AWS Infrastructure Projects with Terraform

This repository contains a collection of AWS infrastructure projects built using Terraform. The projects demonstrate best practices for Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and cover various AWS services, CI/CD pipelines, and scalable deployments.

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Table of Contents

• Project Description
• Project Setup
  • Prerequisites
  • AWS Resources Setup
  • The Setup Project
  • Set local terraform workspace
• How to Run Projects
• Project Folders
• CI/CD User and Credentials
• CI/CD Workflow

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Project Description

This project is a collection of AWS infrastructure templates managed with Terraform. It aims to:

• Simplify the setup of cloud infrastructure using code.
• Enable version-controlled and repeatable infrastructure deployments.
• Demonstrate CI/CD workflows using GitHub Actions.

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Project Setup

Prerequisites

Ensure the following tools are installed and configured on your local computer: - See here for guidiance.

• AWS CLI: Interact with AWS services from the command line.
• aws-vault: Manage AWS credentials securely
• Docker Desktop : Run containerized applications locally
• Docker Compose: Define and run multi-container Docker applications
• Terraform: Provision infrastructure as code
• AWS Account: Required for deploying resources
• AWS Identity Center User: With permissions to create aws resources in a dev environment.

AWS Resources Setup

The following AWS resources are required to be manually created in the same region :

• S3 Bucket: Store Terraform remote state files
• DynamoDB Table: Lock Terraform state files to prevent concurrent operations

The Setup Project

This setup project handles the creation and management of the CI/CD user.

• Directory: setup
• Key Resources Created: IAM roles and permissions for secure deployment

⚠️ Note: Rather than run terraform commands directly from my terminal, I opted to run terraform from a docker container. The benefits of this approach includes:

• Consistency Across Environments: Running Terraform in a Docker container ensures that all team members use the same Terraform version and dependencies, eliminating version mismatches.
• Isolation: Avoids conflicts with other Terraform versions or dependencies installed on your local machine
• Ease of Setup: No need to manually install Terraform and its dependencies; simply pull and run the Docker container.
• Reproducibility: The same container can be used across different machines and CI/CD pipelines, ensuring consistent behavior.
• Security: Limits Terraform's access to only the mounted directories, reducing the risk of accidental modifications outside the intended scope.

Take a look at the doker compose file file in the project root.

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Set local terraform workspace

Run the following command in your terminal

 export TF_WORKSPACE=dev

This makes the TF_WORKSPACE environment variable available to the docker container that runs our terraform manifests.

Alternatively, if you wish to persist the TF_WORKSPACE environment variable between terminal sessions, add export TF_WORKSPACE=dev to your .bashrc or .zshrc file in your home directory.

Run the following command to confirm your workspace is set to dev

  terrafrom workspace show

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How to Run Projects

Use the following commands to deploy the infrastructure for a project:

# Initialize the Terraform project
docker compose run --rm terraform -chdir=<directory> init

# Format the configuration files
docker compose run --rm terraform -chdir=<directory> fmt

# Validate the configuration files
docker compose run --rm terraform -chdir=<directory> validate

# Plan the Terraform configuration
docker compose run --rm terraform -chdir=<directory> plan

# Apply the Terraform configuration
docker compose run --rm terraform -chdir=<directory> apply --auto-approve

For example, to deploy the infrastructure of the setup project, run the following commands:

docker compose run --rm terraform -chdir=setup init
docker compose run --rm terraform -chdir=setup fmt
docker compose run --rm terraform -chdir=setup validate
docker compose run --rm terraform -chdir=setup plan
docker compose run --rm terraform -chdir=setup apply --auto-approve

Project Folders

• setup: Create and manage CI/CD user and IAM roles
• network: AWS VPC with public, private and database subnets
• ecs-with-fargate: AWS ECS service with Fargate option

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CI/CD User and Credentials

• The CICD user is required by github actions to perform deployments in your aws environments (staging, production).
• This user is an IAM user with required permission/policies to create AWS resources
• The CICD user is created with the setup project from your local computer by running the commands above
• The credentials of the CICD user should be added as envrionment variables and secrets in your github repositiory if you want to automate the deployment pipeline.

CI/CD Workflow with GitHub Actions

The GitHub Actions workflow automates the following tasks:

• Linting and validating Terraform configurations
• Running plan and apply stages for infrastructure changes in the staging and production environments
• Ensuring secure and repeatable deployments