Getting started with Terraform CLI (OSS) and Terraform Cloud

This article will help you to setup Terraform CLI (OSS) and Terraform Cloud.

Getting started with Terraform Cloud

1. Create free Terraform Cloud account: Terraform | HashiCorp Cloud Platform
2. Setup Terraform CLI: Install Terraform | Terraform | HashiCorp Developer
3. Download Terraform’s Hello World (it’s called getting-started example) terraform template from github: GitHub - hashicorp/tfc-getting-started: An example Terraform configuration for Terraform Cloud
4. Run setup.sh script & enjoy the show!
5. If you ready to take your skills to the next level, refer What’s next? section.

Setup Terraform CLI

Note: I have shown 3 ways / 3 platforms for installing Terraform CLI.

1. Install Terraform on Windows 10 / 11
2. Install Terraform on Linux Ubuntu or WSL Ubuntu
3. Install terraform on AWS Cloud9 IDE

Install Terraform on Windows 10 / 11

Pre-requisite: Ensure that you have installed GIT Bash, since as part of Terraform’s Hello World example, we will have to run shell script on Windows.

• Download terraform CLI for Windows
  • https://developer.hashicorp.com/terraform/downloads -> OS -> Windows -> Binary download for Windows -> Downloaded AMD64, since I am using 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor
  • Run below command to check if you are using 32 or 64 bit Windows:

    wmic os get osarchitecture
    

• Unzip terraform_1.4.2_windows_amd64.zip to any folder and place terraform.exe in terraform folder, in my case I am using C:\terraform:

    mkdir "C:\terraform"
  

• Open terminal and set Environment variable Path:

    setx PATH "%PATH%;C:\terraform"
  

• Terraform cli setup is complete, now test terraform cli:

    terraform -v
  

Setup Terraform cloud using Terraform cli

Note: Use the Terraform account that you created as part of #1 in above Getting started section.

• Run below login command and perform steps 1, 2:

  terraform login
  

  1. Enter yes & then enter your Terraform cloud credentials in the default browser which was auto-opened for you
  2. On successful login, it generates token when you click on ‘Create API token’ popup. Remember to copy and paste token to terminal & to your notes / scratch pad. We should now be successfully connected to Terraform Cloud! (see below screenshot): Screenshot: Successfull Terraform Cloud login

  Tip: Terraform will store the token in plain text for use by subsequent commands: C:\Users\abhi\AppData\Roaming\terraform.d\credentials.tfrc.json

• From here on, we will follow steps provided by Terraform (these are shown at the bottom in the above screenshot):

  • git clone https://github.com/hashicorp/tfc-getting-started.git
    

  • Navigate to folder containing project:

    cd tfc-getting-started
    

  • Open up this folder having Terraform config in VS code (or any of your favourite IDE) to view TF files

    Tip: Ensure you have installed VS Code’s Terraform extension by Hashicorp for support for .tf files

  • Now we need to execute shell script (.sh) on Windows. This is why we have been Git Bash terminal.

    Note: Before you run shell file from Git bash, we need jq installed: curl -L -o /C/terraform/jq.exe https://github.com/stedolan/jq/releases/latest/download/jq-win64.exe

    Run the setup script and follow the prompts to finish setup and perform your first Terraform Cloud run!

    ./scripts/setup.sh
    

    • It will create Terraform Cloud Organization, Workspace and finally infrastructure. You can view all of this in your Terraform Cloud account (screenshot below): Screenshot: Successfull Terraform Cloud run

Install Terraform on Linux Ubuntu or WSL Ubuntu

Note: You can perform the exact below steps on WSL Ubuntu for Windows

• Download terraform CLI using Linux -> Ubuntu/Debian instructions: Install Terraform | Terraform | HashiCorp Developer

• Ensure that your system is up to date, and you have the gnupg, software-properties-common, and curl packages installed. You will use these packages to verify HashiCorp’s GPG signature, and install HashiCorp’s Debian package repository:

  sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y gnupg software-properties-common
  

