Infrastructure as Code (IaC)

So, you have decided to offload all your application’s infrastructure needs to the cloud. Great choice! A way better option than clicking around forever to get things deployed.

The next step is managing and provisioning that infrastructure efficiently, which is where comes in. IaC allows you to automate the creation, configuration, and management of your cloud resources using code. This ensures consistency, repeatability, and scalability, making infrastructure management more reliable and less error-prone.

With IaC, you can describe your cloud infrastructure in human-readable configuration files. These can be versioned, shared, and reused just like application code. Whether you're deploying a simple app or a complex architecture, IaC helps you define, deploy, and manage it all with ease.

is the most popular IaC tool and a great choice for automating cloud infrastructure.

Introducing Terraform

Terraform allows you to manage infrastructure across multiple cloud providers using a unified syntax. It’s declarative, scalable, and maintainable.

We’ll explore Terraform fundamentals and build a simple setup to deploy an S3 bucket and an EC2 instance.

Installing Terraform

To install Terraform via Chocolatey on Windows:

Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force; 
[System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = 
[System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol -bor 3072; 
iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://community.chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))

Then install Terraform:

choco install terraform

Verify the installation with:

terraform --version

Recommended VS Code Extensions

• HashiCorp Terraform – Adds syntax highlighting, validation, and suggestions.

Agenda

We’ll cover:

• Terraform providers
• Variables and outputs
• CLI commands
• State management
• Deploying an S3 Bucket and EC2 Instance

Terraform Providers

Create a file

providers.tf

:

terraform {
  required_version = "~> 1.9.5"
  required_providers {
    aws = {
      source  = "hashicorp/aws"
      version = "~> 5.64.0"
    }
  }
}

provider "aws" {
  region = "us-east-1"
  default_tags {
    tags = {
      Environment = "staging"
      Owner       = "Mukesh Murugan"
      Project     = "codewithmukesh"
    }
  }
}

Creating an S3 Bucket

Create a file

buckets.tf

:

resource "aws_s3_bucket" "codewithmukesh" {
  bucket = "codewithmukesh-bucket"
}

Terraform Lifecycle & CLI Commands

• terraform init

  – Initialize directory and download providers

• terraform plan

  – Preview changes

• terraform apply

  – Apply changes

• terraform destroy

  – Destroy infrastructure

• terraform show

  ,

  terraform state

  ,

  terraform validate

  , etc.

Authenticating Terraform with AWS

Option 1: Inline credentials (Not recommended)

provider "aws" {
  region     = "us-west-2"
  access_key = "my-access-key"
  secret_key = "my-secret-key"
}

Option 2: AWS CLI Profile (Recommended)

provider "aws" {
  region  = "us-west-2"
  profile = "mukesh"
}

Variables

:

variable "region" {
  description = "The AWS region to deploy resources in"
  type        = string
  default     = "us-east-1"
}

Use in

providers.tf

:

provider "aws" {
  region = var.region
  ...
}

Outputs

:

output "bucket_name" {
  description = "The name of the S3 bucket"
  value       = aws_s3_bucket.my_bucket.id
}

Terraform State Management

• Local State: terraform.tfstate, terraform.tfstate.backup
• Remote State: Store in S3 with locking via DynamoDB

Example backend block

terraform {
  backend "s3" {
    bucket         = "cwm-tfstates"
    key            = "demo/beginners-guide/terraform.tfstate"
    region         = "us-east-1"
    dynamodb_table = "cwm-state-locks"
    encrypt        = true
  }
}

Deploy EC2 Instance

:

resource "aws_instance" "demo" {
  ami           = "ami-066784287e358dad1"
  instance_type = "t3.micro"
}

Destroy Resources

To clean up resources and avoid costs, run:

terraform destroy

What’s Next?

Next, we’ll explore:

• Terraform modularization
• Deploying a .NET 8 Web API to ECS Fargate
• Integrating with PostgreSQL RDS
• Setting up networking and domain/SSL