Platform
• Implement Terraform with Microsoft Azure
• Import data from external sources
• Install and Run Terraform
• Manage State in Terraform
• Troubleshoot Terraform Issues
  
  

This page houses both links and my notes to pass the HashiCorp Terraform Associate certification (at https://hashicorp.com/certification/terraform-associate). For only $70.50 (paid after picking a time on OSI Online, terrible) , correctly answer 70%+ of 57 multiple-choice/fill-in questions to give your employers some assurance that you have a practical knowledge of these topics:

1. Understand infrastructure as code (IaC) concepts
   a. Explain what IaC is
   b. Describe advantages of IaC patterns
   
2. Understand Terraform’s purpose (vs other IaC)
   a. Explain multi-cloud and provider-agnostic benefits
   b. Explain the benefits of state management
   
3. Understand Terraform basics
   a. Handle Terraform and provider installation and versioning
   b. Describe plugin based architecture
   c. Demonstrate using multiple providers
   d. Describe how Terraform finds and fetches providers (from the Terraform Registry)
   e. Explain when to use and not use provisioners and when to use local-exec or remote-exec
   
4. Use the Terraform CLI (outside of core workflow)
   a. Given a scenario: choose when to use terraform fmt to format code
   b. Given a scenario: choose when to use terraform taint to taint Terraform resources
   c. Given a scenario: choose when to use terraform import to import existing infrastructure into your Terraform state
   d. Given a scenario: choose when to use terraform workspace to create workspaces
   e. Given a scenario: choose when to use terraform state to view Terraform state
   f. Given a scenario: choose when to enable verbose logging and what the outcome/value is
   
5. Interact with Terraform modules
   a. Contrast module source options
   b. Interact with module inputs and outputs
   c. Describe variable scope within modules/child modules
   d. Discover modules from the public Terraform Module Registry
   e. Defining module version
   
6. Navigate Terraform workflow
   a. Describe Terraform workflow ( Write -> Plan -> Create )
   b. Initialize a Terraform working directory (terraform init)
   c. Validate a Terraform configuration (terraform validate)
   d. Generate and review an execution plan for Terraform (terraform plan)
   e. Execute changes to infrastructure with Terraform (terraform apply)
   f. Destroy Terraform managed infrastructure (terraform destroy)
   
7. Implement and maintain state
   a. Describe default local backend
   b. Outline state locking
   c. Handle backend authentication methods
   d. Describe remote state storage mechanisms and supported standard backends
   e. Describe effect of Terraform refresh on state
   f. Describe backend block in configuration and best practices for partial configurations
   g. Understand secret management in state files
   
8. Read, generate, and modify configuration
   a. Demonstrate use of variables and outputs
   b. Describe secure secret injection best practice
   c. Understand the use of collection and structural types
   d. Create and differentiate resource and data configuration
   e. Use resource addressing and resource parameters to connect resources together
   f. Use Terraform built-in functions to write configuration
   g. Configure resource using a dynamic block
   h. Describe built-in dependency management (order of execution based)
   
9. Understand Terraform Cloud and Enterprise capabilities
   a. Describe the benefits of Sentinel, registry, and workspaces
   b. Differentiate OSS and TFE workspaces
   c. Summarize features of Terraform Cloud
   
   

VIDEO: Registering for the test takes several steps:

1. Clicking on “Register Exam” takes you to the Zendesk Exam Portal.
2. Read the Exam Handbook. Key points:
   • 48 hour cancellation
3. There is a Exam FAQ
4. Click “Click here to go to the exam platform” for the “Continue with GitHub”.
5. Authorize HashiCorp to use your GitHub credentials to register for exam at the PSI Exam website
6. Click “Schedule” to the right of “HashiCorp Certified: Terraform Associate - Ready to Schedule”
7. Select Country & Timezone. Click a day in green. Click a range of hours. Click a specific hour. Click Continue.
8. In the pop-up, click Continue for “Booking created successfully”. Close.

9. Now you see the $70.50. Check “I acknowledge”… Pay Now.

10. FAQ: After passing the exam, share your badge at

    https://www.credly.com/users/sign_in

11. In your resume, add a link to your certification as:

    https://www.credly.com/earned/badge/[unique certification ID]
    
    

The exam expires in 2 years.

HashiCorp doesn’t have a deeper/more difficult “Professional level” cert at time of writing.

Repeatable from versioning

Terraform provides a single consistent set of commands and workflow on all clouds. That is “future proofing” infastructure work.

Use of version-controlled configuration files in an elastic cloud means that the infrastructure Terraform creates can be treated as disposable. This is a powerful concept. Parallel production-like environments can now be created easily (without ordering hardware) temporarily for experimentation, testing, and redundancy for High Availability.

Infrastructure as Code (IaC) Provisioning Options

The objective is to accellerate work AND save money by automating the configuration of servers and other resources quicker and more consistently than manually clicking through the GUI. That’s called the “Infrastructure-Application Pattern (I-A)”.

BLOG: Analysis:

Terraform installs infrastructure in cloud and VM as workflows.

Kubernetes orchestrates (brings up and down) Docker containers.

Pulumi (see my notes on it)

dagger.io

Terraform vs. AWS Cloud Formation

To get AWS certified, you’re going to need to know Cloud Formation.

https://www.stratoscale.com/blog/data-center/choosing-the-right-provisioning-tool-terraform-vs-aws-cloudformation/

Licensing open source for GUI

Although Terraform is “open source”, the Terraform GUI requires a license.

Paid Pro and Premium licenses of Terraform add version control integration, MFA security, HA, and other enterprise features.

Installation options

There is a version manager to enable you to install several versions of Terraform: https://github.com/aaratn/terraenv

VIDEO:

1. Terraform is open-sourced in GitHub. Metadata about each releases is at:

   https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform/releases

   PROTIP: Terraform is written in the Go language, so (unlike Java) there is no separate VM to download.

2. To download an install file for your operating system, click the list of Terraform versions at:

   https://releases.hashicorp.com/terraform/

   PROTIP: But instead of manually downloading, get the latest version automatically using an installer by following instructions below.

3. After installation, get the version number of Terraform:

   terraform --version

   The response I got (at time of writing) is the version and what operating system:

   Terraform v1.1.16
   on darwin_amd64
   

   If you need to upgrade:

   Your version of Terraform is out of date! The latest version
   is 1.1.6. You can update by downloading from https://www.terraform.io/downloads.html
   

Install on MacOS using tfenv

1. A search through brew:

    brew search terraform

   ==> Formulae
   hashicorp/tap/consul-terraform-sync      terraform-provider-libvirt
   hashicorp/tap/terraform ✔                terraform-rover
   hashicorp/tap/terraform-ls               terraform@0.11
   iam-policy-json-to-terraform             terraform@0.12
   terraform ✔                              terraform@0.13
   terraform-docs                           terraform_landscape
   terraform-inventory                      terraformer ✔
   terraform-ls                             terraforming
   terraform-lsp
    
   If you meant "terraform" specifically:
   It was migrated from homebrew/cask to homebrew/core.
   

   Note there are back versions of terraform (11, 12, 13, etc.).

   Several versions of Terraform

2. PROTIP: To switch among different versions of Terraform, one option is to use little-known Homebrew pin and switch commands pointing to different git commits, as described at: https://blog.gruntwork.io/installing-multiple-versions-of-terraform-with-homebrew-899f6d124ff9

   Standard Homebrew install

3. Is there a brew for Terraform?

   brew info terraform

   Yes, but:

   terraform: stable 1.1.6 (bottled), HEAD
   Tool to build, change, and version infrastructure
   https://www.terraform.io/
   Conflicts with:
     tfenv (because tfenv symlinks terraform binaries)
   /usr/local/Cellar/terraform/1.1.6 (6 files, 66.7MB) *
     Poured from bottle on 2022-02-19 at 10:43:46
   From: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/blob/HEAD/Formula/terraform.rb
   License: MPL-2.0
   ==> Dependencies
   Build: go ✘
   ==> Options
   --HEAD
    Install HEAD version
   ==> Analytics
   install: 47,985 (30 days), 134,541 (90 days), 525,730 (365 days)
   install-on-request: 44,756 (30 days), 125,786 (90 days), 493,333 (365 days)
   

Its popularity has grown since:

terraform: stable 1.0.5 (bottled), HEAD
...
install: 41,443 (30 days), 125,757 (90 days), 480,344 (365 days)
install-on-request: 38,839 (30 days), 118,142 (90 days), 455,572 (365 days)
   

1. PROTIP: Although you can brew install terraform, don’t. So that you can easily switch among several versions installed of Terraform, install and use the Terraform version manager:

   brew install tfenv

   The response at time of writing:

   ==> Downloading https://github.com/tfutils/tfenv/archive/v2.2.0.tar.gz
   Already downloaded: /Users/wilson_mar/Library/Caches/Homebrew/downloads/d5f3775943c8e090ebe2af640ea8a89f99f7f0c2c47314d76073410338ae02de--tfenv-2.2.0.tar.gz
   🍺  /usr/local/Cellar/tfenv/2.2.0: 23 files, 79.8KB, built in 8 seconds
   

   Source for this is has changed over time: from https://github.com/Zordrak/tfenv (previously from https://github.com/kamatama41/tfenv)

   When tfenv is used, do not install from the website or using :

   brew install terraform

2. Install the latest version of terraform using tfenv:

   tfenv install latest

   The response:

   Installing Terraform v1.0.5
   Downloading release tarball from https://releases.hashicorp.com/terraform/1.0.5/terraform_1.0.5_darwin_amd64.zip
   ######################################################################### 100.0%
   Downloading SHA hash file from https://releases.hashicorp.com/terraform/1.0.5/terraform_1.0.5_SHA256SUMS
   ==> Downloading https://ghcr.io/v2/homebrew/core/pcre/manifests/8.45
   ######################################################################## 100.0%
   ==> Downloading https://ghcr.io/v2/homebrew/core/pcre/blobs/sha256:a42b79956773d
   ==> Downloading from https://pkg-containers.githubusercontent.com/ghcr1/blobs/sh
   ######################################################################## 100.0%
   ==> Downloading https://ghcr.io/v2/homebrew/core/grep/manifests/3.7
   ######################################################################## 100.0%
   ==> Downloading https://ghcr.io/v2/homebrew/core/grep/blobs/sha256:180f055eeacb1
   ==> Downloading from https://pkg-containers.githubusercontent.com/ghcr1/blobs/sh
   ######################################################################## 100.0%
   ==> Installing dependencies for grep: pcre
   ==> Installing grep dependency: pcre
   ==> Pouring pcre--8.45.mojave.bottle.tar.gz
   🍺  /usr/local/Cellar/pcre/8.45: 204 files, 5.5MB
   ==> Installing grep
   ==> Pouring grep--3.7.mojave.bottle.tar.gz
   ==> Caveats
   All commands have been installed with the prefix "g".
   If you need to use these commands with their normal names, you
   can add a "gnubin" directory to your PATH from your bashrc like:
     PATH="/usr/local/opt/grep/libexec/gnubin:$PATH"
   ==> Summary
   🍺  /usr/local/Cellar/grep/3.7: 21 files, 941.7KB
   ==> Upgrading 1 dependent:
   zsh 5.7.1 -> 5.8_1
   ==> Upgrading zsh
     5.7.1 -> 5.8_1
    
   ==> Downloading https://ghcr.io/v2/homebrew/core/zsh/manifests/5.8_1
   ######################################################################## 100.0%
   ==> Downloading https://ghcr.io/v2/homebrew/core/zsh/blobs/sha256:a40a54e4b686eb
   ==> Downloading from https://pkg-containers.githubusercontent.com/ghcr1/blobs/sh
   ######################################################################## 100.0%
   ==> Pouring zsh--5.8_1.mojave.bottle.tar.gz
   🍺  /usr/local/Cellar/zsh/5.8_1: 1,531 files, 13.5MB
   Removing: /usr/local/Cellar/zsh/5.7.1... (1,515 files, 13.3MB)
   ==> Checking for dependents of upgraded formulae...
   ==> No broken dependents found!
   ==> Caveats
   ==> grep
   All commands have been installed with the prefix "g".
   If you need to use these commands with their normal names, you
   can add a "gnubin" directory to your PATH from your bashrc like:
     PATH="/usr/local/opt/grep/libexec/gnubin:$PATH"
   Unable to verify OpenPGP signature unless logged into keybase and following hashicorp
   Archive:  tfenv_download.qXFIgg/terraform_1.0.5_darwin_amd64.zip
     inflating: /usr/local/Cellar/tfenv/2.2.2/versions/1.0.5/terraform
   Installation of terraform v1.0.5 successful. To make this your default version, run 'tfenv use 1.0.5'
   

   PROTIP: The above commands create folder .terraform.d on your $HOME folder, containing files checkpoint_cache and checkpoint_signature.

   See HashiCorp’s blog about version announcements.

3. Make the latest the default:

   tfenv use 1.0.5

   Switching default version to v1.0.5
   Switching completed

4. Proceed to Configuration below.

Install on Windows

1. In a Run command window as Administrator.
2. Install Chocolatey cmd:

3. Install Terraform using Chocolatey:

   choco install terraform -y

   The response at time of writing:

   Chocolatey v0.10.8
   Installing the following packages:
   terraform
   By installing you accept licenses for the packages.
   Progress: Downloading terraform 0.10.6... 100%
    
   terraform v0.10.6 [Approved]
   terraform package files install completed. Performing other installation steps.
   The package terraform wants to run 'chocolateyInstall.ps1'.
   Note: If you don't run this script, the installation will fail.
   Note: To confirm automatically next time, use '-y' or consider:
   choco feature enable -n allowGlobalConfirmation
   Do you want to run the script?([Y]es/[N]o/[P]rint): y
    
   Removing old terraform plugins
   Downloading terraform 64 bit
     from 'https://releases.hashicorp.com/terraform/0.10.6/terraform_0.10.6_windows_amd64.zip'
   Progress: 100% - Completed download of C:\Users\vagrant\AppData\Local\Temp\chocolatey\terraform\0.10.6\terraform_0.10.6_windows_amd64.zip (12.89 MB).
   Download of terraform_0.10.6_windows_amd64.zip (12.89 MB) completed.
   Hashes match.
   Extracting C:\Users\vagrant\AppData\Local\Temp\chocolatey\terraform\0.10.6\terraform_0.10.6_windows_amd64.zip to C:\ProgramData\chocolatey\lib\terraform\tools...
   C:\ProgramData\chocolatey\lib\terraform\tools
    ShimGen has successfully created a shim for terraform.exe
    The install of terraform was successful.
     Software installed to 'C:\ProgramData\chocolatey\lib\terraform\tools'
    
   Chocolatey installed 1/1 packages.
    See the log for details (C:\ProgramData\chocolatey\logs\chocolatey.log).
    