• Install the HashiCorp GPG key:

  wget -O- https://apt.releases.hashicorp.com/gpg | \
            gpg --dearmor | \
            sudo tee /usr/share/keyrings/hashicorp-archive-keyring.gpg
  

• Verify the key’s fingerprint:

  gpg --no-default-keyring \
            --keyring /usr/share/keyrings/hashicorp-archive-keyring.gpg \
    --fingerprint
  

• Add the official HashiCorp repository to your system. The lsb_release -cs command finds the distribution release codename for your current system, such as buster, groovy, or sid:

  echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/hashicorp-archive-keyring.gpg] \
            https://apt.releases.hashicorp.com $(lsb_release -cs) main" | \
            sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hashicorp.list
  

• Download the package information from HashiCorp:

  sudo apt update
  

• Install Terraform from the new repository:

  sudo apt-get install terraform
  

• Terraform cli setup is complete, now test terraform cli:

    terraform -v
  

Setup Terraform cloud using Terraform cli

Note: Use the Terraform account that you created as part of #1 in above Getting started section.

• Run below login command and perform steps 1, 2:

  terraform login
  

  1. Enter yes & then enter your Terraform cloud credentials in the default browser which was auto-opened for you
  2. On successful login, it generates token when you click on ‘Create API token’ popup. Remember to copy and paste token to terminal & to your notes / scratch pad. We should now be successfully connected to Terraform Cloud! (see below screenshot): Screenshot: Successfull Terraform Cloud login

  Tip: Terraform will store the token in plain text for use by subsequent commands: /home/abhi/.terraform.d/credentials.tfrc.json

• From here on, we will follow steps provided by Terraform (these are shown at the bottom in the above screenshot):

  • git clone https://github.com/hashicorp/tfc-getting-started.git
    

  • Navigate to folder containing project:

    cd tfc-getting-started
    

  • Open up this folder having Terraform config in VS code (or any of your favourite IDE) to view TF files

    Tip: Ensure you have installed VS Code’s Terraform extension by Hashicorp for support for .tf files

    Note: Before you run shell file, we need jq installed: sudo apt install jq

    Run the setup script and follow the prompts to finish setup and perform your first Terraform Cloud run!

    ./scripts/setup.sh
    

    • It will create Terraform Cloud Organization, Workspace and finally infrastructure. You can view all of this in your Terraform Cloud account (screenshot below): Screenshot: Successfull Terraform Cloud run

Install terraform on AWS Cloud9 IDE

Note: AWS Cloud9 IDE will incur you charges, ensure to clean-up / detroy Cloud9 environment once you are done with it.

• Create a cloud9 IDE from AWS console and you are ready to use terraform! No need to setup / install Terraform CLI, since it is already installed for us!
  • You get aws cli, git, terraform cli setup out of the box!
• When you create cloud9 IDE, all defaults were selected, with 2 key points:
  • Connection = AWS Systems Manager (SSM)
  • Platform = Amazon Linux 2
  • 
  • 
• Once Cloud9 IDE is created, launch it & fire away git, terraform commands!
  • terraform login
  • git clone https://github.com/hashicorp/tfc-getting-started.git

  • cd tfc-getting-started && ./scripts/setup.sh

    > Note: If you get jq error when running setup.sh, then install jq in Cloud9 IDE: "It looks like 'jq' is not installed; please install it and run this setup script again."
        sudo yum install jq  
        ./scripts/setup.sh
    

• Also, alternately you can upload your code to Cloud 9, make changes in Cloud9 IDE & download the code back, if you don’t want to do it git way.

• Cloud9 IDE is the easiest way to get started with Terraform Cloud! (see below screenshot): Screenshot: AWS Cloud9 Terraform Success

• Successful Terraform run from Cloud9 IDE (screenshot below): Screenshot: Successfull Terraform Cloud run

What’s next?

• Refer my hands-on lab article for provisioning AWS resources using Terraform Cloud!