book

The Terraform Book

Name: The Terraform Book
Author: James Turnbull
ISBN: 9780988820258

by James Turnbull

November 2016

Intermediate to advanced

280 pages

3h 51m

English

Turnbull Press

Read now

Unlock full access

The Terraform Book
0.1 Who is this book for?0.2 Credits and Acknowledgments0.3 Technical Reviewers0.3.1 Jennifer Davis0.3.2 Thom May0.3.3 Peter Miron0.3.4 James Nugent0.3.5 Paul Stack0.4 Editor0.5 Author0.6 Conventions in the book0.7 Code and Examples0.8 Colophon0.9 Errata0.10 Disclaimer0.11 Copyright0.12 Version
1 Introduction
1.1 Infrastructure as Code1.1.1 Wait … what’s infrastructure?1.2 Introducing Terraform1.3 So why not a configuration management tool?1.4 So why not CloudFormation et al?1.5 So what can you use Terraform for?1.5.1 Multi-tier applications1.5.2 Self-service infrastructure1.5.3 Production, development, and testing environments1.5.4 Continuous delivery1.5.5 Managing your management tools1.6 What’s in the book?1.7 Links and information
2 Installing and introducing Terraform
2.1 Installing Terraform2.1.1 Installing Terraform on Linux2.1.2 Installing Terraform on Microsoft Windows2.1.3 Alternative Microsoft Windows installation2.1.4 Alternative Mac OS X installation2.2 Getting started with Terraform2.2.1 Adding some configuration2.2.2 Terraform configuration files2.2.3 Setting up Amazon Web Services2.2.4 Our first configuration file2.2.5 Building our first resource2.2.6 Terraform state2.2.7 Showing our resource2.2.8 Adding a second resource2.2.9 Outputting plans2.2.10 Targeting resources2.2.11 Failed plans2.2.12 Showing all the resources2.2.13 Viewing the Terraform graph2.2.14 Destroying infrastructure2.3 Summary
3 Building an application stack with Terraform
3.1 Our application stack3.2 Parameterizing our configuration3.2.1 Variables3.2.2 Maps3.2.3 Lists3.2.4 Variable defaults3.2.5 Populating variables3.3 Starting our stack3.3.1 Using AWS shared credentials3.4 First resources3.5 Modules3.5.1 Defining a module3.5.2 Module structure3.6 Using our module3.6.1 Getting our module3.6.2 Moving our module to a repository3.7 Counts and counting3.7.1 Sets of counted resources using splat3.7.2 Setting values with count indexes3.7.3 Wrapping counts with the element function3.7.4 Conditionals3.7.5 Locals3.8 Provisioning our stack3.9 Finishing up our stack3.10 Committing our configuration3.11 Validating and formatting3.12 Initializing Terraform3.13 Planning our stack3.14 Applying our stack3.15 Graphing our stack3.16 Seeing the results3.17 Destroying the web stack resources3.18 Summary
4 Provisioning with Terraform
4.1 What does a provisioner do?4.2 Provisioning an instance4.2.1 Connection block4.2.2 The file provisioner4.2.3 Remote execution provisioning4.2.4 Destroying the old web stack resources4.2.5 Provisioning our web stack4.2.6 Failed execution of a provisioner4.3 Summary
5 Collaborating with Terraform
5.1 Terraform state5.2 Remote state5.2.1 No state protection5.2.2 Not all backends have locking5.3 Creating an S3 remote state backend5.3.1 Creating a module for an S3 remote state5.3.2 Planning the remote state module5.3.3 Applying our remote state module5.3.4 Uploading the remote state module5.4 Configuring Terraform to use remote state5.4.1 Setting the remote state5.4.2 Disabling remote state5.5 Using and sharing remote state5.5.1 Sharing state between users5.5.2 Externally loading remote state backends5.5.3 Using remote state data5.5.4 Moving our base state remote5.5.5 Adding the data source to the base configuration5.6 State and service discovery5.6.1 Creating a Consul cluster5.6.2 Using Consul and remote state5.7 Other tools for managing Terraform state5.8 Summary
6 Building a multi-environment architecture
6.1 Creating a data center6.1.1 Creating a directory structure6.2 Workflow6.2.1 Develop6.2.2 Plan6.2.3 Apply in development6.2.4 Automation and testing6.2.5 Deploy to production6.3 The development environment6.3.1 Getting our VPC module6.3.2 Adding some outputs for the development environment6.3.3 Planning the development environment6.3.4 Applying the development environment6.3.5 Configuring remote state6.4 Adding the web service6.4.1 The web module6.4.2 Using a data source in the web module6.4.3 Web instances6.4.4 A Cloudflare record6.4.5 Committing our module6.4.6 Getting our web module6.4.7 Planning our web service6.4.8 Applying the web service6.4.9 Testing our web service6.4.10 Removing our web service6.5 Adding the API service6.5.1 The API module6.5.2 API instances6.5.3 The API service outputs6.5.4 Getting our module6.5.5 Planning the API service6.5.6 Applying the API service6.5.7 Testing our API service6.6 Adding a production environment6.6.1 Adding services to production6.7 State environments6.8 Other resources for Terraform environments6.9 Summary
7 Infrastructure testing
7.1 Test Kitchen7.1.1 InSpec7.1.2 How Test Kitchen works7.1.3 Prerequisites7.1.4 Creating a test configuration7.1.5 Creating our first control7.1.6 Decorating controls with metadata7.1.7 Adding another test to our control7.1.8 Setting up a Test Kitchen instance7.1.9 Running the controls7.1.10 Adding a new control7.1.11 Building custom InSpec resources7.2 Alternative infrastructure testing frameworks7.3 Summary

Content preview from The Terraform Book

4 Provisioning with Terraform

In Chapter 3 we saw some simple provisioning, installing Nginx on our web stack. This made use of AWS EC2 user data. This “run a shell script” when the compute resource launches is configuration management and provisioning at its most basic. It’s not very flexible or repeatable.

Indeed, like many organizations, you likely have a configuration management tool like Puppet, Chef, or Ansible installed. This means you have existing configuration management modules, roles, or cookbooks that already know how to build your applications and services.

Terraform isn’t designed to replace your configuration management tool—rather, it’s made to integrate with it. Terraform’s sweet spot is the management of your infrastructure ...

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.

Read now

Unlock full access

More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly

O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.

Julian F.

Head of Cybersecurity

I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.

Addison B.

Field Engineer

I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.

Amir M.

Data Platform Tech Lead

I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.

Mark W.

Embedded Software Engineer

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9780988820258

Cloud Computing

Data Engineering

Data Science

AI & ML

Programming Languages

Software Architecture

IT/Ops

Security

Design

Business

Soft Skills

The Terraform Book

by James Turnbull

4 Provisioning with Terraform

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.