4. Proceed to Configuration below.

Install on Linux

• https://github.com/migibert/terraform-role Ansible role to install Terraform on Linux machines

• https://supermarket.chef.io/cookbooks/terraform

• https://forge.puppet.com/inkblot/terraform

• https://github.com/hashicorp/docker-hub-images/tree/master/terraform builds Docker containers for using the terraform command line program.

To manually install on Ubuntu:

1. On a Console (after substituing the current version):

   sudo curl -O https://releases.hashicorp.com/terraform/0.12.0/terraform_0.12.0_linux_amd64.zip
   sudo apt-get install unzip
   sudo mkdir /bin/terraform 
   sudo unzip terraform_0.11.5_linux_amd64.zip -d /usr/local/bin/
   

Install on Linux using Docker

1. To install Docker CE on Linux:

   sudo apt-get update
   sudo apt-get install \
    apt-transport-https \
    ca-certificates \
    curl \
    software-properties-common
    
   curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg | sudo apt-key add -
    
   sudo add-apt-repository \
   "deb [arch=amd64] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu \
   $(lsb_release -cs) \
   stable"
    
   sudo apt-get update
   sudo apt-get install docker-ce
   

Configure Terraform logging

VIDEO:

1. To set a level of logging (similar to Log4j’s INFO &LT; WARNING &LT; ERROR &LT; DEBUG &LT; TRACE to see Terraform’s internal logs):

   export TF_LOG=TRACE

2. Define where logs are saved:

   export TF_LOG_PATH=/tmp/terraform.log

3. Define the above settings in a shell file used to call Terraform.

Install Utilities

You’ll need a text editor with plugins to view HCL:

• VSCode add-on
• JetBrains IDE add-on
• Terraform Enterprise TFLint

VSCode

1. Use VSCode (installed by default) to view blocks in Terraform HCL files:

   cd ~/clouddrive/terraform-on-azure/02-init-plan-apply-destroy/01-intro
   code main.tf
   

2. In VSCode, press shift+command+X or click the bottom-left menu icon and select “Extensions” to select the add-on from HashiCorp

   

3. If you use Azure, install the “Azure Terraform” extension from Microsoft.

   CAUTION: Avoid installing anything from publishers you don’t know.

4. Define .gitignore for use with VSCode:

5. Review code:

   NOTE: Each key-value pair is an argument containing an expression of a text value.

   Each HCL file needs to specify the (cloud) provider being used is “azure”.

   NOTE: Multiple providers can be specified in the same HCL file.

   Each Provider is a plugin that enables Terraform to interface with the API layer of various cloud platforms and environments.

6. Search for “Resource Group” in Terraform’s Azure Provider docs:

   https://registry.terraform.io/providers/hashicorp/azurerm/latest/docs

   for “azurerm_resource_group”.

JetBrains add-ins

https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/7808-terraform-and-hcl

Terraspace generates IaC code

VIDEO: Terraspace.cloud dynamically generates Terraform projects in a centralized manner (which eliminates duplication). So the whole stack can be brought up by a single command: VIDEO:

terraspace up STACK

Unlike Terragrunt, Terraspace automatically creates storage Buckets in the back-end. Terraspace intermixes its own features with those of Terraform (e.g. using ERB templates in backend configuration), needed because Terraform doesn’t allow expressions in the backend block.

Terraspace claims that their CLI hook syntax is “more concise and cleaner”.

References:

• https://blog.boltops.com/2020/09/28/terraform-vs-terragrunt-vs-terraspace/
  
  

Issues to look for

There are several industry standards which prescribe “controls” and configurations:

• AWS Foundations referenced by the AWS Security Hub service

• CIS

• SOC2
• ISO

• FedRAMP

• PCI
• HIPAA
• NIST
• Hightrust
• etc.
  
  

The trouble with written policies and standards is that they are in PDF and Excel files. So few read them.

Terraform Enterprise TFLint

An important distinction between Cloud Formmation and Terraform is that Terraform tracks the state of each resource.

Terraform Enterprise automatically stores the history of all state revisions. https://www.terraform.io/docs/state

VIDEO: Terraform Enterprise has producers (experts) and read-only consumers. Terraform Enterprise processes HCL with auditing policies like linter https://github.com/terraform-linters/tflint, installed on Windows using choco install tflint. See https://spin.atomicobject.com/2019/09/03/cloud-infrastructure-entr/

[8:25] Terraform Enterprise enforces “policy as code” which automates the application of what CIS (Center for Internet Security) calls (free) “benchmarks” – secure configuration settings for hardening operating systems, for AWS settings at (the 155 page) https://www.cisecurity.org/benchmark/amazon_web_services/.

• Set to public instead of private?

Terratest from Gruntwork.

https://itnext.io/automatic-terraform-linting-with-reviewdog-and-tflint-f4fb66034abb

Programs processing Policy as Code

PROTIP: To prevent vulnerabilities before they are manifested in resources on the internet, several groups have created programs which can automatically attest to whether a Terraform file actually meets or violates specific policies defined as code.

This enables a CI/CD pipeline to stop processing if a Terraform file fails a scan.

github.com/iacsecurity/tool-compare details each policy check and which tool performs them:

• OSS Python-based Checkov by Bridgecrew.io (acquired by Palo Alto Networks)

• Fremium Indeni Cloudrail

• OSS Go-based Kics (Keeping Infrastructure as Code Secure) by Checkmarx

• Freemium Snyk

• OSS Terrascan by Accurics.

• OSS Go-based Tfsec by Aqua Security has a VSCode extension (/usr/local/Cellar/tfsec/0.56.0: 5 files, 16.9MB)

• https://github.com/accurics/terrascan uses Rego policies

• SonarQube

• Terraform FOSS with Atlantis

• Terraform Enterprise Sentinel

STAR: Rob Schoening presents an evaluation of the above tools.

Post deployment, Pulumi finds unused resources daily and shut them down.

Install Security Scanners

https://github.com/iacsecurity/tool-compare lists specific tests (of vulnerability) and which products can detect each.

Checkov is an OSS static scanner of Terraform, AWS Cloud Formation, and Azure ARM templates.

Cloudrail from Indeni is a freemium scanner utility which audits Terraform IaC code for security concerns. It calls itself “context-aware” because (although Terratest requires that you deploy the infra and run tests against the live infra), Cloudrail takes a hybrid (SAST+DAST) approach - parsing static TF files into a database (of resources in a python object) and “continuously” comparing that against the live infrastructure in a separate python object fetched dynamically using their Dragoneye data collector (for AWS and Azure).

When run on local envrionments, security scanning achieves “shift left”.

Install Checkov scanner

1. If you prefer using Conda, please install that up and setup an environment.

2. The Terraform files can be analyzed (before they become resources) using static scanners TFSec or Checkov (Twitter: #checkov</a>):

   pip3 install -U checkov
   checkov --help
   

3. Expand your Terminal to full screen.

4. Let’s start by scanning a single tf file within terragoat/terraform/aws:

   checkov -f db-app.tf > db-app.txt

   It takes several minutes.

   > db-app.txt above sends the output to a new file. If the file already exists, it overwrites the previous run.

   Checkov is “freemium” to the licensed Bridgecrew platform, the program asks:

   Would you like to “level up” your Checkov powers for free?  The upgrade includes:
    
   • Command line docker Image scanning
   • Free (forever) bridgecrew.cloud account with API access
   • Auto-fix remediation suggestions
   • Enabling of VS Code Plugin
   • Dashboard visualisation of Checkov scans
   • Integration with GitHub for:
    ◦ 	Automated Pull Request scanning
    ◦ 	Auto remediation PR generation
   • Integration with up to 100 cloud resources for:
    ◦ 	Automated cloud resource checks
    ◦ 	Resource drift detection
    
   and much more...
    
   It's easy and only takes 2 minutes. We can do it right now!
    
   To Level-up, press 'y'...
    
   Level up? (y/n): _
   

5. Edit the output file.

          _               _              
   ___| |__   ___  ___| | _______   __
     / __| '_ \ / _ \/ __| |/ / _ \ \ / /
    | (__| | | |  __/ (__|   < (_) \ V / 
     \___|_| |_|\___|\___|_|\_\___/ \_/  
    
   By bridgecrew.io | version: 2.0.829 
   Update available 2.0.829 -> 2.0.873
   Run pip3 install -U checkov to update 
    
   terraform scan results:
    
   Passed checks: 12, Failed checks: 14, Skipped checks: 0
    
   Check: CKV_AWS_211: "Ensure RDS uses a modern CaCert"
    PASSED for resource: aws_db_instance.default
    File: /db-app.tf:1-41
   

   As of this writing, Checkov has 50 built-in checks. Each check has a Guide at https://docs.bridgecrew.io/docs/general-policies which defines recommended Terraform coding.

6. Remove the file to save disk space.

7. Scan a directory (folder), such as from Terragoat:

   checkov -d aws

   Install full-fast-fail scanner

   This library is not yet in Homebrew, so:

   git clone https://github.com/JamesWoolfenden/full-fast-fail --depth 1
   cd full-fast-fail
   ./checker.sh
   

Terragoat for learning

https://github.com/bridgecrewio/terragoat

(It’s in the same vein as RhinoLabs’ penetration testing training tool, CloudGoat.)

1. Get it on your laptop after navigating to a folder:

   git clone https://github.com/bridgecrewio/terragoat --depth 1
   cd terragoat/terraform
   

2. Vulnerabilities designed into Terragoat are for specific services in AWS, Azure, and GCP clouds. Let’s look at aws services:

   ls aws
   

   Response:

   db-app.tf - database application
   ec2.tf
   ecr.tf - elastic Kubernetes service
   eks.tf - elastic Kubernetes service
   elb.tf - elastic load balancer
   es.tf
   iam.tf
   kms.tf - key management service
   lambda.tf
   neptune.tf
   rds.tf - relational database service
   xs3.tf - key management service
   

   PROTIP: BLAH: These are a few of the 200+ AWS services.

   QUESTION: How will you know when new AWS services become available or deprecated?

Known-bad IaC for training

1. To use the Terraform to create resources, I created a setup.sh based on CLI code in this README.md file.

2. Edit my setup.sh file to override default values in file consts.tf:

   • “acme” for company_name in TF_VAR_company_name
   • “mydevsecops” for environment in TF_VAR_environment
   • TF_VAR_region
     
     

3. Edit my setup.sh file to override default values in file providers.tf:

   alias      = "plain_text_access_keys_provider"
     region     = "us-west-1"
     access_key = "AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE"
     secret_key = "wJalrXUtnFEMI/K7MDENG/bPxRfiCYEXAMPLEKEY"
   

   SECURITY WARNING: Replace key values with a variable name.

   https://github.com/bridgecrewio/terragoat#existing-vulnerabilities-auto-generated

4. Sign up for the #CodifiedSecurity Slack community (confirm by email).

, and #airiam,

https://medium.com/bridgecrew/terragoat-vulnerable-by-design-terraform-training-by-bridgecrew-524b50728887

Sample Terraform repositories

Let’s learn from others.

1. View or download to your containing folder:

   https://github.com/fedekau/terraform-with-circleci-example

2. Or:

   git clone https://github.com/lukeorellana/terraform-on-azure
   cd terraform-on-azure
   

   The repo contains these folders:

   • 01-intro
   • 02-init-plan-apply-destroy
   • 03-terraform-state
   • 04-variables
   • 05-modules
   • 06-advanced-hcl
     
     

Others:

https://github.com/Capgemini/terraform-amazon-ecs/

https://akhilmovva.com/projects/

https://github.com/KevinDMack/TerraformKubernetes to establish K8S using Packer within Azure

Gruntwork’s sample

Gruntwork.io offers (for $795/month = $9,500/year), access to their 250,000-line Reference Architecture of (opinionated) starter code to create a production-worthy “defense in depth” setup on AWS:

An additional $500 a month gets you access to their Reference Architecture Walktrough video class. But previews of the class is free:

• Course overview
• Architecture overview
• Code organization overview
  
  

The Gruntwork Production Framework organizes app solutions for going to production on the public cloud:

For those who can’t subscribe, Yevegeniy (Jim) Brikman (ybrikman.com, co-founder of DevOps as a Service Gruntwork.io) has generously shared:

• https://github.com/gruntwork-io/intro-to-terraform.git

• https://github.com/brikis98/infrastructure-as-code-talk/tree/master/terraform-configurations

• https://github.com/brikis98/terraform-up-and-running-code provides bash scripts to run on Ubuntu server to install Apache, PHP, and a sample PHP app on an Ubuntu server. It also has automates tests written in Ruby script to make sure it returns “Hello, World”. The repo is referenced by the book Terraform Up & Running (OReilly book $11.99 on Amazon) and website:
  terraformupandrunning.com

The sample scripts referenced by this tutorial contain moustache variable mark-up so that you can generate a set for your organization.

• https://www.terraform.io/docs/providers/azurerm/r/virtual_machine_scale_set.html

• https://training.gruntwork.io/courses/reference-architecture-walkthrough/lectures/4211191

Cloudposse

https://github.com/cloudposse has mostly AWS Terraform, such as https://github.com/cloudposse/load-testing

Standard Files and Folders Structure

According to

• https://www.terraform.io/language/modules/develop/structure
• https://www.baeldung.com/ops/terraform-best-practices
  
  

The root folder for a Terraform module should contain these files:

• README.md describes to humans how the module works. REMEMBER: Don’t put a README file within internal module folders because its existance determines whether a module is considered usable by an external user.

• LICENSE - (no file extension) to define the legal aspects (whether it’s open source)

• .gitignore - files and folders to not add and push to GitHub
• main.tf - the entry point of the module
• outputs.tf - Values output by run
• variables.tf - declares a description and optional default values for each variable in *.tf files
  
  

VIDEO: In this 2 hour video mastercourse “The Gruntwork Infrastructure Module Cookbook” on Teachable, Yevgeniy (Jim) Brikman (of Gruntwork) demos the logic of how to structure (from 2017, before Workspaces) a Terraform project folder such as Gruntwork’s example: Gruntwork recommends separate folders:

• vpc (networking)
• frontend

• mysql (db)
  
  

• modules/
  • install-vault
    • install-vault.sh
  • run-vault
    • run-vault.sh
  • vault-cluster
  • vault-security-group-rules
  • vault-elb  
  • IAM (folder)
    • README.md
    • variables.tf
    • main.tf
    • outputs.tf
  • Network (folder)
    • …  
• examples (folder)
• test
  
  

REMEMBER: Terraform processes all .tf files in a directory invoked, in alphabetical order.

