Variable declaration syntax in Terraform - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Variable declaration syntax in Terraform

📖 Scenario: You are setting up a Terraform configuration to manage cloud infrastructure. Variables help you customize your setup without changing the main code.

🎯 Goal: Learn how to declare variables in Terraform with default values and descriptions.

📋 What You'll Learn

Declare a variable named region with default value us-west-2

Declare a variable named instance_type with default value t2.micro

Add descriptions to both variables

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Variables in Terraform let you customize infrastructure deployments without changing the main code, making it easy to reuse and share configurations.

💼 Career

Understanding variable declaration is essential for cloud engineers and DevOps professionals to write flexible and maintainable infrastructure as code.

1

Declare the region variable

Write a Terraform variable declaration for a variable called region with a default value of "us-west-2" and a description "AWS region to deploy resources".

Terraform

# Declare the variable 'region' with default and description
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use the variable block with description and default inside.

2

Declare the instance_type variable

Add a Terraform variable declaration for a variable called instance_type with a default value of "t2.micro" and a description "EC2 instance type" below the region variable.

Terraform

variable "region" {
  description = "AWS region to deploy resources"
  default     = "us-west-2"
}

# Declare the variable 'instance_type' with default and description
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Follow the same pattern as the region variable.

3

Use the region variable in a provider block

Add a Terraform provider block for AWS that uses the variable region with the syntax region = var.region.

Terraform

variable "region" {
  description = "AWS region to deploy resources"
  default     = "us-west-2"
}

variable "instance_type" {
  description = "EC2 instance type"
  default     = "t2.micro"
}

# Add AWS provider block using var.region
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use provider "aws" { region = var.region } to connect the variable.

4

Use the instance_type variable in an EC2 resource

Add a Terraform resource block for an AWS EC2 instance named example that uses the variable instance_type with the syntax instance_type = var.instance_type and the ami set to "ami-0c55b159cbfafe1f0".

Terraform

variable "region" {
  description = "AWS region to deploy resources"
  default     = "us-west-2"
}

variable "instance_type" {
  description = "EC2 instance type"
  default     = "t2.micro"
}

provider "aws" {
  region = var.region
}

# Add AWS EC2 resource 'example' using var.instance_type and given AMI
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use resource "aws_instance" "example" { ami = "ami-..." instance_type = var.instance_type }.