Terraform in Gitlab for AWS

📅 Dec 7, 2023

This post goes through the steps explained in this presentation:

• Cumulus Circles: Automate AWS Infra Deployment using Terraform and GitHub Actions (2022), github

Steps:

• Create a code AWS account in AWS Organizations.
• Assign your user as admin to the code AWS account in IAM Identity Center
• Log into the code AWS account as yourself
• In IAM, create terraform user, and give it Admin privileges
• Create Access Keys for the terraform user
  • In the user details page, navigate to the Security credentials tab.
    • Under the “Access keys” section, click on Create access key.
    • Download and Store the Keys Safely:
  • Once the access key is created, AWS will offer you the option to download the key as a .csv file. This file contains the Access Key ID and Secret Access Key.
  • Download and save this file in a secure location. This is the only time AWS will display the Secret Access Key. If you lose it, you’ll have to create a new access key.
• Create Gitlab repo aws-terraform
  • In repo, click Settings, click Secrets and variables->Actions, New repository secrets
  • Add AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID and `AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY
• Copy contents of github
  • Copy src/* at the top level of the aws-terraform sandbox
    • Change the bucket name. It must be unique across AWS.
  • Copy .gitignore to the top level of the aws-terraform sandbox
  • Don’t copy the .github folder with the git actions just yet
  • Run git add at the top, check in and commit
• In main.tf
  • Comment out the terraform backend config for now
  • Comment out vpc-infra module for now
• Install terraform e.g. using these instructions
• Source the AWS environment variables
• Run these commands:
  • terraform init
  • terraform validate
  • terraform plan
  • terraform apply
• Comment in the backend
  • Update the bucket name in the back end to match the configured bucket
• Run these commands:
  • terraform init
    • Enter yes to copy your state to the S3 backend
  • terraform plan
  • Don’t run terraform apply. We will apply the changes through Github Actions.
• Copy the .gitlab folder from the original sandbox
  • Change the path from src to . in the terraform.yaml
• Enable the vpc module
• Check in. The changes will be applied through Gitlab Actions
  • Review the Gitlab Actions log in the web UI
• Disable the vpc module, setting a count=0 variable (instead of commenting the module out)
• Apply the changes again.