Day 61 – Introduction to Terraform and My First AWS Infrastructure ☁️
On Day 61 of my 90 Days of DevOps journey, I started learning Terraform and Infrastructure as Code (IaC).
Until now, I was mainly working with Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD, and deployments.
But today I explored something very important in DevOps:
How cloud infrastructure itself is created using code.
This was my first hands-on experience creating AWS resources using Terraform instead of manually clicking inside the AWS Console.
Infrastructure as Code (IaC)
Before starting Terraform practically, I first learned what Infrastructure as Code means.
Infrastructure as Code is the process of managing infrastructure using configuration files instead of manually creating resources.
Instead of creating:
EC2 instances
S3 buckets
networks
security groups
manually from the AWS Console, Terraform allows us to define everything inside code files.
This makes infrastructure:
repeatable
version-controlled
automated
consistent
I also understood why IaC is so important in DevOps.
Manual infrastructure creation can lead to:
human errors
inconsistent environments
difficult scaling
hard recovery
IaC solves these problems by automating infrastructure provisioning.
Installing Terraform and AWS CLI
Next, I installed:
Terraform
AWS CLI
Then I configured AWS credentials using:
aws configure
and verified access using:
aws sts get-caller-identity
That was my first successful connection between my local machine and AWS using CLI tools.
Creating My First Terraform Project
Then I created my first Terraform project directory and wrote a:
file.
Inside the file, I configured:
AWS provider
AWS region
S3 bucket resource
Then I ran the Terraform workflow:
terraform init
terraform plan
terraform apply
When I executed:
terraform apply
Terraform created my AWS S3 bucket automatically.
Seeing cloud infrastructure get created directly from code felt really exciting ☁️🔥
Understanding terraform init
Today I also learned what:
terraform init
actually does.
It downloads:
required provider plugins
creates the .terraform directory
prepares the working directory
This step initializes the Terraform project before provisioning resources.
Creating an EC2 Instance
Next, I added an EC2 instance inside the same:
file.
I configured:
Amazon Linux 2 AMI
t2.micro instance
custom Name tag
Then I ran:
terraform plan
again.
Terraform only showed the EC2 instance for creation because the S3 bucket already existed.
That helped me understand how Terraform tracks infrastructure using the:
terraform.tfstate
file.
Understanding Terraform State
One of the most important things I learned today was the Terraform state file.
Terraform stores all infrastructure details inside:
terraform.tfstate
This file contains:
resource IDs
configurations
metadata
current infrastructure state
Using:
terraform state list
and:
terraform state show
I explored how Terraform tracks resources internally.
I also learned:
never manually edit the state file
never push state files to GitHub
because they may contain sensitive information.
Modify, Plan, and Destroy
Finally, I modified the EC2 instance tag inside:
Then I ran:
terraform plan
again.
Terraform clearly showed what changes would happen before applying them.
I also learned Terraform symbols:
→ create
~ → modify→ destroy
At the end, I deleted all infrastructure using:
terraform destroy
and AWS resources were removed automatically.
That was honestly one of the coolest parts today.
What I Learned Today
Today I learned:
Infrastructure as Code (IaC)
Terraform basics
AWS provider
terraform init
terraform plan
terraform apply
terraform destroy
Terraform state file
AWS S3 bucket creation
EC2 provisioning using code
Final Thoughts
Today was a very important step in my DevOps journey because I finally understood how infrastructure automation works.
Instead of manually creating cloud resources, Terraform allows everything to be managed using code.
Creating and destroying AWS infrastructure from the terminal felt really powerful
TerraWeek officially started