Deploying Code and Managing configuration with Terraform

Question

I am using Terraform to bring up new separate environments with ec2 machines, elb etc. and then maintaining configuration as well. Doing that with terraform and using AWS provider sounds fairly simple.

While launching those instances I want to install few packages etc. so that when Terraform launches the instances (servers) things/ apps should be up and running. And how do I deploy new code on the servers in this environment launched by Terraform? Should I use for eg. ansible playbooks/chef recipes/puppet manifests for that? or Terraform gives some other options/ways?

Answer 1

Try one of these for your first problem

1. Create an AMI of your instance with the installed packages and specify that in the resource.
2. Use the user data script to install the packages that you need when the instance starts.
3. Use ansible playbooks/chef recipes/puppet to install packages once the instance is running (e.g. creating an opsworks stack with terraform)

For the second problem

Not the intended use case for terraform, use other tools like jenkins or aws services like codepipeline or codedeploy. Ansible/chef/puppet can also help (e.g. with opsworks)