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Terraform Initial Setup

Create state bucket​

Docbox uses terraform to setup AWS infrastructure, to ensure your setup can be shared amongst team members and to prevent loss of terraform state, Docbox makes use of the "S3" backend which stores the terraform state in a S3 bucket that can be accessed by multiple users.

Create a S3 bucket in your AWS console or use the following commands with the AWS CLI

note

The commands below assume you are using the bucket name docbox-infra-bucket and the AWS region ap-southeast-2 adjust the commands accordingly to your specific setups

Create bucket​

aws s3api create-bucket --bucket docbox-infra-bucket --region ap-southeast-2

Block public access​

Block public access to the bucket to ensure your private infrastructure state and credentials are secret

aws s3api put-public-access-block --bucket docbox-infra-bucket --public-access-block-configuration "BlockPublicAcls=true,IgnorePublicAcls=true,BlockPublicPolicy=true,RestrictPublicBuckets=true"

Enable bucket versioning​

Terraform recommends enabling versioning on the bucket, this step is not required but is recommended

aws s3api put-bucket-versioning --bucket docbox-infra-bucket --versioning-configuration Status=Enabled

Enable bucket encryption​

Enable encryption on the bucket

aws s3api put-bucket-encryption --bucket docbox-infra-bucket --server-side-encryption-configuration '{"Rules":[{"ApplyServerSideEncryptionByDefault":{"SSEAlgorithm":"AES256"}}]}'

Setup Initial Terraform​

Download Infrastructure​

Download the terraform infrastructure as code from Docbox AWS Infra Repository the project contains the required infrastructure as code

Setup Infrastructure backend​

After creating the bucket create a s3.tfbackend file in the root folder of the docbox infrastructure project. Put the following content in this file:

bucket =  "docbox-infra-bucket" # The S3 bucket name
key    = "docbox.tfstate" 
region = "ap-southeast-2" # The AWS region you are using
# profile = "<YOUR AWS PROFILE>" # Optionally configure a specific AWS profile to use for creating infrastructure

Initialize Terraform​

After setting up the bucket and the s3.tfbackend file you can now initialize terraform using the backend:

terraform init -backend-config=s3.tfbackend

SSH Key​

The terraform setup depend on you having a SSH key for accessing the created resources. This is using during the initial setup and will also be the keys you use later to SSH into the systems.

  • ~/.ssh/docbox.pub (The public key)
  • ~/.ssh/docbox (The private key)

Theses keys can be named anything but keep them in an accessible place as you will need to set them as the following variables in a later step:

# SSH keys
ssh_public_key_path  = "~/.ssh/docbox.pub"
ssh_private_key_path = "~/.ssh/docbox"