REMEMBER: A .tfvars file defines the actual values used in each environmet (dev, qa, stage, prod). For example:

• In dev, env_instance_count = 1
• In qa, env_instance_count = 2
• In stage, env_instance_count = 4
• In prod, env_instance_count = 4
  
  

HCL (HashiCorp Configuration Language) comments

VIDEO:

Terraform defined HCL (HashiCorp Configuration Language) for both human and machine consumption. HCL is defined at https://github.com/hashicorp/hcl and described at https://www.terraform.io/docs/configuration/syntax.html.

Terraform supports JSON syntax to read output from programmatic creation of such files. The name suffix of files containing JSON “*.tf.json”.

HCL is less verbose than JSON and more concise than YML. *

Unlike JSON and YML, HCL allows annotations (comments). As in bash scripts: single line comments start with # (pound sign) or // (double forward slashes).

Multi-line comments are wrapped between /* and */.

\ back-slashes specify continuation of long lines (as in Bash).

variables.tf (vars.tf)

References:

• https://www.terraform.io/language/values/variables
• https://kodekloud.com/topic/understanding-the-variable-block/
• PROTIP: Specifying passwords in environment variables is more secure than typing passwords in tf files*.
  
  

PROTIP: For reusability, static values are replaced with variables resolved in a separate variables.tf file.

This file defines for each (and every) variable referenced within tf files its description, default.

For example, reference to environment variables:

variable "server_port" {
  description = "The port the server will use for HTTP requests"
  default = 8080
}

variable "aws_access_key" {}
variable "aws_secret_key" {}
variable "subnet_count" {
  default = 2
}
   

There are several types of variables:

variable "image_name" {
  type        = "string"
  description = "The name of the image for the deployment."
  default     = "happy_randomizer"
}
variable "service_networks" {
  type        = "list"
  description = "The name or ID of one or more networks the service will operate on."
  default     = ["Joyent-SDC-Public","Joyent-SDC-Private"]
}
variable "image_version" {
  type        = "string"
  description = "The version of the image for the deployment."
  default     = "1.0.0"
}
variable "image_type" {
  type        = "string"
  description = "The type of the image for the deployment."
  default     = "lx-dataset"
}
variable "package_name" {
  type        = "string"
  description = "The package to use when making a deployment."
  default     = "g4-highcpu-128M"
}
variable "service_name" {
  type        = "string"
  description = "The name of the service in CNS."
  default     = "happiness"
}
   

“Collection” variable types allow multiple values of one primitive type variable to be grouped together.

type = list(string) can be iterated from index 0 for the first item.

type = list(number) causes an error if entries are not numbers.

A “structural”

variable "someone" {
  type = object({
    name = string
    pant_size = number
    favorite_foods = list(string)
    is_available = bool
  })
  default = {
     name = "Joe"
     pant_size = 42
     favorite_foods = ["salmon", "chicken", "bananas"]
     is_available = true
  }
}
   

Boolean true/false and numbers are never between quotes.

type = set(string) cannot contain duplicates.

type = tuple([string, number, bool]) is used for mixed types in a list.

NOTE: A tuple cannot be converted into a string.

resource ... {
   ...
   for_each = toset(var.regio)
}
variable region {
   type = list
   default = ["us-east-1",
              "us-east-1",
              "ca-central-1"]
   description = "A list of AWS Regions"
}
   

KodeKloud’s example map:

variable "ami" {
      type = map
      default = {
         us-west-1 = "ami-...123",
         us-east-1 = "ami-...456",
         eu-east-1 = "ami-...789",
      }
}
   

To retrieve indirectly by key name to obtain value “HHD”:

ami = lookup( var.ami_map, "us-west-1")

The result is ami-…123

1. To select the appropriate storage size based on your server plan even using nested lookups like in the example below.

   storage = lookup(var.storages,lookup(var.plans,var.config,"1xCPU-1GB"),"25")

   variable storages {
   type = map
   default = {
      "1xCPU-1GB" = "25"
      "1xCPU-2GB" = "50"
      "2xCPU-4GB" = "100"
   }
   }
   variable plans {
   type = map
   default = {
      "5USD"  = "1xCPU-1GB"
      "10USD" = "1xCPU-2GB"
      "20USD" = "2xCPU-4GB"
   }
   }
   variable config {
   default = "5USD"
   }
   

   If the key does not exist in the map, the interpolation will fail. To avoid issues, you should specify a third argument, a default string value that is returned if the key could not be found. Do note though that this function only works on flat maps and will return an error for maps that include nested lists or maps.

   TODO: Obtain the latest ami.

Linters identify when they are not.

Interpolation & HCL2 syntax

Terraform 0.11 and earlier required all non-constant expressions to be provided via interpolation syntax with a format similar to shell scripts:

image = "${var.aws_region}"

PROTIP: Interpolation allows a single file to be specified for several environments (dev, qa, stage, prod), with a variable file to specify only values unique to each enviornment.

But this pattern is now deprecated.

var. above references values defined in file “variables.tf”, which provide the “Enter a value:” prompt when needed:

Values can be interpolated using syntax wrapped in ${}, called interpolation syntax, in the format of ${type.name.attribute}. For example, $\{aws.instance.base.id\} is interpolated to something like i-28978a2. Literal $ are coded by doubling up $$.

Interpolations can contain logic and mathematical operations, such as abs(), replace(string, search, replace).

HCL does not contain conditional if/else logic, which is why modules (described below) are necessary.

HCL2 is the new experimental version that combines the interpolation language HIL to produce a single configuration language that supports arbitrary expressions. It’s not backward compatible, with no direct migration path.

main.tf

References:

• https://www.terraform.io/language/values/variables#booleans
  
  

In this minimal sample file for AWS, HCL specifies the provider cloud, instance type used to house the AMI, which is specific to a region:

terraform {
  required_version = ">= 0.8, < 0.9"
}
provider "aws" {
  version = ">= 1.2, < 1.2"
  alias = "${var.aws_region_alias}"
  region = "${var.aws_region}"
  access_key = "${var.AWS_ACCESS_KEY}"
  secret_key = "${var.AWS_SECRET_KEY}"
}
 
resource "aws_instance" "web" {
  ami           = "ami-40d28157"
  instance_type = "t2.micro"
  subnet_id     = "subnet-c02a3628"
  vpc_security_group_ids = ["sg-a1fe66aa"]
  tags {
    Identity = "..."
    Name = "my_server"
  }
}
output "public_ip"  {
  value = aws.instance.my_server[*].public_ip
}
   

In this minimal sample file for Azure:

provider “azurerm” {
   version = “~> 2.1.0"
   subscription_id = var.subscription_id
 
   client_id = var.client_id
   client_secret = var.client_secret
   tenant_id = var.tenant_id
 
   features {}
}
   

terraform, the first block name, defines an argument (between curly braces) which defines the versions of terraform the file was tested for use.

Each block defined between curly braces is called a “stanza”.

REMEMBER: Key components of Terraform are: provider, resource, provision. “provider” and “resource” are each a configuration block.

In the resource block, “aws_instance” is the Resource Type. “web” is the Resource Name.

If the prefix block name begins with a known provider name such as “time_” or “random_”, a type =” is not needed because Terraform assumes that prefix as the type (type = time_static) referenced by ${time_static.time_update.id}

The ami (amazon machine image) identifier is obtained from Amazon’s catalog of public images.

“t1.micro” qualifies for the Amazon free tier available to first-year subscribers.

PROTIP: Vertically aligning values helps to make information easier to find.

subnet_id is for the VPC and vpc_security_group_ids array.

tags_identity is to scope permissions.

A data source is accessed through a data provider.

References:

• http://www.antonbabenko.com/2016/09/21/how-i-structure-terraform-configurations.html
• Another example is from the Terransible lab and course
• https://www.ahead.com/resources/how-to-create-custom-ec2-vpcs-in-aws-using-terraform/
  
  

Multi-cloud/service

Terraform is better characterized as a multi-service tool rather than a “multi-cloud tool”. PROTIP: One would need to rewrite templates to move from, say, AWS to Azure. Terraform doesn’t abstract resources needed to do that. However, it does ease migration among clouds to avoid cloud vendor lock-in.

Terraform provides an alternative to each cloud vendor’s IaC solution:

• AWS - Cloud Formation & CDK
• Microsoft Azure Resource Manager Templates
• Google Cloud Platform Deployment Manager
• OpenStack Heat (on-premises)
  
  

Terraform can also provision on-premises servers running OpenStack, VMWare vSphere, and CloudStack as well as AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Digitial Ocean, Fastly, and other cloud providers (responsible for understanding API interacitons and exposing resources).

In GCP, Terraform state is stored as an object in a configurable prefix in a given bucket on GCS (Google Cloud Storage), which supports state locking.

To set an IAM policy for a specified project and replace any existing policy that is already attached, the use a google_project_iam_policy authoritative resource.

References:

• https://oracle-base.com/articles/misc/terraform-variables

Terraform Providers

https://www.terraform.io/docs/language/providers/index.html

1. List providers from https://github.com/terraform-providers

   terraform providers

   Most commonly, Terraform Providers translate HCL into API calls defined in (at last count, 109) cloud provider repositories from Terraform, Inc. Note there is a local provider and also a “random” provider to generate random data:

   Terraform Built-in Providers

   https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform/tree/master/builtin/providers

   US Majors: “aws”, “azurestack”, “google”, “google-beta”, “azurerm”, “azuread”,

   “heroku”, Kubernetes, “gitlab”, DigitalOcean, Heroku, GitHub, “cloudscale”, “cloudstack”, “opentelekomcloud”, “oci” (Oracle Cloud Infrastructure), “opc” (Oracle Public Cloud), “oracclepass” (Oracle Platform Cloud), “flexibleengine”, “nsxt”, “rancher”, “rancher2”, (VMware NSX-T), “vcd” (VMware vCloud Director ), “openstack”, “scaleway”, “UCloud”, “JDcloud”, Joyent Triton, Circonus, NaverCloud, TelefonicaOpenCloud, oneandone, Skytap, etc.

   Cloud operators in China: “alicloud”, “huaweicloud”, “tencentcloud”, etc.

   Monitoring and other infrastructure services vendors: “datadog”, “grafana”, “newrelic”, “pagerduty”, “bigip” (F5 BigIP), “RabbitMQ”, “acme”, “yandex”, “ciscoasa” (ASA), etc.

   CDN vendors: Dyn, “fastly”, “cloudflare”, “netlify”, “packet” (Terraform Packet), “consul” (Terraform Consul), “nutanix”, “ignition”, “dnsimple”, “fortis”, LogicMonitor, “profitbricks”, “statuscake”, etc.

   Database and repositories: “influxdb”, “mysql”, “postgresql”, “vault” (Terraform), “bitbucket”, “github”, “archive”, etc.

   Servers: “docker”, “dns”, UltraDNS, “helm” (Terraform), “http”, “vsphere” (VMware vSphere), etc.

   chef, “spotinst”, “linode”, “hedvig”, “selectel”, “brightbox”, “OVH”, “nomad”, “local”, Panos, NS1, “rundeck”, VMWare vRA7, random, external, “null”, Icinga2, Arukas, runscope, etc.

   The follow have been archived: Atlas (Terraform), “clc” (CenturyLinkCloud), OpsGenie, (IBM) SoftLayer, PowerDNS, DNSMadeEasy, Librato, Mailgun, LogEntries, Gridscale, CIDR, etc.

Custom Providers

Custom Terraform Providers are written in the Go language.

The steps below are based on https://www.terraform.io/intro/examples and implemented in the setup scripts at: https://github.com/wilsonmar/mac-setup which performs the following steps for you:

1. Install a Git client if you haven’t already.

2. Use an internet browser (Chrome) to see the sample assets at:

   https://github.com/terraform-providers/terraform-provider-aws.git

3. If you are going to make changes, click the Fork button.

4. Create or navigate to a container folder where new repositories are added. For example:

   ~/gits/wilsonmar/tf-sample

5. Get the repo onto your laptop (substituting “wilsonmar” with your own account name):

   git clone https://github.com/terraform-providers/terraform-provider-aws.git --depth=1 && cd tf-sample

   The above is one line, but may be word-wrapped on your screen.

   The response at time of writing:

   Cloning into 'tf-sample'...
   remote: Counting objects: 12, done.
   remote: Compressing objects: 100% (12/12), done.
   remote: Total 12 (delta 1), reused 9 (delta 0), pack-reused 0
   Unpacking objects: 100% (12/12), done.
   

6. PROTIP: Make sure that the AWS region is what you want.

   https://www.terraform.io/docs/providers/aws/r/instance.html AWS provider

   A template data store Template Provider exposes data sources which use templates to generate strings for other Terraform resources or outputs.

Credentials in tfvars

Actual values which replace each variable in tf files are defined in a *.tfvars file for each environment:

PROTIP: Separate Terraform configurations by a folder for each environment:

• base (template for making changes)
• dev
• loadtest (performance/stress testing)
• stage
• uat (User Acceptance Testing)
• prod
• demo (demostration used by salespeople)
• train (for training users)
  
  

Credentials in a sample terraform.tfvars file for AWS:

aws_access_key = "123456789abcdef123456789"
aws_secret_key = "Your AWS SecretKey"
aws_region = "us-east-1"
aws_accountId = "123456789123456"
private_key_path = "C:\\PathToYourPrivateKeys\PrivateKey.pem"
   

It’s not good security to store such information in a repo potentially shared, so tfvars files are specified in .gitignore, and retrieved from secret storage before running terraform commands. Also for security, the variables are then removed from memory shortly after usage.

1. Navigate into the base folder.

   PROTIP: Terraform commands act only on the current directory, and does not recurse into sub directories.

   A development.tfvars file may also contain:

   environment_tag = "dev"
   tenant_id = "223dev"
   billing_code_tag = "DEV12345"
   dns_site_name = "dev-web"
   dns_zone_name = "mycorp.xyz"
   dns_resource_group = "DNS"
   instance_count = "1"
   subnet_count = "1"
   

   The production.tfvars file usually instead contain more instances and thus subnets that go through a load balancer for auto-scaling:

   environment_tag = "prod"
   tenant_id = "223prod"
   billing_code_tag = "PROD12345"
   dns_site_name = "marketing"
   dns_zone_name = "mycorp.com"
   dns_resource_group = "DNS"
   instance_count = "6"
   subnet_count = "3"
   

   All these would use main_config.tf and variables.tf files commonly used for all environments:

   Tag for cost tracking by codes identifying a particular budget, project, department, etc.

