As a product manager building a B2B platform, one of the essential components to consider is infrastructure. The infrastructure must be scalable, secure, and easy to manage. Terraform is a tool that helps product and engineering teams manage their infrastructure as code.

What is Terraform?

Terraform is an open-source tool for building, changing, and versioning infrastructure. It allows you to describe your infrastructure as code and apply it to various cloud providers. Terraform has become increasingly popular over the years because it provides a simple and efficient way to manage infrastructure.

Benefits of using Terraform

Infrastructure as code

With Terraform you can version control your infrastructure, collaborate with other team members, and make changes more efficiently.

Provider agnostic

Terraform supports a wide range of cloud providers, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and Microsoft Azure. This means that you can use the same tool to manage your infrastructure across multiple providers.

Modular architecture

Terraform has a modular architecture that allows you to reuse code across multiple projects. This can save you time and effort when building new platforms.

Scalability

Terraform is designed to be scalable, which means that it can handle large and complex infrastructure configurations.

Automation

Terraform allows you to automate the infrastructure provisioning process, which can save you time and reduce the risk of human error.

World-class platforms using Terraform

Here are some real-world examples of using Terraform to manage their infrastructure on AWS and automate the deployment process:

Stripe

Payment platform that provides APIs for businesses to accept payments online.

Slack

Messaging platform for teams, businesses and enterprises.

HubSpot

Marketing and sales platform for businesses.

Step-by-Step Guide: Use Terraform on AWS

Let's look at how to use Terraform to manage infrastructure as code. We will use the following steps:

1. Install Terraform

The first step is to download and install Terraform on your local machine. You can find the installation instructions for various operating systems on the official Terraform website.

https://developer.hashicorp.com/terraform/tutorials/aws-get-started/install-cli

2. Configure your AWS credentials

You'll need to configure your AWS access keys so that Terraform can interact with your AWS account. You can do this by setting environment variables or creating a profile in the AWS CLI. Make sure to grant the appropriate permissions to your access keys for the resources you plan to manage with Terraform. You can find the configuration instructions on the official AWS website.

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/userguide/cli-chap-configure.html

3. Create a Terraform configuration file

This file (.tf) will define the infrastructure resources you want to create on AWS. You'll use the Terraform language to write this file, which describes the desired state of your infrastructure resources.

Here is a quick example to create an EC2 instance on AWS: terraform_test_ec2.tf

‍{% code-block language="yaml" %}
provider "aws" {  
region = "us-east-1"  
profile = "your-aws-credentials-profile-goes-here"
}
resource "aws_vpc" "test_vpc" {  
cidr_block = "10.0.0.0/16"
}
resource "aws_subnet" "test_subnet" {  
cidr_block = "10.0.1.0/24"  
vpc_id = aws_vpc.test_vpc.id  
availability_zone = "us-east-1a"
}
resource "aws_security_group" "ec2_basic_sg" {  
name_prefix = "ec2_basic_sg"  
vpc_id = aws_vpc.test_vpc.id  
ingress {    
from_port   = 22  
to_port     = 22    
protocol    = "tcp"    
cidr_blocks = ["0.0.0.0/0"]  
}  
ingress {    
from_port   = 80    
to_port     = 80    
protocol    = "tcp"    
cidr_blocks = ["0.0.0.0/0"]  
}
}
resource "aws_instance" "single_ec2" {  
ami           = "ami-06e46074ae430fba6"  
instance_type = "t2.micro"  
key_name      = "basic_ec2"  
vpc_security_group_ids = [aws_security_group.ec2_basic_sg.id]  
subnet_id = aws_subnet.test_subnet.id  
tags = {    
Name = "test_ec2"  
}
}
{% end-code-block %}‍

4. Initialize the Terraform working directory‍

After you create the Terraform configuration file (.tf), you'll need to initialize your working directory to download the necessary provider plugins and modules. Using your terminal run the terraform init command in your working directory to do this.

{% code-block language="shell" %}
terraform init
{% end-code-block %}

5. Plan the changes

After you initialize the Terraform working directory, run the command terraform plan to preview the changes that Terraform will make to your AWS resources. This command will show you a list of resources that will be created, updated, or deleted.

{% code-block language="shell" %}
terraform plan
{% end-code-block %}

6. Apply the changes

If you're satisfied with the changes that Terraform will make, run the command terraform apply to apply them to your AWS account. Terraform will create or modify your resources as necessary to match the desired state defined in your configuration file.

{% code-block language="shell" %}
terraform apply
{% end-code-block %}

7. Manage the infrastructure

That's it! You should now be able to manage your AWS resources with Terraform. You can make further changes to your configuration file and run the commands terraform plan and terraform apply again to make additional changes or updates.

8. Delete infrastructure

If you're just doing some testing and you have finished your work, then you can delete all the resources running the command terraform destroy

{% code-block language="shell" %}
terraform destroy
{% end-code-block %}

‍