Creating a project that integrates Terraform and Ansible can be a great way to automate both the provisioning and configuration of infrastructure.

Project Overview

• Terraform: Used to provision an EC2 instance in AWS.
• Ansible: Used to configure the EC2 instance by installing and setting up a web server (e.g., Apache).

Step 1: Provisioning Infrastructure with Terraform

1.1. Terraform Configuration

Create a main.tf file in the terraform/ directory:

provider "aws" {
  region = "us-west-2"
}

resource "aws_instance" "web" {
  ami           = "ami-0c55b159cbfafe1f0"
  instance_type = "t2.micro"
  key_name      = var.key_name

  tags = {
    Name = "WebServer"
  }
}

output "web_server_ip" {
  value = aws_instance.web.public_ip
}
        

1.2. Variables

Create a variables.tf file to define variables:

variable "key_name" {
  description = "The name of the SSH key pair"
  type        = string
}
        

1.3. Terraform Variables File

Create a terraform.tfvars file to set values for the variables:

key_name = "your-aws-key-name"        

1.4. Output the Ansible Inventory

Create an outputs.tf file to generate the Ansible inventory:

output "ansible_inventory" {
  value = templatefile("inventory.tpl", {
    ip = aws_instance.web.public_ip
  })
}        

1.5. Inventory Template

Create an inventory.tpl file to format the inventory:

[web]
${ip} ansible_ssh_user=ec2-user ansible_ssh_private_key_file=~/.ssh/your-aws-key.pem        

1.6. Initialize and Apply Terraform

Run the following commands in the terraform/ directory:

terraform init
terraform apply -auto-approve        

This will create an EC2 instance and output an Ansible inventory file.

Step 2: Configuring Infrastructure with Ansible

2.1. Ansible Configuration

Create an ansible.cfg file to specify settings:

[defaults]
inventory = ../terraform/terraform.tfstate.d/ansible_inventory
host_key_checking = False        

2.2. Ansible Playbook

Create a playbook.yml file to define the tasks:

- hosts: web
  become: yes
  tasks:
    - name: Update and install Apache
      yum:
        name: httpd
        state: present

    - name: Start Apache service
      service:
        name: httpd
        state: started
        enabled: yes        

Step 3: Running the Ansible Playbook

Run the Ansible playbook from the ansible/ directory:

ansible-playbook playbook.yml        

This playbook will connect to the EC2 instance provisioned by Terraform and install and start the Apache web server.

Step 4: Verification

• After running the playbook, you can access the public IP of the EC2 instance (output by Terraform) in your web browser. If everything was successful, you should see the Apache default page.

Step 5: Clean Up

When you are done with the project, you can destroy the resources with Terraform:

cd ../terraform
terraform destroy -auto-approve        

Thank you for reading