   Defaults and lookup function

   PROTIP: Variables can be assigned multiple default values selected by a lookup function:

   # AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID
   # AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY
   # export AWS_DEFAULT_REGION=xx-yyyy-0
    
   variable "server_port" {
     description = "The port the server will use for HTTP requests"
     default = 8080
   }
   variable "amis" {
     type = "map”"
     default = {
    us-east-1 = "ami-1234"
    us-west-1 = "ami-5678"
     }
   }
   ami = ${lookup(var.amis, "us-east-1")}
   

   PROTIP: With AWS EC2, region “us-east-1” must be used as the basis for creating others.

   NOTE: Amazon has an approval process for making AMIs available on the public Amazon Marketplace.

   The “default” argument requires a literal value and cannot reference other objects in the configuration.

Count of items processed

VIDEO: To create several items (such as files) using a count that is indexed from 0:

1. In a .tf file:

   resource "local_file" "my_data" {
     my_data_filename = var.my_data_filename[my_data_file_count.index]
     my_data_file_count = 3
   }
   

2. In a variables.tf file, my_data_filename[0] is the first default file name:

   variable "my_data_filename" {
     default = [
     "/root/file_a.txt",
     "/root/file_b.txt",
     "/root/file_c.txt",
     "/root/file_d.txt"
     ]
   }
   

3. After terraform apply, a list of files would yield:

   file_a.txt
   file_b.txt
   file_c.txt
   

   The default directory_permission and file_permission is 0777.

VIDEO: To ensure that items are properly deleted, a for-each is used to create a map referenced by key values instead of a blind list referenced by an index.

.gitignore

1. In the .gitignore file are files generated during processing, so don’t need to persist in a repository:

   .DS_Store
   *.pem
   *.tfvars
   *.auto.tfvars
   terraform.tfvars.json
   *.tfplan
   *.plan
   *.tfstate
   terraform.tfstate*
   *.tfstate.backup
   .terraform/
   *.lock.info
   *.iml
   vpc
   

   .DS_Store is created internally within MacOS and so serves no purpose in GitHub.

   .pem are private key files which should never be stored in GitHub.

   *.tfvars contains secrets, so should not be saved in GitHub.

   *.tfplan is created each time terraform plan is run, so no need to save it in GitHub.

   terraform.tfstate* is a wildcard for folder terraform.tfstate.d and variants, which contain Terraform Workspaces.

   tfstate.backup is created from the most recent previous execution before the current tfstate file contents.

   .terraform/ specifies that the folder is ignored when pushing to GitHub.

   Terraform apply creates a dev.state.lock.info file as a way to signal to other processes to stay away while changes to the environment are underway.

   PROTIP: CAUTION: tfstate files can contain secrets, so .gitignore and delete them before git add.

2. Define .gitignore for use with editors used by the team: VSCode, PyCharm, IntelliJ, etc.

   https://www.toptal.com/developers/gitignore/api/terraform,intellij+all,visualstudiocode

   https://intellij-support.jetbrains.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/360006390300-Terraform

   https://community.opengroup.org/osdu/platform/deployment-and-operations/infra-azure-provisioning/-/blob/master/.gitignore

Upgrading Terraform version

When upgrading Terraform version, configurations may need syntax update.

1. To make updates automatically:

   terraform versionupgrade

Terraform reversed from resources

Wisdom Hambolu analyzes use of a utility that attempts to convert Cloud Formation files to Terraform, with mixed results.

To generate from resources created under an AWS account/Azure Subscription Terraform HCL files, here are the options:

NOTE: No longer supported is the Ruby-based https://github.com/dtan4/terraforming. It also comes as a Docker container.

Created about the same time are:

• Google’s terraformer
• cloud diagram creator Cycloid’s terracognita https://blog.cycloid.io/what-is-terracognita
  
  

Both are installed onto MacOS using Homebrew.

brew info terracognita
brew install terracognita
terracognita aws resources | wc -l      # 119
terracognita azurerm resources | wc -l  # 119
terracognita google resources | wc -l   #  21
   

On GCP, customize based on video at https://asciinema.org/a/330055 :

terracognita google --project cycloid-sandbox --region us-central1 \
   --credentials "$HOME/cycloid/google/cycloid-iam-9789b351a19b.json \
   --tfstate resources.tfstate \
   --hcl resources.tf \
   -i google_compute_instance \
   -i google_compute_network
   

On Azure:

terracognita azurerm --tenant-id $TENANT_ID \
   --subscription-id $SUBSCRIPTION_ID \
   --resource-group-name $GROUP_NAME [format to import] \
   --client-id $CLIENT_ID --client-secret $CLIENT_SECRET 
   

On AWS with profiles:

terracognita aws --aws-default-region $AWS_REGION [format to import] \
   --aws-profile $PROFILE_NAME 
   

On AWS with credentials:

terracognita aws --aws-default-region $AWS_REGION [format to import] \
   --aws-access-key $AWS_ACCESS_KEY --aws-secret-access-key $AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY 
   

On AWS with credentials file:

terracognita aws --aws-default-region $AWS_REGION [format to import] \
   --aws-shared-credentials-file $FILE_PATH 
   

Additionally on AWS:

   --hcl test.tf \
   --module module-name (as tf module) Optional with this format: \
   --module-variables file.json/yaml (to limit vars on the module) \
   --tfstate test.tfstate (as tfstate)
   

More info at https://github.com/cycloidio/terracognita#modules

brew info terraformer
brew install terraformer
   

1. Other diagramming tools:

   https://cloudcraft.co/

   https://www.hava.io/blog/aws-network-diagram-generator AWS network diagram generator and visualize security group, traffic and open port details. Generates to Visio, draw.io or any VSDX.

   LucidChart

   https://cloudviz.io/ for AWS at $10/month

2. Deploy your existing CFT instead of trying to convert it:

   https://www.terraform.io/docs/providers/aws/r/cloudformation_stack.html

3. It may be possible for simple cases but perhaps very complex (almost impossible) to convert CFT intrinsic functions:

   https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSCloudFormation/latest/UserGuide/intrinsic-function-reference.html

Azure AzTfy

From Azure: https://github.com/Azure/aztfy a tool to bring existing Azure resources under the management of Terraform, based on https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform-provider-azurerm

*1 - CF/CFN (CloudFormation) is used only within the AWS cloud while others operate on several clouds. CFN is the only closed-sourced solution on this list. Code for Terraform is open-sourced at https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform

Those who create AMI’s also provide CFN templates to customers.* (cloudnaut.io has free templates)

TOOL: Troposphere and Sceptre makes CFN easier to write with basic loops and logic that CFN lacks.

But in Sep 2018 CloudFormation got macros to do iteration and interpolation (find-and-replace). Caveat: it requires dependencies to be setup.

CF/CFN (Cloud Formation) limits the size of objects uploaded to S3.

Can’t really do that with CFN alone. Even though Cloud Formation has nested stack only for AWS.

AWS Cloud Formation and Terraform can both be used at the same time. Terraform is often used to handle security groups, IAM resources, VPCs, Subnets, and policy documents; while CFN is used for actual infrastructural components, now that cloud formation has released drift detection using Bridgecrew.

NOTE: “Combined with cfn-init and family, CloudFormation supports different forms of deployment patterns that can be more awkward to do in Terraform: ASGs with different replacement policies, automatic rollbacks based upon Cloudwatch alarms, etc. due to state being managed purely internally by AWS.

Terraform is not really an application level deployment tool. So you wind up rolling your own.

Working out an odd mix of null resources and shell commands to deploy an application while trying to roll back is not straightforward and seems like a lot of reinventing the wheel.”

References about CFN:

• Puppet, Chef, Ansible, Salt AWS API libraries Boto, Fog
• AWS CloudFormation Sample Templates at https://github.com/awslabs/aws-cloudformation-templates
• AWS CloudFormation Master Class by Stéphane Maarek from Packt May 2018
• Some CloudFormation templates are compatible with OpenStack Heat templates.
  
  

Dependency Graph for visualization

(click image for full screen

1. VIDEO: The above Resource Graph visual representation of dependencies can be created by this command:

   terraform graph | dot -Tsvg > graph.svg

   The terraform graph command creates graphs specified in the DOT language, with the file name extension .gv, so the dot program is needed to generate .svg format used to specify graphics in programs.

2. Copy the SVG code to Clipboard to paste into webgraphwiz.com

   PROTIP: Save that URL among your browser bookmarks.

   

   The above is from “Solving Infrastructure Challenges with Terraform” 5h videos on CloudAcademy by Rogan Rakai using GCP and VSCode on https://github.com/cloudacademy/managing-infrastructure-with-terraform to create a two-tier sample WordPress app with a MYSQL_5_7 database, both running under Kubernetes (GKE), with a replica in another region.

   Alternately, several apps can display SVG files, including Sketch.app.

3. A more colorful format using Blast Radius [examples]:

Terragrunt from Gruntwork

VIDEO: A popular replacement of some standard terraform commands are terragrunt commands open-sourced at https://github.com/gruntwork-io/terragrunt by Gruntwork:

   terragrunt get
   terragrunt plan
   terragrunt apply
   terragrunt output
   terragrunt destroy
   

These wrapper commands provide a quick way to fill in gaps in Terraform:

• provide dynamic values to a provider

• provide extra tools for working with multiple Terraform modules

• managing remote state, and keeping DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself), so that you only have to define it once, no matter how many environments you have. This reduces boilerplate.

• configure remote state, locking, extra arguments, etc.

WARNING: There are some concerns about Terragrunt’s use of invalid data structures. See https://github.com/gruntwork-io/terragrunt/issues/466

QUESTION: Terraform Enterprise cover features of Terragrunt?

References:

• https://blog.gruntwork.io/introducing-the-gruntwork-module-service-and-architecture-catalogs-eb3a21b99f70 August 26, 2020
• https://www.missioncloud.com/blog/aws-cloudformation-vs-terraform-which-one-should-you-choose
  
  

Install on MacOS:

1. To install Terragrunt on macOS:

   brew unlink tfenv
   brew install terragrunt
   brew unlink terraform
   brew link --overwrite tfenv
   

   The unlink is to avoid error response:

   Error: Cannot install terraform because conflicting formulae are installed.
     tfenv: because tfenv symlinks terraform binaries
    
   Please `brew unlink tfenv` before continuing.
    
   Unlinking removes a formula's symlinks from /usr/local. You can
   link the formula again after the install finishes. You can --force this
   install, but the build may fail or cause obscure side effects in the
   resulting software.
   

   Otherwise:

   ==> Installing dependencies for terragrunt: terraform
   ==> Installing terragrunt dependency: terraform
   ==> Downloading https://homebrew.bintray.com/bottles/terraform-0.12.24.catalina.
   Already downloaded: /Users/wilson_mar/Library/Caches/Homebrew/downloads/041f7578654b5ef316b5a9a3a3af138b602684838e0754ae227b9494210f4017--terraform-0.12.24.catalina.bottle.tar.gz
   ==> Pouring terraform-0.12.24.catalina.bottle.tar.gz
   🍺  /usr/local/Cellar/terraform/0.12.24: 6 files, 51.2MB
   ==> Installing terragrunt
   ==> Downloading https://homebrew.bintray.com/bottles/terragrunt-0.23.10.catalina
   ==> Downloading from https://akamai.bintray.com/d6/d6924802f5cdfd17feae2b561ab9d
   ######################################################################## 100.0%
   ==> Pouring terragrunt-0.23.10.catalina.bottle.tar.gz
   🍺  /usr/local/Cellar/terragrunt/0.23.10: 5 files, 30.4MB
   

2. For the Terragrunt menu on macOS:

   terragrunt
   

   Expand the Terminal/console window edge for full screen to see all lines without wrapping:

   DESCRIPTION:
   terragrunt - Terragrunt is a thin wrapper for Terraform that provides extra tools for working with multiple
   Terraform modules, remote state, and locking. For documentation, see https://github.com/gruntwork-io/terragrunt/.
    
   USAGE:
   terragrunt <COMMAND> [GLOBAL OPTIONS]
    
   COMMANDS:
   run-all               Run a terraform command against a 'stack' by running the specified command in each subfolder. E.g., to run 'terragrunt apply' in each subfolder, use 'terragrunt run-all apply'.
   terragrunt-info       Emits limited terragrunt state on stdout and exits
   validate-inputs       Checks if the terragrunt configured inputs align with the terraform defined variables.
   graph-dependencies    Prints the terragrunt dependency graph to stdout
   hclfmt                Recursively find hcl files and rewrite them into a canonical format.
   aws-provider-patch    Overwrite settings on nested AWS providers to work around a Terraform bug (issue #13018)
   *                     Terragrunt forwards all other commands directly to Terraform
    
   GLOBAL OPTIONS:
   terragrunt-config                            Path to the Terragrunt config file. Default is terragrunt.hcl.
   terragrunt-tfpath                            Path to the Terraform binary. Default is terraform (on PATH).
   terragrunt-no-auto-init                      Don't automatically run 'terraform init' during other terragrunt commands. You must run 'terragrunt init' manually.
   terragrunt-no-auto-retry                     Don't automatically re-run command in case of transient errors.
   terragrunt-non-interactive                   Assume "yes" for all prompts.
   terragrunt-working-dir                       The path to the Terraform templates. Default is current directory.
   terragrunt-download-dir                      The path where to download Terraform code. Default is .terragrunt-cache in the working directory.
   terragrunt-source                            Download Terraform configurations from the specified source into a temporary folder, and run Terraform in that temporary folder.
   terragrunt-source-update                     Delete the contents of the temporary folder to clear out any old, cached source code before downloading new source code into it.
   terragrunt-iam-role                          Assume the specified IAM role before executing Terraform. Can also be set via the TERRAGRUNT_IAM_ROLE environment variable.
   terragrunt-iam-assume-role-duration          Session duration for IAM Assume Role session. Can also be set via the TERRAGRUNT_IAM_ASSUME_ROLE_DURATION environment variable.
   terragrunt-ignore-dependency-errors          *-all commands continue processing components even if a dependency fails.
   terragrunt-ignore-dependency-order           *-all commands will be run disregarding the dependencies
   terragrunt-ignore-external-dependencies      *-all commands will not attempt to include external dependencies
   terragrunt-include-external-dependencies     *-all commands will include external dependencies
   terragrunt-parallelism  N>                   *-all commands parallelism set to at most N modules
   terragrunt-exclude-dir                       Unix-style glob of directories to exclude when running *-all commands
   terragrunt-include-dir                       Unix-style glob of directories to include when running *-all commands
   terragrunt-check                             Enable check mode in the hclfmt command.
   terragrunt-hclfmt-file                       The path to a single hcl file that the hclfmt command should run on.
   terragrunt-override-attr                     A key=value attribute to override in a provider block as part of the aws-provider-patch command. May be specified multiple times.
   terragrunt-debug                             Write terragrunt-debug.tfvars to working folder to help root-cause issues.
   terragrunt-log-level                         Sets the logging level for Terragrunt. Supported levels: panic, fatal, error, warn (default), info, debug, trace.
   terragrunt-strict-validate                   Sets strict mode for the validate-inputs command. By default, strict mode is off. When this flag is passed, strict mode is turned on. When strict mode is turned off, the validate-inputs command will only return an error if required inputs are missing from all input sources (env vars, var files, etc). When strict mode is turned on, an error will be returned if required inputs are missing OR if unused variables are passed to Terragrunt.
    
