Talk given at Coding Leipzig Meetup (8th August, 2018). Why infrastructure should be managed as code (IaC), a small intro to the IaC-tooling Terraform (and Packer), and a demo that shows how to use Terraform to deploy a good old LAMP Stack into the Cloud by the push of a button (https://github.com/cloudetc/lamp-stack-for-aws).

1. LAMP Stack (Reloaded)
Infrastructure as Code with
Terraform & Packer
Jan-Christoph Küster

2. IaaS = Freedom
2

3. LAMP Stack (Reloaded) https://github.com/cloudetc/
lamp-stack-for-aws
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4. 4

5. Solution? Code!
5

6. ● Automation (scalability)
● Reuse (don’t reinvent the wheel)
● Reproducibility (test once use many)
● Versioning (rollbacks)
● Team collaboration (no single point-of-failure)
● Source of truth (documentation)
6

7. 7

8. ./packer build webserver.json
...
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9. 9

10. Provider
provider "aws" {
region = "us-west-2"
# default is $HOME/.aws/credentials
profile = "myaccount"
}
10

11. resource "aws_vpc" "webserver" {
cidr_block = "10.0.0.0/16"
tags {
Name = "LAMP"
}
}
Resource
Name
resource "aws_subnet" "webserver" {
vpc_id = "${aws_vpc.webserver.id}"
…
}
Type
11

12. Variables
variable "instance_type" {
description = "The type of instance to launch"
default = "t2.micro"
}
resource "aws_instance" "webserver" {
instance_type = "${var.instance_type}"
...
}
12

13. Outputs
output "endpoint" {
value = "${aws_elb.webserver.elb_dns_name}"
}
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14. Datasource
data "aws_ami" "webserver" {
owners = ["self"]
filter {
name = "name"
values = ["webserver-*"]
}
}
resource "aws_instance" "web" {
image_id = "${data.aws_ami.webserver.id}"
...
} 14

15. webserver/
- variables.tf
- outputs.tf
- main.tf
- foo/
- webserver.tfstate
cd webserver/
terraform init
terraform plan
terraform apply
Terraform
project
15

16. Target
state
Current state
Diff Plan Apply
Terraform
project
foo.tfstate
foo.tfstate
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17. Modules (https://registry.terraform.io/)
module "webserver" {
source = "<git-repo>//webserver"
version = "v0.0.1"
instance_type = "t2.micro"
...
}
17

18. Loops
resource "aws_subnet" "webserver" {
count = "${length(var.AZs)}"
availability_zone = "${element(var.AZs,
count.index)}"
}
variable "AZs" {
type = "list"
default = ["us-west-2a", "us-west-2b"]
} 18

19. ● Use code! It’s where the power comes from.
● Use modules! Don’t reinvent the wheel.
● Test your infrastructure! Like other code, too.
19

20. https://www.heise.de/developer/artikel/Terraform-in-der-Praxis-LAMP-Stack-in-der-Cloud-3961117.html
20

21. AWSweeper
Clean out your AWS account
Fridolin freudenfett, Creative Common

22. Backup
22

23. https://blog.gruntwork.io/why-we-use-terraform-and-not-chef-puppet-ansible-saltstack-or-cloudformation-7989dad2865c
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24. Terraform ...
1. is cloud-agnostic (supports AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, DNSimple, etc.)
2. is open-source (possible to write custom providers in Go)
3. is under active development (coverage of missing AWS components,
improving all the time)
4. is declarative
5. manages dependencies automatically
6. can visualize the dependency graph
7. executes in parallel
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25. Terraform ...
8. has a separate planning step
(generates an execution plan that shows exactly what it will do)
9. applies changes incrementally
10. offers readable and easy to work with DSL, called HCL
(100% translatable into JSON)
11. has tool integration (e.g., IntelliJ Plugin)
12. “feels just right” to handle and expand big projects
(LAMP Stack example in Cloud formation is one JSON file with >1000 LoC)
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26. Infrastructure as Code
Configuration management
● Provision software on machines
● Tools: Puppet, Chef
Orchestration
● Provision the machines themselves,
and infrastructure around them
● Tools: Hashicorp’s Terraform & Packer, Cloudformation
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27. Packer ...
● automates creation of machine images
● is provider-agnostic
● allows modern configuration
management (Chef, Puppet, Shell …)
● improves testability and robustness
(test once, use many)
ELB
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28. Photo credits
● Photo by Rory Björkman on Unsplash
● Photo by Ilya Pavlov on Unsplash
● Photo by Jelleke Vanooteghem on Unsplash
● Photo by Samuel Zeller on Unsplash
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