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Terraform Resource Meta-Argument count

Step-01: Introduction

  • Understand Resource Meta-Argument count
  • Also implement count and count index practically

Step-02: Create 5 EC2 Instances using Terraform

  • In general, 1 EC2 Instance Resource in Terraform equals to 1 EC2 Instance in Real AWS Cloud
  • 5 EC2 Instance Resources = 5 EC2 Instances in AWS Cloud
  • With Meta-Argument count this is going to become super simple.
  • Lets see how.
    # Create EC2 Instance
    resource "aws_instance" "web" {
      ami = "ami-047a51fa27710816e" # Amazon Linux
      instance_type = "t2.micro"
      count = 5
      tags = {
        "Name" = "web"
      }
    }
    
  • Execute Terraform Commands
    # Initialize Terraform
    terraform init
    
    # Terraform Validate
    terraform validate
    
    # Terraform Plan to Verify what it is going to create / update / destroy
    terraform plan
    
    # Terraform Apply to Create EC2 Instance
    terraform apply 
    
  • Verify EC2 Instances and its Name

Step-03: Understand about count index

  • If we currently see all our EC2 Instances has the same name web
  • Lets name them by using count index web-0, web-1, web-2, web-3, web-4
    # Create EC2 Instance
    resource "aws_instance" "web" {
      ami = "ami-047a51fa27710816e" # Amazon Linux
      instance_type = "t2.micro"
      count = 5
      tags = {
        #"Name" = "web"
        "Name" = "web-${count.index}"
      }
    }
    
  • Execute Terraform Commands
    # Terraform Validate
    terraform validate
    
    # Terraform Plan to Verify what it is going to create / update / destroy
    terraform plan
    
    # Terraform Apply to Create EC2 Instance
    terraform apply 
    
  • Verify EC2 Instances

Step-04: Destroy Terraform Resources

# Destroy Terraform Resources
terraform destroy

# Remove Terraform Files
rm -rf .terraform*
rm -rf terraform.tfstate*

References

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