   VERSION:
   v0.31.7
    
   AUTHOR(S):
   Gruntwork <www.gruntwork.io>
   

3. To define:

   terragrunt = {
     # (put your Terragrunt configuration here)
   }

The problem with Terragrunt

A terragrunt.hcl is needed in each folder where we want Terragrunt to generates a Terraform project in that folder. So people end up with a bunch of folders that represent all your modules, environments, regions permutations - one folder for each permutation of env+server+region+account.*

The problem with that is duplicated terragrunt.hcl configurations, which create the need to plan Terragrunt project structure carefully upfront. However, recent TF versions have:

• partial backend configurations (so you can pass backend as CLI flags)

• ability to set data directory tf_data_dir

• Change to a directory with -chdir parameter.

Configuration

Instructions below are for the Command Line.

If you prefer using Python, there is a Python module to provide a wrapper of terraform command line tool at https://github.com/beelit94/python-terraform

Command Alias list & help

1. For a list of commands, use the abbreviated alternate to the terraform command:

   tf

   Alternately, use the long form:

   terraform

   Either way, the response is a menu (at time of writing):

   Usage: terraform [global options] <subcommand> [args]
    
   The available commands for execution are listed below.
   The primary workflow commands are given first, followed by
   less common or more advanced commands.
    
   Main commands:
     init          Prepare your working directory for other commands
     validate      Check whether the configuration is valid
     plan          Show changes required by the current configuration
     apply         Create or update infrastructure
     destroy       Destroy previously-created infrastructure
    
   All other commands:
     console       Try Terraform expressions at an interactive command prompt
     fmt           Reformat your configuration in the standard style
     force-unlock  Release a stuck lock on the current workspace
     get           Install or upgrade remote Terraform modules
     graph         Generate a Graphviz graph of the steps in an operation
     import        Associate existing infrastructure with a Terraform resource
     login         Obtain and save credentials for a remote host
     logout        Remove locally-stored credentials for a remote host
     output        Show output values from your root module
     providers     Show the providers required for this configuration
     refresh       Update the state to match remote systems
     show          Show the current state or a saved plan
     state         Advanced state management
     taint         Mark a resource instance as not fully functional
     test          Experimental support for module integration testing
     untaint       Remove the 'tainted' state from a resource instance
     version       Show the current Terraform version
     workspace     Workspace management
    
   Global options (use these before the subcommand, if any):
     -chdir=DIR    Switch to a different working directory before executing the
                given subcommand.
     -help         Show this help output, or the help for a specified subcommand.
     -version      An alias for the "version" subcommand.
   

   NOTE: The terraform remote command configures remote state storage.

   BLAH: Terraform doesn’t have an alias command (like Git) to add custom subcommands, so one has to remember which command is Terragrunt and which are standard Terraform?

2. Install Terragrunt wrapper:

   https://github.com/gruntwork-io/terragrunt

3. Help on a specific command, for example:

   terraform plan --help

   Terraform Console

4. Open the Terraform Console (REPL) from a Terminal/command shell:

   terraform console

   The response is the prompt:

   >

5. Commands can interpret numbers:

   element(list("one","two","three"),0,2)

   The response is (because counting begins from zero):

   1:3: element: expected 2 arguments, got 3 in:

6. Type exit or press (on a Mac) control+C to return to your Terminal window.

   The program also expects an additional top level in all .tfvars files:

   You should now be at your operating system console.

fmt HCL Coding Conventions

Terraform language style conventions include:

• A block definition must have block content delimited by “{“ and “}” starting on the same line as the block header.

• Indent using two spaces (not tabs).

• A space before and after “=” assignment is not required, but makes for easier reading.

1. To validate whether HCL files are syntactically valid and internally consistent, regardless of any provided variables or existing state. Also, correctness of attribute names and value types:

   terraform validate
   
   This is automatically run when terraform plan or terraform apply is run.
   
   

2. To reformat HCL files according to rules.

   terraform fmt -diff
   
   This is a destructive command, so make sure to git commit before the command.
   
   
   
   

Reusable Modules

Modules are self-contained packages of Terraform configurations that are managed as a group.

In other words, a Terraform module is a container for multiple resources used together.

Putting Terraform code in modules enable their reuse, which speeds development by reducing testing and increasing the pace of change.

Terraform modules provide “blueprints” to deploy.

References:

• https://blog.gruntwork.io/how-to-create-reusable-infrastructure-with-terraform-modules-25526d65f73d
• How to Build Reusable, Composable, Battle tested Terraform Modules
• How to: Introduction to Terraform Modules
  
  

Custom modules

VIDEO

To add more logic to continue using declarative specifications (templates), administrators can write modules of their own.

Thus Terraform defines the “desired state configuration” (DSC).

1. To get (download and update) modules in the root module without initializing state or pull provider binaries like terraform init:

   terraform get

Output from within a module

From within a module named “some_module”:

output "returned-variable" {
  value = "1"
}

Output in the main Terraform code invoking the module:

module.some_module.returned-variable

The module’s source can be on a local disk:

module "service_foo" {
  source = "/modules/microservice"
  image_id = "ami-12345"
  num_instances = 3
}
   

### Modules from GitHub

The source can be from a GitHub repo such as https://github.com/objectpartners/tf-modules

<pre>module "rancher" {   source = "<a target="_blank" href="https://github.com/objectpartners/tf-modules//rancher/server-standalone-elb-db&ref=9b2e590">github.com/objectpartners/tf-modules//rancher/server-standalone-elb-db&ref=9b2e590</a>" }

</pre>

• Notice “https://” are not part of the source string. It’s assumed.
• Double slashes in the URL above separate the repo from the subdirectory.
• PROTIP: The ref above is the first 7 hex digits of a commit SHA hash ID. Alternately, semantic version tag value (such as “v1.2.3”) can be specified. This is a key enabler for immutable strategy.
  
  

The ability to loop over modules with a single module call became available August 2020 with the release of Terraform 0.13.

### Terraform Registry

PROTIP: Learn from modules created by others in Terraform Modules Registry (marketplace) at https://registry.terraform.io/browse/modules which contains 9,000 modules shared globally by many.

For AWS in github.com/terraform-aws-modules: https://registry.terraform.io/modules/terraform-aws-modules/security-group/aws/latest

• ACM
• Appsync
• ALB
• Atlantis
• autoscaling

• API Gateway v2

• Big Query
• Cloudwatch
• Cloud Front

• dynamodb-table

• Eventbridge
• ebs-optimized
• ec2-instance
• ECS
• EKS
• ELB

• IAM

• key-pair
• Lambda
• Load Balancer HTTP
• org-policy
• redshift
• rds-aurora

• Route 53 (DNS)

• S3-bucket VIDEO, AWS docs
• security-group
• step-functions

• transit-gateway

• vpn-gateway
• VPC
  
  

Vault

HashiCorp Vault can store long-lived credentials in a secure way and dynamically inject short-lived, temporary keys to Terraform at deployment. https://registry.terraform.io/modules/hashicorp/vault module installs HashiCorp’s own Vault and Consul on AWS EC2, Azure, GCP.

Video of demo by Yevgeniy Brikman:

Community modules

Terrafrom provides its own modules.

PROTIP: Don’t blindly include public assets in your code. First scan them. Then copy lines and test them.

Terraform Modules are how to add “smartness” to manage each DevOps component:

• https://github.com/terraform-community-modules

• https://github.com/gruntwork-io/terratest is a Go library that makes it easier to write automated tests for your infrastructure code.

https://terratest.gruntwork.io/docs/testing-best-practices/unit-integration-end-to-end-test/ https://terratest.gruntwork.io/ https://terratest.gruntwork.io/docs/testing-best-practices/unit-integration-end-to-end-test/

• https://www.ybrikman.com/writing/2017/10/13/reusable-composable-battle-tested-terraform-modules

• https://github.com/terraform-aws-modules

CAUTION: In 2020, 44% of public registry modules did not meet CIS benchmarks. 56% of the modules that have ever been downloaded contain what is now considered a misconfiguration.

VIDEO: Terraform Provider Azure.gov for standardized templates across clouds at github.com/dod-iac (DOD Infrastructure as Code) with 36 examples of how the Pentagon uses Terraform within AWS IAM, S3, EBS, KMS, Kinesis api gateway, Lambda, MFA, GuardDuty, Route53, etc. Included is https://github.com/dod-iac/terraform-module-template for creating new terraform modules.

Terraform Cloud

TFE provides easy access to shared state and secret data.

Terraform Cloud workspaces store the Terraform configuration in a linked version control repository.

Terraform on AWS

VIDEO: Implementing Terraform with AWS by Ned Bellavance at https://github.com/ned1313/Implementing-Terraform-on-AWS

CLI List AWS instances

1. Tagged AWS resources with the environment

   env_instance_tags = {
   "environment" = "prod"
   }
   

2. List instances filtered for only those resources tagged:

   export AWS_PAGER=""
   export ENV="dev"  # or "qa" or "prod"
    aws ec2 describe-instances \
    --filters Name=tag:environment,Values=${ENV} \
    --query 'Reservations[*].Instances[*].{Instance:InstanceId,AZ:Placement.AvailabilityZone,Name:Tags[?Key==`Name`]|[0].Value,Environment:Tags[?Key==`environment`]|[0].Value}' \
    --output table
   

   export AWS_PAGER=”” disables paging of output.

3. To list all instances:

   -filters Name=tag-key,Values=Name \

VPC

For example, to create a simple AWS VPC (Virtual Private Cloud),

1. Allocate IPs outside the VPC module declaration.

   resource "aws_eip" "nat" {
     count = 3
     vpc = true
   }
   

2. Set: https://github.com/terraform-aws-modules/terraform-aws-vpc/tree/master/examples

   module "vpc" {
     source = "terraform-aws-modules/vpc/aws"
    
     name = "my-vpc"
     cidr = "10.0.0.0/16"
    
     azs             = ["eu-west-1a", "eu-west-1b", "eu-west-1c"]
     private_subnets = ["10.0.1.0/24", "10.0.2.0/24", "10.0.3.0/24"]
     public_subnets  = ["10.0.101.0/24", "10.0.102.0/24", "10.0.103.0/24"]
    
     enable_nat_gateway = true
     enable_vpn_gateway = true
    
     tags = {
    Terraform = "true"
    Environment = "dev"
     }
   }
   

   • “azs” designates Availability Zones.

   PROTIP: Remember: a common mistake under each module is that providers are specified within a list:

   module "vpc" {
   source = "terraform-aws-modules/vpc/aws"
   providers = {
      aws = aws.eu
   }
   name = "my-vpc"
   cidr = "10.0.0.0/16"
   azs = "["eu-west-1a", "eu-west-1b", "eu-west-1c"]
   private_subnets = ["10.0.1.0/24", "10.0.2.0/24", "10.0.3.0/24"]
    
   enable_nat_gateway = true
   enable_vpn_gateway = true
    
   tage = {
      Terraform = "true"
      Environment = "dev"
   }
   

Terraform on Azure

https://medium.com/modern-stack/azure-management-using-hashicorp-terraform-e15744f7e612

https://www.oasys.net/posts/updating-azurerm-template-from-terraform/

VIDEO: Implementing Terraform on Microsoft Azure by Ned Bellavance

1. In a browser, go to straight to the Azure Cloud Shell:

   https://shell.azure.com

2. PROTIP: Azure uses the subscription you last used (based on cookies saved from your previous session). So switch to another browser profile or switch to another Subscription.

   az account list

   “isDefault”: true, means you’re using the default Azure account.

   Alternately, environment variables can also be specified for a Service Principal with a cert/secret hard coded in a file run:

   export ARM_CLIENT_ID="..."
   export ARM_CLIENT_SECRET="..."
   export ARM_SUBSCRIPTION_ID="..."
   export ARM_TENANT_ID="..."
   

   Alternately, to use a container’s Managed Service Identity (MSI) instead of ARM_CLIENT_SECRET:

   export ARM_USE_MSI=true
   export ARM_SUBSCRIPTION_ID="..."
   export ARM_TENANT_ID="..."
   

3. Terraform is pre-installed:

   terraform --version

   Terraform v0.14.10
   Your version of Terraform is out of date! The latest version
   is 0.15.0. You can update by downloading from https://www.terraform.io/downloads.html
   

   See what is the latest version and details for each release.

Terraform on Azure documentation index by Microsoft:

• Terraform with Azure on Microsoft Docs summary
• Quickstart: Configure Terraform using Azure Cloud Shell
• Quickstart: Configure Terraform using Azure PowerShell
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/extensions/custom-script-windows to pass in a ps to run, referenced in https://www.udemy.com/course/terraform-on-azure-2021/learn/lecture/25583448#overview

Videos:

• 1.5 hr Udemy video course: Terraform on Azure 2021 by Luke Orellana under Mike Pfiffer’s CloudSkills.io at https://github.com/CloudSkills/Terraform-Projects/tree/master/4-Build-Azure-Infrastructure
• Learning Terraform on Microsoft Azure - Terraform v12 / v13

Testing Terraform

As with Java and other programming code, Terraform coding should be tested too.

Gruntwork has an open-source library to setup and tear down conditions for verifying whether servers created by Terraform actually work.

https://github.com/gruntwork-io/terratest is a Go library that makes it easier to write automated tests for your infrastructure code. It’s written in Go that uses Packer, ssh, and other commands to automate experimentation and to collect results (impact of) various configuration changes.

Quick Start Terratest

BLOG:

terraform validate

1. Validate the folder (see https://www.terraform.io/docs/commands/validate.html)

   terraform validate single-web-server
   

   If no issues are identified, no message appears. (no news is good news)

2. Add a pre-commit hook to validate in your Git repository

   Main.tf

   PROTIP: There should be only one main.tf per folder.

