Lab: Installing Terraform and OpenTofu on Example Academy

Overview

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

In this lab, you will gain hands-on experience installing Terraform - an infrastructure as code tool that enables you to safely and predictably provision and manage infrastructure in any cloud. We will provision a Google Compute Engine using Terraform and then move on to implementing OpenTofu, which is a fork of Terraform that is open source, community-driven, and managed by the Linux Foundation.

Pre-Requisites 🔗

Ensure you have an Ubuntu 20.04 host. If not, then provision a virtual machine from Google Cloud Platform as per the lab in chapter 3.

Install Terraform

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

In this exercise, we will install Terraform on our Ubuntu host.

Download the public signing key for the package repositories. To get started, execute the following commands:

wget -O- https://apt.releases.hashicorp.com/gpg | sudo gpg --dearmor -o
/usr/share/keyrings/hashicorp-archive-keyring.gpg

Add the appropriate apt repository:

echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/hashicorp-archive-keyring.gpg]
https://apt.releases.hashicorp.com $(lsb_release -cs) main" | sudo tee
/etc/apt/sources.list.d/hashicorp.list

Update the apt package index and install Terraform:

sudo apt update && sudo apt install terraform

Verify the Terraform installation.

terraform --version
Terraform v1.7.4
on linux_amd64

Set up the GCP Service Account and Configure Google Cloud SDK

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

In this exercise, we will install Google Cloud SDK, configure Google Cloud account to create a service account and use the credentials to create infrastructure using Terraform.

Before you install the gcloud CLI, update the packages:

sudo apt-get update

Install the curl and apt-transport-https packages:

sudo apt-get install apt-transport-https ca-certificates gnupg curl

Import the Google Cloud public key:

curl https://packages.cloud.google.com/apt/doc/apt-key.gpg | sudo gpg --dearmor
-o /usr/share/keyrings/cloud.google.gpg

Add the gcloud CLI distribution URI as a package source:

echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/cloud.google.gpg]
https://packages.cloud.google.com/apt cloud-sdk main" | sudo tee -a
/etc/apt/sources.list.d/google-cloud-sdk.list

Update and install the gcloud CLI:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install google-cloud-cli

After installing the SDK, initialize it by running the following command and follow the prompts:

gcloud init
Welcome! This command will take you through the configuration of gcloud.
Your current configuration has been set to: [default]
You can skip diagnostics next time by using the following flag:
gcloud init --skip-diagnostics
Network diagnostic detects and fixes local network connection issues.
Checking network connection...done.
Reachability Check passed.
Network diagnostic passed (1/1 checks passed).
Choose the account you would like to use to perform operations for this
configuration:
Follow the prompts and enter your project details accordingly.

Create a Service Account:

You’ll need to create a service account in your Google Cloud project. This service account will be used by applications and scripts to authenticate with Google Cloud APIs.

Create a Google Cloud Compute Engine Instance Using Terraform

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Create a directory to store our Terraform code:

mkdir -p ~/code

Create a Terraform configuration file and save the file as main.tf with the following configuration:

provider "google" {
 project = "<ADD YOUR PROJECT ID HERE>"
 region = "us-central1"
 zone = "us-central1-a"
}

resource "google_compute_instance" "my_instance" {
 name = "my-instance"
 machine_type = "n1-standard-1"
 zone = "us-central1-a"

 boot_disk {
 initialize_params {
 image = "debian-cloud/debian-10"
 }
 }

 network_interface {
 network = "default"
 access_config {
 // Ephemeral IP
 }
 }
}

Note: Replace " ADD YOUR PROJECT ID HERE " with your Google Cloud project ID. You can also customize other parameters like the instance name, machine type, zone, and image.

Setting up OpenTofu

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

OpenTofu is a fork of Terraform that is open source, community-driven, and managed by the Linux Foundation. OpenTofu is an infrastructure as code tool that lets you define both cloud and on-prem resources in human-readable configuration files that you can version, reuse, and share. You can then use a consistent workflow to provision and manage all of your infrastructure throughout its lifecycle. OpenTofu can manage low-level components like compute, storage, and networking resources, as well as high-level components like DNS entries and SaaS features.