Terraform Providers

What are the terraform providers ?

Terraform providers are plugins that allow Terraform to interact with and manage specific infrastructure resources.
Each provider is responsible for understanding the API of a particular service or platform, and translating Terraform's configuration files into API calls that can create, update, and delete resources.
Providers maintained by Hashicorp are marked as ‘official’ on the documentation pages.
Providers marked as ‘verified’ are owned by official third-party technology vendors. Vendors are also a member of the HashiCorp Technology Partner Program.
Providers can be downloaded from the internet or from a local source during the first step (terraform init) of using Terraform. Once they are downloaded, Terraform will not download them again unless you want to use a different version. They are stored in a special folder called ".terraform" and are used every time you use Terraform.
To find the latest version available, check out the Terraform docs page, or the GitHub page. GitHub will also give you a version history and details on issues raised by community members and stakeholders.

Provider Configuration

When you use Terraform, you need to tell it which cloud providers you want to use. This information is called the "provider configuration." You can put this information in any file that ends in .tf, but it's best to put it in a file called main.tf, providers.tf, or versions.tf. This way, all the other parts of your Terraform project can use the same provider information. And you have to make sure the provider configuration is in the main or root module of your Terraform project.

When you use the AWS provider in Terraform, you can add extra information to tell Terraform how to connect to your AWS account. This information is called the "provider block." You don't have to include this information, but it can help Terraform work better. Some of the things you can include in the provider block are your AWS login information, the region where you want to create resources, and an IAM role. These options are specific to AWS and are optional.

From the Terraform docs, there are a number of ways to authenticate using the AWS provider. Configuration for the AWS Provider can be derived from several sources, which are applied in the following order:

Parameters in the provider configuration
Environment variables
Shared credentials files
Shared configuration files
Container credentials
Instance profile credentials and region

We will show different ways to give information to Terraform, like using parameters or environment variables, when you set up the provider configuration. These are the most common methods people use.

However, before we can authenticate, we will need to create an access key for use with Terraform. Browse to the IAM section in the AWS console and ‘create new access key’.

Check How to create user in the AWS IAM Blog. (Click Here -->)

Note : A better way to give login information to Terraform when you use AWS is to use the AWS Command Line Interface (CLI) instead of the provider options. First, you have to install the AWS CLI on your computer. Then, you can type "aws configure" to set up your login information. This is the usual and recommended way to do it.

Check How to install AWs CLI. (Click Here -->) & configure it In Git Bash.

You can then enter your access key ID, secret access key, and default region.

Parameters in the provider configuration

To specify parameters in the provider configuration, we can set an access key and secret key as follows:

provider "aws" {
  region     = "us-west-2"
  access_key = "my-access-key"
  secret_key = "my-secret-key"
}

It's not safe to include sensitive information like login details directly in the Terraform configuration files and then upload them to a source control. If someone gets access to those files, they will also get access to your secret information. So, it's not recommended.

Best Pratices For AWS Provider :

terraform {
    version  = 0.13 
  required_providers {
    aws = {
      source = "hashicorp/aws"
      version = "4.47.0"
    }
  }
}

provider "aws" {
  region = "us-east-2"
  profile = "sivakrishna"
  
}

Key points about Version :

Liked This Article?

Conclusion:

You will learn in this blog what are providers, what it do & best pratices of providers.

Terraform Providers

What are the terraform providers ?

Provider Configuration

From the Terraform docs, there are a number of ways to authenticate using the AWS provider. Configuration for the AWS Provider can be derived from several sources, which are applied in the following order:

We will show different ways to give information to Terraform, like using parameters or environment variables, when you set up the provider configuration. These are the most common methods people use.

However, before we can authenticate, we will need to create an access key for use with Terraform. Browse to the IAM section in the AWS console and ‘create new access key’.

Check How to create user in the AWS IAM Blog. (Click Here -->)

Check How to install AWs CLI. (Click Here -->) & configure it In Git Bash.

You can then enter your access key ID, secret access key, and default region.

Parameters in the provider configuration

To specify parameters in the provider configuration, we can set an access key and secret key as follows:

It's not safe to include sensitive information like login details directly in the Terraform configuration files and then upload them to a source control. If someone gets access to those files, they will also get access to your secret information. So, it's not recommended.

Best Pratices For AWS Provider :

Key points about Version :

Liked This Article?

Conclusion:

You will learn in this blog what are providers, what it do & best pratices of providers.

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