   Plug-in Initialization

   Cloud providers are not included with the installer, so…

3. In your gits folder:

   git clone https://github.com/terraform-providers/terraform-provider-aws.git --depth=1
   

4. Initialize Terraform working directory (like git init) plug-ins:

   terraform init

   Sample response:

   Initializing provider plugins...
          - Checking for available provider plugins on https://releases.hashicorp.com...
          - Downloading plugin for provider "aws" (1.17.0)...
    
   The following providers do not have any version constraints in configuration,
   so the latest version was installed.
    
   To prevent automatic upgrades to new major versions that may contain breaking
   changes, it is recommended to add version = "..." constraints to the
   corresponding provider blocks in configuration, with the constraint strings
   suggested below.
    
          * provider.aws: version = "~> 1.17"
    
   Terraform has been successfully initialized!
    
   You may now begin working with Terraform. Try running "terraform plan" to see
   any changes that are required for your infrastructure. All Terraform commands
   should now work.
    
   If you ever set or change modules or backend configuration for Terraform,
   rerun this command to reinitialize your working directory. If you forget, other
   commands will detect it and remind you to do so if necessary.
   

   See https://www.terraform.io/docs/commands/init.html

   This creates a hidden .terraform\plugins" folder path containing a folder for your os - darwin_amd64` for MacOS.

terraform init

terraform init is run again if you modify or change dependencies.

The command causes a .terraform folder in the folder.

1. To Download and install binaries of providers and modules, initialize each new Terraform project folder:

   terraform init hashicorp/vault/aws
   

   The above makes use of https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform-aws-vault stored as sub-folder hashicorp/vault/aws

   It’s got 33 resources. The sub-modules are:

   • private-tls-cert (for all providers)
   • vault-cluster (for all providers)
   • vault-lb-fr (for Google only)
   • vault-elb (for AWS only)
   • vault-security-group-rules (for AWS only)
     
     

   An example of initializing a backend in S3:

   terraform init \
    -backend-config="bucket=red30-tfstate" \
    -backend-config="key=red30/ecommerceapp/app.state" \
    -backend-config="region=us-east-2" \
    -backend-config="dynamodb_table=red30-tfstatelock" \
    -backend-config="access_key={ACCESS_KEY}" \
    -backend-config="secret_key={SECRET_KEY}"
   

   QUESTION: Are interpolations now allowed in backend .tf statements?

   Alternately, to skip default installation of plugins:

   terraform init hashicorp/vault/aws -get-plugins-false
   

   Alternately, to install from a target folder path:

   terraform init hashicorp/vault/aws -plugins-dir="$PLUGIN_PATH"
   

   Sample response:

   Initializing backends...
    
   Initializing provider plugins...
          - Finding hashicorp/azurerm versions matching "2.40.0"...
          - Installing hashicorp/azurerm v2.40.0...
          - Installed hashicorp/azurerm v2.40.0 (signed by HashiCorp)
    
   Terraform has created a lock file .terraform.lock.hcl to record the provider
   selections it made above. Include this file in your version control repository
   so that Terraform can guarantee to make the same selections by default when
   you run "terraform init" in the future.
    
   Terraform has been successfully initialized!
    
   You may now begin working with Terraform. Try running "terraform plan" to see
   any changes that are required for your infrastructure. All Terraform commands
   should now work.
    
   If you ever set or change modules or backend configuration for Terraform,
   rerun this command to reinitialize your working directory. If you forget, other
   commands will detect it and remind you to do so if necessary.
   

2. To confirm that command creates a (hidden) .terraform directory:

   ls -al .terraform
   

3. To confirm that command creates a (hidden) dependency lock file to enforce versioning of plugins and Terraform itself:

   ls .terraform.lock.hcl
   

4. Set a dependency lockfile mode:

   terraform init -lockfile=MODE
   

5. To upgrade all plugins to the latest version (which compiles with the configuration’s version constraint):

   terraform init -upgrade
   

6. What if Terraform

   terraform apply

7. Respond to “Enter a Value:”

   yes

8. Verify it worked:

   az group list -o table

   “Environment” = “terraexample”

9. Done with Terraform

   terraform destroy -auto-approve

10. Respond to “Enter a Value:”

    yes

11. Navigate to the next example:

    cd ~/clouddrive/terraform-on-azure/02-init-plan-apply-destroy/02-interpolation
    terraform init
    code main.tf
    

12. Execute plan file “temp”

    terraform apply temp -auto-approve

    REMEMBER: Although terraform plan -out temp requires -out argument, terraform apply does not require an argument in front of the file name.

13. This example has output blocks to separate tfstate for the virtual network and each resource group (using interpolation):

    code ~/clouddrive/terraform-on-azure/03-terraform-state/02-remote-state/main.tf
    

    The output blocks can be moved to a separate output.tf file.

14. data.

15. variables.tf for reusability. Define default values refered as “var.” in:

    code ~/clouddrive/terraform-on-azure/04-variables/02-deployvariables/terraform.tfvars
    

    Environment variables are referenced as “TF_VAR_XXX”

    A map is a collection of variables, for use in conditional logic.

    An object can contain lists, etc.

16. 05-Modules passes NSG output

    https://registry.terraform.io/browse/modules?provider=azurerm

• Advanced location variable:

  variable "location" {
      type = string
      description = "Azure location (region)"
      default = ""
   }

  resource "azurerm_resource_group" "rg" {
   name = "rg-testcondition"
   location = var.location != "" ? var.location : "westus2"
   }
   

Docs:

• chapter 37 shows use of for_each to specify hub-and-spoke networking.

1. To limit the number of concurrent operations as Terraform walks the graph:

   terraform apply … -parallelism=3

How to call

PROTIP: To save yourself typing (and typos), define a shell file to invoke each different pipeline:

chmod +x abc-dev-fe.sh
abc-dev-fe.sh
   

chmod +x abc-stage-fe.sh
abc-stage-fe.sh
   

Handle secrets in *.tfvars securely

PROTIP: Since *.tfvars files typically containing secrets, handle them securely.

Within abc-dev-fe.sh For local development only on a laptop, unencrypt a local.tfvars file.

For other environments running in the cloud, retrieve a *.tfvars file from a trusted cloud vault storage (such as a HashiCorp Vault, Azure Key Vault, AWS Secrets Manager, etc.).

References:

• https://learn.hashicorp.com/tutorials/terraform/sensitive-variables?in=terraform/0-14
• Inject Secrets into Terraform Using the Vault Provider
• https://www.terraform.io/language/state/sensitive-data
• https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-securely-manage-secrets-with-hashicorp-vault-on-ubuntu-20-04
• https://www.linode.com/docs/guides/secrets-management-with-terraform/
  
  

Marking Variables as Sensitive

variable "database_password" {
    description = "Password of database administrator"
    type = string
    sensitive = true
}
variable "database_username" {
    description = "Username of database administrator"
    type = string
}
   

Precedence of value override

Terraform provides different mechanisms for obtaining dynamic values.

When troubleshooting, REMEMBER: the order of precedence*

1. Environment variables defined in shell files are overridden by all other ways of specifying data:

   export TFVAR_filename="/.../abc-stage.txt"

   Alternately, specify a value for the variable “env” (abbreviation for environment) after prefix TF_VAR_:

   TF_VAR_env=staging

   CAUTION: It’s best to avoid using enviornment variables to store secrets because other programs can read snoop in memory. When using environment variables to set sensitive values, those values remain in your environment and command-line history.

2. Within terraform.tfvars

3. Within terraform.tfvars.json

4. Within *.auto.tfvars (in alphabetical order)

   filename = "/root/something.txt"

5. Command-line flags -var or -var-file overrides all other techniques of providing values:

   terraform apply -var "filename=/.../xxx-staging.txt"

   Values for variables can be specified at run-time using variables names starting with “TF_VAR_”, such as:

   But unlike other systems, environment variables have less precedence than -var-file and -var definitions, followed by automatic variable files.

Terraform Plan command

VIDEO:

A key differentiator of Terraform is its plan command, which provides more than just a “dry-run” before configurations are applied for real.

Terraform identifies dependencies among components requested, and creates them in the order needed.

1. A simple way

   terraform plan -out=happy.plan
   

   Alternate format (instead of an equal sign):

   terraform plan -out happy.plan
   

   Alternately, leave out the .plan file extension, as it’s assumed:

   terraform plan -out happy
   

   A sample response:

   "<computered>" means Terraform figures it out.
   

   Under the covers, terraform plan generates an executable, and uses it to apply configuration to create infrastructure. This guarantees that what appeared in plan is the same as when apply occurs.

   The Terraform Plan file output is a binary file (machine code).

   Parallel execution

   When Terraform analyzes a configuration specification, it recognizes where parallel execution can occur, which means faster runs to create real infrastructure.

   Terraform control, iterations, and (perhaps most of all) management of resources already created (desired state configuration) over several cloud providers (not just AWS).

   • https://app.pluralsight.com/courses/49b66fa5-6bcd-469c-ad04-6135ff739bb6

   A more sophisticated plan

   Alternately, a more sophisticated way to have Terrform evaluate based on vars in a different (parent) folder:

   terraform plan \
      -var 'site_name=demo.example.com' \
      -var-file='..\terraform.tfvars' \
      -var-file='.\Development\development.tfvars' \
      -state='.\Development\dev.state' \
      -out base-`date-+'%s'`.plan
   

   The -var parameter specifies a value for var.site_name variable.

   The two dots in the command specifies to look above the current folder.

   The -out parameter specifies the output file name. Since the output of terraform plan is fed into the terraform apply command, a static file name is best. However, some prefer to avoid overwriting by automatically using a different date stamp in the file name.

   The “%s” yields a date stamp like 147772345 which is the numer of seconds since the 1/1/1970 epoch.

   Pluses and minuses flag additions and deletions. This is a key differentiator for Terraform as a “”

   Terraform creates a dependency graph (specfically, a Directed Acyclic Graph). This is so that nodes are built in the order they are needed.

   Terraform show

2. View the plan created by terraform plan

   terraform show "happy.plan"
   

   This shows output variables defined by tf code such as:

   output "instance-dns" {
     value = aws_instance.nodejs1.public_dns
   }
   output "private-dns" {
     value = aws_instance.nodejs1.private_dns
   }
   

   “(known after apply” is resolved by terraform apply.

   Terraform apply

   VIDEO:

3. Process the plan created by terraform plan

   terraform apply "happy.plan"
   

   REMEMBER: terraform apply generates a terraform.tfstate file (containing JSON) to persist the state of runs by mapping resource IDs to their data. There is a one-to-one mapping of resource instances to remote objects in the cloud.

   Alternately, to specify the state file’s output name and attribute:

   terraform apply -state=".\develop\dev.state" 
      -var="environment_name=development"
   

   Within the file, “version” defines the version of the tfstate JSON format. The “terraform_version” is the terraform program version. , the file contains a serial number to increment every time the file itself changes.

1. List resources in the state:

   <pre0terraform state list</pre>

2. Pull current remote state and output to stdout:

   <pre0terraform state pull</pre>

3. Push (update) remote state from a local state:

   <pre0terraform state push</pre>

4. Show a specific resource in the state:

   <pre0terraform state show</pre>

5. Move an item in the state (to change the reference) instead of renaming a module, which would result in a create and destroy action:

   <pre0terraform state mv</pre>

6. Remove instances from the state:

   <pre0terraform state rm</pre>

   Alternative

   Alternative specification of environment variable:

   TF_VAR_first_name="John" terraform apply
   

   Values to Terraform variables define inputs such as run-time DNS/IP addresses into Terraform modules.

   What terraform apply does:

   1. Generate model from logical definition (the Desired State).
   2. Load current model (preliminary source data).
   3. Refresh current state model by querying remote provider (final source state).
   4. Calculate difference from source state to target state (plan).
   5. Apply plan.
      
      

   NOTE: Built-in functions: https://terraform.io/docs/configuration/interpolation.html

   In Terraform, you cannot create your own user-defined functions.

   Primitive data types in Terraform are Number, String, Boolean.

   Dynamic blocks CANNOT be used with lifecycle blocks, because Terraform must process lifecycle blocks before it can safely evaluate expressions.

   Apply to create tfstate

   References:

   • https://kodekloud.com/topic/introduction-to-terraform-state/
   • BLOG: Yevgeniy Brikman (Gruntwork) “How to manage Terraform state”
     
     

7. While in the same folder where there is a “backend.tf” file (above), have Terraform read the above to establish an EC2 instance:

   terraform apply -auto-approve

   The console shows resources provisioned in the cloud.

8. To force the state file to be updated during a plan operation:

   terraform plan --refresh=false

9. To force the state to be updated anytime:

   terraform refresh

10. If “-auto-approve” was not specified, responde to the prompt by typing “yes”.

    Apply creates a new file terraform.tfstate define the status/condition of cloud resources at a specific time.

    NOTE: Subsequent to apply, any command that modify state results in a terraform.tfstate.backup created to store tfstate before it changes.

11. Manually verify on the AWS Management Console GUI webpage set to service S3.

Terraform State commands

Rather than editing the tfstate file:

1. List

   terraform state list

2. State can be pulled from a remote state backend:

   terraform state pull

3. VIDEO: Extract from response above the hash_key:

   terraform state pull | jq '.resources[] | select(.name == "state-locking-db")|.instances[].attributes.hash_key'

Saving tfstate in S3 Backend

In a team environment, it helps to store state state files off a local disk and in a “backend” location central to all.

1. Using AWS IAM, define a AWS user with Permissions in a Role.

2. Obtain and save credentials for user in an environment variable.

   VIDEO: Terraform Remote State on Amazon S3 describes use of a file named backend.tf, such as this AWS S3 specification, after substituting “YouOwn” with the (globally unique) S3 bucket name defined with the current AWS credentials:

   terraform {
     backend "s3" {
    bucket = "YouOwn-terraform"
    key    = "terraform.tfstate"
    region = "us-east-1"
     }
   }
   

   Remote state

   NOTE terraform.tfstate can be stored over the network in S3, etcd distributed key value store (used by Kubernetes), or a HashiCorp Atlas or Consul server. (HashiCorp Atlas is a licensed solution.)

