Why IaC over manual provisioning in Terraform - See It in Action

Why IaC over manual provisioning

📖 Scenario: You work as a cloud engineer for a small company. The company wants to set up a simple web server on a cloud provider. They are deciding between creating the server manually through the cloud console or using code to automate the setup.

🎯 Goal: Build a simple Terraform configuration that creates a virtual machine instance. This will show how Infrastructure as Code (IaC) works compared to manual setup.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a Terraform configuration file named main.tf

Define a resource for a virtual machine instance with specific properties

Add a variable to configure the instance type

Use the variable in the resource configuration

Add an output to show the instance's public IP address

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Cloud engineers use Infrastructure as Code to automate and manage cloud resources reliably and quickly.

💼 Career

Knowing IaC tools like Terraform is essential for roles in cloud operations, DevOps, and infrastructure management.

1

Create the initial Terraform resource

Create a Terraform resource named aws_instance called web_server with the following properties: ami = "ami-0c55b159cbfafe1f0" and instance_type = "t2.micro" inside a file named main.tf.

Terraform

# Your code here

Need a hint?

The resource block starts with resource "aws_instance" "web_server" { and ends with }.

2

Add a variable for instance type

Add a Terraform variable named instance_type with a default value of "t2.micro" in the same main.tf file.

Terraform

resource "aws_instance" "web_server" {
  ami           = "ami-0c55b159cbfafe1f0"
  instance_type = "t2.micro"
}

# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use variable "instance_type" {} block and refer to it as var.instance_type inside the resource.

3

Add an output for the public IP

Add an output named public_ip that shows the public_ip attribute of the aws_instance.web_server resource in main.tf.

Terraform

resource "aws_instance" "web_server" {
  ami           = "ami-0c55b159cbfafe1f0"
  instance_type = var.instance_type
}

variable "instance_type" {
  type    = string
  default = "t2.micro"
}

# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use output "public_ip" { value = aws_instance.web_server.public_ip } to show the IP.

4

Explain why IaC is better than manual provisioning

Add a comment at the top of main.tf explaining in simple words why using Terraform (IaC) is better than creating the server manually.

Terraform

# Your comment here
resource "aws_instance" "web_server" {
  ami           = "ami-0c55b159cbfafe1f0"
  instance_type = var.instance_type
}

variable "instance_type" {
  type    = string
  default = "t2.micro"
}

output "public_ip" {
  value = aws_instance.web_server.public_ip
}

Need a hint?

Write a simple comment starting with # explaining benefits like repeatability, fewer errors, and tracking.