Kia Zhi Tang (Ryen Tang)

Kia Zhi Tang (Ryen Tang)

Technology Evangelist, Infrastructure as Code Developer, Automation Guru

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Getting started with Azure deployment using Terraform

3 minute read

In this post, I will discuss on how you can obtain Terraform in your working environment and briefly demonstrates on how to create a resource group with Terraform *.tf files containing those Terraform configuration language.

Setting up Terraform CLI

Since Terraform is a multiple platform tool for multiple cloud service providers and I have included Terraform tool deployment for macOS, Linux and Windows.

macOS

In this walkthrough section, I will demonstrate on how you can use terraform on macOS Catalina to deploy in Azure.

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# Go to your Downloads directory as your working directory
cd ~/Downloads

# Download the Terraform
curl -sSO https://releases.hashicorp.com/terraform/0.12.19/terraform_0.12.19_darwin_amd64.zip

# Unzip the downloaded compressed file
unzip terraform_0.12.19_darwin_amd64.zip

# Make a Terraform directory
mkdir -p ~/Terraform

# Move the terraform file to Terraform directory
mv terraform ~/Terraform

# Set up Terraform PATH
echo 'export PATH="/Users/$USER/Terraform:$PATH"' >> ~/.zshrc

Quit your current terminal and launch a new terminal window. Now you can check the terraform version from the terminal to determine if the file path is configured properly.

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# Check the version
terraform -version

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Linux

In this walkthrough section, I will demonstrate on how you can use terraform on linux to deploy in Azure.

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# Go to your home directory as your working directory
cd ~

# Download the Terraform
curl -sSO https://releases.hashicorp.com/terraform/0.12.19/terraform_0.12.19_linux_amd64.zip

# Unzip the downloaded compressed file
unzip terraform_0.12.19_linux_amd64.zip

# Move the terraform file to Terraform directory
mv ~/terraform /usr/local/bin/terraform

Once you have moved the terraform file to /usr/local/bin directory, test if you execute terraform by checking its version.

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# Check the version
terraform -version

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Windows

In this walkthrough section, I will demonstrate on how you can use terraform on Windows to deploy in Azure.

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# Download the Terraform
Invoke-WebRequest `
  -Uri "https://releases.hashicorp.com/terraform/0.12.19/terraform_0.12.19_windows_amd64.zip" `
  -UseBasicParsing `
  -OutFile "~\Downloads\terraform_0.12.19_windows_amd64.zip" ;

# Unzip the downloaded compressed file
Expand-Archive `
  -Path "~\Downloads\terraform_0.12.19_windows_amd64.zip" `
  -DestinationPath "~\Downloads" ;

# Make a Terraform directory
New-Item `
  -Path "$env:ProgramFiles\Terraform" `
  -ItemType "directory" ;

# Move the terraform file to Terraform directory
Move-Item `
  -Path "~\Downloads\terraform.exe" `
  -Destination "$env:ProgramFiles\Terraform\terraform.exe" ;

# Add to environment path
$env:Path += ";$env:ProgramFiles\Terraform"

Once you add it to the environment path, test if you execute terraform.exe and checks its version.

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# Check the version
terraform.exe -version

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Example - Creating resource group using Terraform

After obtaining terraform, let us try to create a resource group using terraform as an example.

Note:

Depending on whether if you are using AzCLI or PowerShell, you will need to authenticate to Azure.

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# Login to Azure using AzCLI
az login

or

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# Login to Azure using PowerShell
Connect-AzAccount

Once you have authenticated, proceed with the steps below with your preferred console or terminal.

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# Create a folder name for the terraform example
mkdir -p ~/Terraform/example1

Firstly, define the provider in the main.tf file.

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echo \
'# Configure the Azure provider
provider "azurerm" {
  version = "~>1.5"
}' > ~/Terraform/example1/main.tf

Secondly, define the resource in the resource.tf file.

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echo \
'# Create a new resource group
resource "azurerm_resource_group" "rg" {
  name     = "terraform-resource-group"
  location = "southeastasia"
  tags      = {
    Environment    = "Development"
    DeploymentType = "Terraform"
  }
}' > ~/Terraform/example1/resource.tf

Once you have defined the configuration in main.tf and resource.tf files, execute teeraform with init argument to initialize the working directory.

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# Initialize a working directory containing Terraform configuration files
terraform init \
  ~/Terraform/example1

Next, use the plan argument with the -out parameter to generate the execution plan file from the working directory.

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# Create an execution plan
terraform plan \
  -out ~/Terraform/example1/out.plan \
  ~/Terraform/example1

Finally, use the apply argument with the execution plan file to apply changes in Azure.

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# Apply the changes
terraform apply \
  -state ~/Terraform/example1/terraform.tfstate \
  ~/Terraform/example1/out.plan

Now, go to your Azure and check if the resource group has been created.

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References

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