3. State can be obtained using command:

   terraform remote pull

4. Retrieve state data from a remote data store:

   terraform_remote_state

   Backends

   Terraform can manage state through these backends which persists (stores) data:

   • local (the default) HashiCorp products:
     • Terraform Enterprise (cloud)
     • Consul (a distributed key-value store)
     • Atlas
       
       
   • etcd (distributed key value store used by Kubernetes)

   Cloud vendors:

   • s3 - in AWS VIDEO with DynamoDB
   • gcs - Google Cloud

   • azurerm

   • artifactory - by JFrog
   • cos
   • postgres
   • manta
   • swift
     
     

   Some backends allows multiple named workspace instances to be associated with a single backend configuration (without configuring a new backend authentication).

5. When using remote state as a data source, use root-level outputs of Terraform configurations as input data for another configuration:

   data "terraform_remote_state" "vpc" {
     backend = "remote"
      
     config = {
    organization = "hashicorp"
    workspaces = {
      name = "vpc-prod"
    }
     }
   }
   resource "aws_instance" "foo" {
     subnet_id = data.terraform_remote_state.vpc.outputs.subnet_id
   }
   

Drift management

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsCdEvZ5la0
• a target=”_blank” href=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4waklkBC38&t=6h24m19s”>VIDEO</a>:
  <hr />

Drift occurs when the actual state of resources provisioned diverges from the expected state.

If an approved manual configuration has been changed or removed, such as when a VM is terminated using the AWS Console GUI, the state can be refreshed by an alias of the command terraform apply -refresh-only -auto-approve which doesn’t make changes:

terraform refresh

1. When you can’t create new resources (you’re not in control of resource creattion), and an existing resource needs to be added, import an existing resource (one at a time) into a placeholder definition:

   resource "aws_instance" "example1" {
    # blank instance configuration
   }

   The resource address and its ID is required:

   terraform import aws_instance.example1" i-abc1111
   

   CAUTION: Importing the same resources is not recommended because that can cause weird behavior.

data instance_id import

VIDEO:

1. To reference an existing instance from within a .tf file, first capture the instance_id of the instance not managed by Terraform.

2. Reference that instance_id in a .tf file:

   data "aws_instance" "news_server" {
      instance_id = "i-234124897234"
   }
   output news_server {
   value = data.aws_instance.news_server.public_ip
   }
   

3. REMEMBER: terrform import brings in the state of another resource, and cannot change that other instance. So define a shell resource:

   resource "aws_instance" "other_server" {
   # (resource arguments)
   }
   

   Once imported, resources are available for management.

   Taint to -replace

4. Due to Terraform’s design for immutability, if an individual resource has been damaged or degraded such that it cannot be detected by Terraform, or to get Terraform to make a configuration change in real time, replace by resource address index in a plan or apply, for example:

   terraform apply -replace="aws_instance.example[0]"

   aws_instance is a module namespace or resource_type. “example” is its name.

   CAUTION: Replacement of “tainted” resources may cause other resources to be modified, such as public IPs.

   NOTE: terraform taint (to mark a resource for replacement) was deprecated as of version 0.152. VIDEO

   terraform taint aws_instance.webserver

   The above would cause the resource to be deleted and replaced with a resource with the new configuration.

   The opposite command was:

   terraform untaint aws_instance.webserver

### Destroy state

PROTIP: At time of this writing, Amazon charges for Windows instances by the hour while it charges for Linux by the minute, as other cloud providers do.

VIDEO: Destroy instances (so they don’t rack up charges unproductively):

1. While in the same folder where there is a “backend.tf” file (above), have Terraform read the above to establish an EC2 instance when given the command: 33 3333300

   terraform destroy

2. Confirm by typing “yes”.

3. Manually verify on the AWS Management Console GUI webpage set to service S3.

   Processing flags

   HCL can contain flags that affect processing. For example, within a resource specification, force_destroy = true forces the provider to delete the resource when done.

Crossplane

Crossplane.io provides more flexible ways to interact with Kubernetes than Terraform. Their github.com/crossplane has providers for AWS, Azure, and GCP.

Workspaces

NOTE: The Terragrunt wrapper for terraform plan/apply/destroy commands (and in file terraform.tfvars) provide an alternative to HashiCorp’s Workspaces feature (described at https://www.terraform.io/docs/state/workspaces.html).

VIDEO: Workspaces enable management of multiple “environments” in alternate state files (dev, qa, stage, prod).

VIDEO INTRO: Terraform now offers a Terraform Cloud provider to manage VCS provider GitHub in temporary test workspaces, to see the impact of incremental changes.

Workspaces work locally or via remote backends.

1. By default, when working locally, Terraform creates a workspace in your local backend called “default”.

   terraform workspace list

   * identifies the selected workspace

2. Create a new workspace projectX to contain a separate state file:

   terraform workspace new projectX

3. To change your current workspace to a workspace:

   terraform workspace select projectX

4. Reference the ${terraform.workspace} named value in HCL:

   resource "aws_instance" "example" {
      // Return 5 instead of 1 if the value is not "default"
      count = "${terraform.workspace == "default" ? 5 : 1 }
      # ...
      tags = {
         Name = "web - ${terraform.workspace}"
      }
      # ...
   }
   

5. To output the current Workspace:

   ??? terraform.workspace

6. Terraform stores workspace states in a folder called terraform.tfstate.d

   ls -al terraform.tfstate.d

PROTIP: Use a remote backend unless you’re working by yourself.

Terraform Cloud workspaces act like differen working directories (like GitHub branches)

VPC Security Group

1. VPC Security group

   The example in Gruntwork’s intro-to-terraform also specifies the vpc security group:

   resource "aws_instance" "example" {
     \# Ubuntu Server 14.04 LTS (HVM), SSD Volume Type in us-east-1
     ami = "ami-2d39803a"
     instance_type = "t2.micro"
     vpc_security_group_ids = ["${aws_security_group.instance.id}"]
     user_data = <<-EOF
              #!/bin/bash
              echo "Hello, World" > index.html
              nohup busybox httpd -f -p "${var.server_port}" &
              EOF
     tags {
    Name = "ubuntu.t2.hello.01"
     }
   }
   resource "aws_security_group" "instance" {
     name = "terraform-example-instance"
     \# Inbound HTTP from anywhere:
     ingress {
    from_port = "${var.server_port}"
    to_port = "${var.server_port}"
    protocol = "tcp"
    cidr_blocks = ["0.0.0.0/0"]
     }
   }
   

   The “var.server_port” is defined in variables file:

   The tag value AWS uses to name the EC2 instance.

   Execution control

   Terraform automatically detects and enforces rule violations, such as use of rogue port numbers other than 80/443.

## outputs.tf

Sample contents of an outputs.tf file:

  output "public_ip" {
  value = "${aws_instance.example.public_ip}"
}
  output "url" {
  value = "http://${aws_instance.example.public_ip}:${var.port}"
}
   

Sample contents of an outputs.tf file for a cluster points to the Elastic Load Balancer:

output "aws_elb_public_dns" {
  value = "${aws_elb.web.dns_name}"
}
output "public_ip" {
  value = "${aws_instance.example.public_ip}"
}
   

output "azure_rm_dns_cname" {
  value = "${azurerm_dns_cname_record.elb.id}"
}
   

PROTIP: If the AMI is no longer available, you will get an error message.

1. Output Terraform variable:

   output "loadbalancer_dns_name" {
     value = "${aws_elb.loadbalancer.dns_name}"
   }
   

Provisioners

VIDEO: When a resource is initially created, provisioners can be executed to initialize that resource.

VIDEO: This defines a string (from a variable) inside the file:

resource "aws_instance" "web" {
  # ...
  provisioner "file" {
    content = "ami_used: ${self.ami}"
    destination = "/tmp/file.log"
}
   

1. VIDEO: To copy files or directories within a Linux machine, using the file provisioner:

   resource "aws_instance" "web" {
     # ...
     provisioner "file" {
    source = "conf/myapp.conf"
    destination = "/etc/myapp.conf"
    
     connection {
    type     = "ssh"
    user     = "root"
    password = "${var.root_password}"
    host     = "${var.host}"
     }
   }
   

A connection block is needed for the provisioner to pass authentication.

This examples copies a file through Windows Remote Management (winrm):

resource "aws_instance" "web" {
  # ...
  provisioner "file" {
    source = "conf/myapp.conf"
    destination = "C:/App/myapp.conf"
 
  connection {
    type     = "winrm"
    user     = "Administrator"
    password = "${var.admin_password}"
    host     = "${var.host}"
  }
}
   

QUESTION: How about a custom user name rather than generic root/admin account name?

CAUTION: What Cloud Provisioners do are not reflected in Terraform state, so better to use cloudinit scripts.

Cloud-init is an industry standard for cross-platform cloud instance initializations. When your VM is launched on a Cloud Service Provider (CSP) based on YAML or Bash script such as:

#!bin/bash
yum update -y
yum install -y httpd
sudo service httpd start
sudo service httpd enable
   

Packer (from HashiCorp) is an automated image-build service for multiple clouds.

Provisioner definitions define the properties of each resource, such as initialization commands.

remote-exec on target machines

VIDEO: After a VM is provisioned, this inline script makes uses of Puppet:

resource "aws_instance" "web" {
  # ...
  provisioner "remote-exec" {
    inline = [
      "puppet apply",
    "sudo service nginx start",
    "consul join ${aws_instance.web.private_ip}",
  ]
}
   

Observe that the last line is allowed to have a comma.

REMEMBER: A single “script” is the keyword for when a relative or absolute local script is copied to the remote resource for execution. The plural “scripts” is the keyword when executed in order:

provisioner "remote-exec" {
  # ...
  scripts = [
    "./setup-users.sh",
    "/home/anyuser/Desktop/bootstrap",
  ]
}
   

Another inline example installs an nginx web server and displays a minimal HTML page:

provisioner "remote-exec" {
  inline = [
    "sudo yum install nginx -y",
    "sudo service nginx start",
    "echo "<html><head><title>NGINX server</title></head><body style=\"background-color"></body></html>"
  ]
}
   

PROTIP: SECURITY CAUTION: Better to pull in installers and libraries from an internal Artifactory registry which allows for forensics in case something bad happens, since the external one could have been infected an hour before.

To trigger a map of values

resource "aws_instance" "web" {
  # ...
  triggers {
    cluster_instance_ids = "${join(",", aws_instance.cluster.*.id)}"
  }
  connection {
    host     = "${element(aws_instance.cluster.*.public_ip, 0)}"
  }
  provisioner "remote-exec" {
    inline = [
      "bootstrap-cluster.sh ${join(" ", aws_instance.cluster.*.private_ip)},
    ]
  }
}
   

local-exec provisioner Ansible

Provisioner configurations are also plugins for Ansible configuration management:

VIDEO: “Local” is where Terraform commands are run, which can be your laptop/workstation or on a build server (Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GCP Cloud Build, AWS Code Build, etc.). Another example is within HashiCorp’s “Terraform Cloud Run Environment” of single-use Linux virtual machine.

NOTE: Software can be specified for installation using Packer’s local-exec provisioner which executes commands on host machines. For example:

resource "null_resource" "local-software" {
  provisioner "local-exec" {
    command = "echo ${self.private_ip} >> private_ips.txt"
    command = <<EOH
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y ansible
EOH
  }
}
   

NOTE: The apt-get installer is in-built within Ubuntu Linux distributions.

PROTIP: Use this to bootstrap automation such as assigning permissions and running Ansible or PowerShell DSC, then use DSC scripts for more flexibility and easier debugging.

On a Windows machine:

resource "null_resource" "windows-example" {
  provisioner "local-exec" {
    command = "Get-Date > completed.txt"
    interpreter = ["PowerShell", "-Command"]
  }
}
   

QUESTION: The interpreter is excuted first, then the command?

Ansible local-exec

See https://github.com/radekg/terraform-provisioner-ansible

As a general rule, use Ansible for repetitive on-going maintenance tasks such as:

• Backup table to Datawarehouse
• Truncate daily tables
  
  

To run Ansible playbook.yml:

provisioner "local-exec" {
   command = "ANSIBLE_HOST_KEY_CHECKING=False ansible-playbook \
   -u {var.user} -i '${self.ipv4_address},' \
   --private-key ${var.ssh_private_key} playbook.yml"}
   

The key component is ${self.ipv4_address} variable. After provisioning the machine, Terraform knows its IP address. And we need to pass an IP address for Ansible. Therefore, we are using the built-in Terraform variable as input for Ansible.

Another option is to run Terraform and Ansible separately but import the data from one to another. Terraform saves all the information about provisioned resources into a Terraform state file. We can find the IP addresses of Terraform-provisioned instances there and import them into the Ansible inventory file.

Terraform Inventory extract from the state file the IP addresses for use by ab Ansible playbook to configure nodes.

Ansible can use hash_vault to retrieve secrets from a HashiCorp Vault.

References:

• https://www.hashicorp.com/resources/ansible-terraform-better-together
• https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-use-ansible-with-terraform-for-configuration-management
  
  

NOTE: Ansible Tower cannot be used with Terraform.

Configuration Management

Terraform and Ansible can work in unison, complementing each other. Terraform bootstraps the underlying cloud infrastructure for Ansible to configure app settings and the user space. To test a service on a dedicated server, skip using Terraform and run the Ansible playbook on that machine. Derek Morgan has a “Deploy to AWS with Ansible and Terraform” video class at LinuxAcademy which shows how to do just that, with code and diagram.

“Procedural” means “programmatic” as in a Python or JavaScript program applies logic. This means procedures need to be written to check whether a desired resource is available before provisioning, then logic is needed to check whether the provisioning command was effective.

“Declarative” means a (yaml format) file defines what is desired, and the system makes it so. tf files are declarative, meaning that they define the desired end-state (outcomes). If 15 servers are declared, Terraform automatically adds or removes servers to end up with 15 servers rather than specifying procedures to add 5 servers. Terraform can do that because Terraform knows how many servers it has setup already.

IaC code is idempotent (repeated runs results in what is described, and does not create additional items with every run). Terraform takes action only when needed (called “convergence” principle).

Terraform manages explicit and implicit (assumed) dependencies automatically.

Terraform automatically takes care of performing in the correct sequence.

Immutable?

PROTIP: WARNING: Terraform does not support rollbacks of changes made.

“Immutable” means once instantiated, components cannot be changed. In DevOps, this strategy means individual servers are treated like “cattle” (removed from the herd) and not as “pets” (courageously kept alive as long as possible).

Immutable and idempotent means “when I make a mistake in a complicated setup, I can get going again quickly and easily with less troubleshooting because I can just re-run the script.”

Plugins into Terraform

All Terraform providers are plugins - multi-process RPC (Remote Procedure Calls).

https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform/plugin

https://terraform.io/docs/plugins/index.html

Terraform expect plugins to follow a very specific naming convention of terraform-TYPE-NAME. For example, terraform-provider-aws, which tells Terraform that the plugin is a provider that can be referenced as “aws”.

