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Lab description

This lab will cover the very basic terraform workflow for the inital creation of resources in Azure.

The terraform Core Workflow is:

Setup

Make sure you are in the correct folder:

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cd ~/terraform-labs

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cd ~/terraform-labs

Day 1 operation (Create)

For the following commands you’ll need to be authenticated to Azure and connected to the subscription you want to deploy to.

HINT: Use az login and az account set --subscription mysubscription

1. Write

  1. Create a file called main.tf and open in your editor, then paste in the below code.

    HINT: If you are using VSCode, you can type code . and select main.tf or simply code main.tf in terminal to bring up the editor.

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     # Specifiy the provider and version
 terraform {
   required_providers {
     azurerm = {
       source  = "hashicorp/azurerm"
       version = "~> 4.0"
     }
   }
 }
    
 # Configure the Microsoft Azure Provider
 provider "azurerm" {
   features {}
 }
    
 # Create the very first resource
 resource "azurerm_resource_group" "contoso_rg" {
   name     = "contoso_rg"
   location = "UK South"
 }
  2. Take a quick look at above code and understand what it does.
  3. Save main.tf (ctrl + s)

HINT: Turn on auto save in VSCode to make your life easier. Go to File > Auto Save or ctrl + shift + p and type Auto Save and select Toggle Auto Save.

2. Init

  1. From terminal, (shortcut ctrl + ' in vs code)

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     terraform init

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     terraform init

    Take a look at what’s been created

  2. .terraform.lock.hcl - Lock file to record the provider selections it made above.

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     dir

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     ls -a

    To upgrade to newer version of the provider in the future, will require a terraform init --upgrade, which will then also update the lock file. This prevents accidental version bump following a change to main.tf.

    You can version control .terraform.lock.hcl to ensure everyone gets the same versions moving forward.

  3. .terraform directory - Contains provider itself that got installed based on the version specified in main.tf.

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     ls -R ./.terraform/providers/*/

    Above should display something like terraform-provider-azurerm_v4.7.0_x5.exe.

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     ls -R ./.terraform/providers/*/

    Above should display something like terraform-provider-azurerm_v4.7.0_x5.

3. Plan

Starting with AzureRM 4.0, the subscription ID is required. We can either hard code it into our provider block or use the ARM_SUBSCRIPTION_ID environment variable. We are going to use the environment variable in this lab.

HINT: Can’t remember your subscription id? Run az account show --query id -o tsv in your terminal.

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$env:ARM_SUBSCRIPTION_ID = "your_subscription_id"

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export ARM_SUBSCRIPTION_ID="your_subscription_id"

We can now run the plan:

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terraform plan

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terraform plan

You should see something like below:

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Terraform used the selected providers to generate the following execution plan. Resource actions are indicated with the following symbols:
  + create

Terraform will perform the following actions:

  # azurerm_resource_group.contoso_rg will be created
  + resource "azurerm_resource_group" "contoso_rg" {
      + id       = (known after apply)
      + location = "uksouth"
      + name     = "contoso_rg"
    }

Plan: 1 to add, 0 to change, 0 to destroy.

4. Apply

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terraform apply

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terraform apply

When prompted to enter a value, type yes to approve

The terminal output should say something like below

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azurerm_resource_group.contoso_rg: Creating...
azurerm_resource_group.contoso_rg: Creation complete after 9s [id=/subscriptions/b857908d-3f5c-4477-91c1-0fbd08df4e88/resourceGroups/contoso_rg]

Apply complete! Resources: 1 added, 0 changed, 0 destroyed.

Note that terraform.tfstate file has been created locally upon our first apply. State management is a topic on its own and we’ll cover it separately.

5. Verify

Verify that the resource has been created, either via Azure Portal or using az cli.

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az group list --query "[?name == 'contoso_rg']"

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az group list | jq '.[] | select(.name == "contoso_rg")'

Take a few minutes to understand what terraform generated during apply

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terraform show 

terraform show terraform.tfstate

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terraform show 

terraform show terraform.tfstate

The terraform show command is used to provide human-readable output from a state or plan file. See: https://developer.hashicorp.com/terraform/cli/commands/show

Important Note: Besides information about terraform managed resources, tfstate will often contain sensitive information and therefore must be kept be very secure. You will see that it’s in .gitignore to make sure it’s not accidentally checked into version control. We’ll cover more on State Management later.

6. Version control your code

  1. Add a .gitignore file to your folder, copying the content from https://github.com/github/gitignore/blob/main/Terraform.gitignore.

  2. Add main.tf and .terraform.hcl.lock to git

    Below will only include main.tf and .terraform.hcl.lock because all other items such as terraform.tfstate, .terraform are in .gitgnore.

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     cd ~/terraform-labs
    
 git init
 git add .
 git commit -m "created resource group"

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     cd ~/terraform-labs
    
 git init
 git add .
 git commit -m "created resource group"

  3. You are welcome to push your changes to your own github remote if you prefer.

    1. You’ll need to create a repository on GitHub.com and push your changes up there.
    2. See: https://help.github.com/en/github/using-git/adding-a-remote
    3. If you’re new to git, and unsure about these steps. Feel free to skip for now.

Next Lab - Day 2 Operations

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