PROTIP: Establish a standard for where plugins are located:

For *nix systems, ~/.terraformrc

For Windows, %APPDATA%/terraform.rc

https://www.terraform.io/docs/internals/internal-plugins.html

PROTIP: When writing your own terraform plugin, create a new Go project in GitHub, then locally use a directory structure:

$GOPATH/src/github.com/USERNAME/terraform-NAME

where USERNAME is your GitHub username and NAME is the name of the plugin you’re developing. This structure is what Go expects and simplifies things down the road.

TODO:

• Grafana or Kibana monitoring
• PagerDuty alerts
• DataDog metrics

Plugin Registry

https://registry.terraform.io is public

hosts both providers and modules (a group of configuration files that provide common configuration).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qfp8Jv78yt8 Writing High Quality Terraform Modules for Exponential Organizations

CIDR Subnet function

variable network_info {
   default = “10.0.0.0/8” #type, default, description
}
cidr_block = ${cidrsubnet(var.network_info, 8, 1)} # returns 10.1.0.0/16
cidr_block = ${cidrsubnet(var.network_info, 8, 2)} # returns 10.2.0.0/16
     

Also:

variable network_info {
   default = “10.0.0.0/8” #type, default, description
}
cidr_block = ${cidrsubnet(var.network_info, 8, 1)} # returns 10.1.0.0/16
cidr_block = ${cidrsubnet(var.network_info, 8, 2)} # returns 10.2.0.0/16
     

In this example terraform.tfvars file are credentials for both AWS EC2 and Azure ARM providers:

bucket_name = "mycompany-sys1-v1"
arm_subscription_id = "???"
arm_principal = "???"
arm_passsord = "???"
tenant_id = "223d"
aws_access_key = "insert access key here>"
aws_secret_key = "insert secret key here"
private_key_path = "C:\\MyKeys1.pem"
   

The private_key_path should be a full path, containing \\ so that the single slash is not interpreted as a special character.

bucket_name must be globally unique within all of the AWS provider customers.

### Terraforming AWS Configuration

PROTIP: Install from https://github.com/dtan4/terraforming a Ruby script that enables a command such as:

terraforming s3 --profile dev
   

You can pass profile name by –profile option.

### Verify websites

1. The website accessible?

2. In the provider’s console (EC2), verify

Densify FinOps

densify.com dynamically self-optimizes configurations based on predictive analytics. This “FinOps” works by updating tags in AWS of recommendations for server type based on cost and performance analysis in real-time:

vm_size = "${module.densify.instance_type}"

VIDEO:

It’s defined in a tf file:

module "densify" {
  source = "densify-dev/optimization-as-code/null"
  version = "1.0.0"
   
  densify_recommendations = "${var.densify_recommendations}"
  densify_fallback        = "${var.densify_fallback}"
   
  densify_unique_id       = "${var.name}"
}

CDK for Terraform

VIDEO: CDK for Terraform

Create SSH key pair

1. To create a SSH key pair using CLI using the AWS Test Framework:

   aws ec2 create-key-pair --endpoint http://aws:4566 
   --key-name jade \
   --query 'KeyMaterial' \
   --output text > /root/terraform-projects/project-jade/jade.pem
   

   aws ec2 describe-instances --endpoint http://aws:4566
   

   To just get the id of the EC2 created with this AMI and Instance Type, use filters and jq to filter the data:

   aws ec2 describe-instances --endpoint http://aws:4566 --filters "Name=image-id,Values=ami-082b3eca746b12a89" | jq -r '.Reservations[].Instances[].InstanceId'
   

Terraform Kubernetes

Docs on Terraform Kubernetes:

• https://registry.terraform.io/providers/hashicorp/kubernetes/latest/docs
• https://registry.terraform.io/providers/hashicorp/kubernetes/latest/docs/guides/getting-started
• https://kubernetes.io/blog/2020/06/working-with-terraform-and-kubernetes/
• https://opensource.com/article/20/7/terraform-kubernetes

Social

• https://www.twitch.tv/hashicorplive 1st & 3rd PT Fridays every month

• https://discuss.hashicorp.com

• Google Group terraform-tool
• LinkedIn
• StackOverflow

• r/Terraform (Reddit sub-reddit)

• 0.12-alpha4 Dec 20, 2018 on Mitchell Hashimoto (CEO) YouTube channel

• No IRC (Internet Relay Chat)?

Rock Stars

Here are people who have taken time to create tutorials for us about Terraform:

Ned Bellavance (@ned1313 MS MVP at nerdinthecloud.com) has several video classes on Pluralsight [subscription]:

• video course “Implementing Terraform with AWS”

• Terraform - Getting Started (Beginner level) Sep 14 2017 [3h 11m]

• Deep Dive - Terraform 6 Feb 2018 [3h 39m] shows how to export secret keys for back-end processes, use custom data sources, and incorporation into enterprise CI/CD frameworks.

• Resource graphs of dependencies.

Derek Morgan in May 2018 released video courses on LinuxAcademy.com:

• Managing Applications and Infrastructure with Terraform [4:35:35]

• Deploying to AWS with Ansible and Terraform with hands-on lab.

Dave Cohen in April 2018 made a 5 hands-on videos using Digital Ocean Personal Access Token (PAT).

Seth Vargo, Director of Evangelism at HashiCorp, gave a deep-dive hands-on introduction to Terraform at the O’Reilly conference on June 20-23, 2016. If you have a SafaribooksOnline subscription, see the videos: Part 1 [48:17], Part 2 [37:53]

Saurav Sharma created a YouTube Playlist that references code at https://github.com/Cloud-Yeti/aws-labs as starters for website of videos and on Udemy.

Yevgeniy (Jim) Brikman (ybrikman.com), co-founder of DevOps as a Service Gruntwork.io

• Introduction to Terraform

• O’Reilly book “Hello Startup” about organizations.

zero-downtime deployment, are hard to express in purely declarative terms.

Comprehensive Guide to Terraform includes:

• BLOG: How to manage Terraform state

• Infrastructure-as-code: running microservices on AWS with Docker, ECS, and Terraform

• Terraform tips & tricks: loops, if-statements, and gotchas

• $500 A Crash Course on Terraform

• $500 A Crash Course on Docker & Packer

• BOOK: Terraform: Up and Running from O’Reilly Media published: March 2017

• BLOG: Infrastructure as code: running microservices on AWS using Docker, Terraform, and ECS Mar 31, 2016

Anton Babenko (github.com/antonbabenko linkedin)

• Manage AWS infrastructure as code using Terraform talk in Norway 14 Dec 2015

• terraform-best-practices.com

• https://github.com/antonbabenko/terraform-best-practices-workshop

James Turnbull

• The Terraform Book ($8 on Kindle) is among the first books on this subject, based on Terraform v0.10.3. Files referenced are at https://github.com/turnbullpress/tfb-code [On SafariBooks]

Jason Asse

• https://github.com/jason-azze/tf-web-exercise

Nick Colyer (Skylines Academy)

• Automating AWS and vSphere with Terraform (Intermediate level) Jun 12 2017 [1:22]

Kirill Shirinkin

• Getting Started with Terraform - Second Edition from Packt July 2017 (1st edition Jan 2017)

James Nugent

• Engineer at HashiCorp

dtan4

• http://terraforming.dtan4.net

• https://github.com/dtan4/terraforming is Ruby code.

Kyle Rockman (@Rocktavious, author of Jenkins Pipelines and github.com/rocktavious) presented at HashiConf17 (slides) a self-service app to use Terraform (powered by React+Redux using Jinga2 to Gunicorn + Djanjo back end running HA in AWS) that he hopes to open-source at github.com/underarmour

Tutorials

• Glossary of Terraform terms

• Official Getting Started docs at HashiCorp focus on individual elements (i.e. resources, input variables, output variables, etc).

At the top of the list is the in-depth videos and hands-on labs with quizzes of KodeKloud’s “HashiCorp Certified Terraform Associate”. It’s taught by Vijin Palazhi, who also created tutorials on Kubernetes, Jenkins, and other DevOps tools and certifications.

ACloud.Guru has a 11-hour Associate prep course by Moosa Khalid.

On Linked Learning: Advanced Terraform by David Swersky references https://github.com/LinkedInLearning/advanced-terraform-2823489

Videos free on YouTube but a better UI to view vidoes is provided by:

• Andrew Brown posted from his $24 Exampro to in one 13-hour on YouTube dated Oct 5, 2021, described here.

On Udemy.com:

• “Terraform: Beginner to Advanced” by Zeal Vora has code at https://github.com/zealvora/terraform-beginner-to-advanced-resource

• HashiCorp Certified: Terraform Associate Practice Exam 2021

Another FreeCodeCamp.org video on YouTube:

• 2:20:57 VIDEO: Terraform Course - Automate your AWS cloud infrastructure

“Get started managing a simple application with Terraform” by Alexandra White (at Joyant) shows the deployment of the Happy Randomizer app

Other YouTube videos :

• On Feb 2022 Sid Palas (of DevOps Directive) released his 2h 38m VIDEO “Complete Terraform Course - From BEGINNER to PRO! (Learn Infrastructure as Code)” with code at https://github.com/sidpalas/devops-directive-terraform-course and Discord channel for discussions.

• Terraform w/ Lee Trout Chadev

• Automating Infrastructure Management with Terraform at SF CloudOps Meetup

• Evolving Your Infrastructure with Terraform Jun 26, 2017 by Nicki Watt, CTO at OpenCredo

• Journey to the Cloud with Packer and Terraform Oct 12, 2017 by Nadeem Ahmad, Software Engineer at Box

• Terraforming the Kubernetes Land Oct 13, 2017 by Radek Simko (@RadekSimko), Terraform Expert HashiCorp

• [JFrog Webinar] Infrastructure as Code with Terraform 25:22

References

PDF: HashiCorp’;’s Cloud Operating Model whitepaper

VIDEO: Learn Terraform in 10 Minutes Tutorial by Reval Govender

VIDEO: SignalWarrant’s videos on PowerShell by David Keith Hall includes:

• Automate Creating Lab Virtual Machines in Azure with PowerShell shows how to take input from a CSV file.
  
  

Terraform Basics mini-course on YouTube in 5-parts from “tutorialLinux”.

http://chevalpartners.com/devops-infrastructure-as-code-on-azure-platform-with-hashicorp-terraform-part-1/ quotes https://www.hashicorp.com/blog/azure-resource-manager-support-for-packer-and-terraform from 2016 about support for Azure Resource Manager.

Sajith Venkit explains Terraform file exampled in his “Building Docker Enterprise 2.1 Cluster Using Terraform” blog and repo for AliCloud and Azure.

AWS Cloudformation vs Terraform: Prepare for DevOps/ Cloud Engineer Interview

How to create a GitOps workflow with Terraform and Jenkins by Alex Podobnik

VIDEO: Manage SSH with HashiCorp Vault

https://medium.com/capital-one-tech/terraform-poka-yokes-writing-effective-scalable-dynamic-and-error-resistant-terraform-dcbd6a0ada6a

2 hr. VIDEO: Terraform for DevOps Beginners + Labs by Vijin Palazhi.

https://medium.com/codex/devops-iac-setup-using-terragrunt-and-terraform-5d8a54c97724

Like Sentinel, the env0 includes policy as code guardrails.

https://medium.com/4th-coffee/on-devops-30-9-extraordinary-terraform-best-practices-that-will-change-your-infra-world-278d98d209ee

https://medium.com/@ben.arundel/godaddy-and-terraform-a-brief-poc-f3afac56c402

VIDEO: “Learning Live with AWS & HashiCorp” multi-part series by Jenna Pederson from AWS (@jennapederson) and J. Cole Morrison from HashiCorp (@jcolemorrison):

1. Laying the Foundations of a Microservices Architecture
2. Creating Your First Containerized Microservice
3. Extending Your Application with Private Microservices
4. Introducing a Service Mesh with Consul
   
   

VIDEO: Microsoft’s Terrafy (pronounced “terrify” as in Holloween?) at https://github.com/Azure/aztfy generates *.tf (Terraform configuration files) and State based on resources based on what is in an AzureRM resource group. Those files can then be used in regular Terraform commands as if they were originally created using Terraform Plan and Apply.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/54xRbC6doIojY1edvB1QdT?si=8580a6cdebcd438a PagerDuty

https://aws-ia.github.io/standards-terraform/ THE AWS INTEGRATION & AUTOMATION TEAM’S BEST PRACTICES FOR TERRAFORM

More on DevOps

This is one of a series on DevOps:

1. DevOps_2.0
2. ci-cd (Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery)
3. User Stories for DevOps

4. Enterprise Software)

5. Git and GitHub vs File Archival
6. Git Commands and Statuses
7. Git Commit, Tag, Push
8. Git Utilities
9. Data Security GitHub
10. GitHub API

11. TFS vs. GitHub

12. Choices for DevOps Technologies
13. Pulumi Infrastructure as Code (IaC)
14. Java DevOps Workflow

15. Okta for SSO & MFA

16. AWS DevOps (CodeCommit, CodePipeline, CodeDeploy)
17. AWS server deployment options

18. AWS Load Balancers

19. Cloud services comparisons (across vendors)
20. Cloud regions (across vendors)

21. AWS Virtual Private Cloud

22. Azure Cloud Onramp (Subscriptions, Portal GUI, CLI)
23. Azure Certifications

24. Azure Cloud

25. Azure Cloud Powershell
26. Bash Windows using Microsoft’s WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux)

27. Azure KSQL (Kusto Query Language) for Azure Monitor, etc.

28. Azure Networking
29. Azure Storage
30. Azure Compute

31. Azure Monitoring

32. Digital Ocean

33. Cloud Foundry

34. Packer automation to build Vagrant images
35. Terraform multi-cloud provisioning automation

36. Hashicorp Vault and Consul to generate and hold secrets

37. Powershell Ecosystem
38. Powershell on MacOS

39. Powershell Desired System Configuration

40. Jenkins Server Setup
41. Jenkins Plug-ins
42. Jenkins Freestyle jobs

43. Jenkins2 Pipeline jobs using Groovy code in Jenkinsfile

44. Docker (Glossary, Ecosystem, Certification)
45. Make Makefile for Docker
46. Docker Setup and run Bash shell script
47. Bash coding
48. Docker Setup
49. Dockerize apps

50. Docker Registry

51. Maven on MacOSX

52. Ansible

53. MySQL Setup

54. SonarQube & SonarSource static code scan

55. API Management Microsoft

56. API Management Amazon

57. Scenarios for load
58. Chaos Engineering