📌 TL;DR
A step-by-step guide on how I used Terraform to provision an EC2 instance on AWS with full monitoring, VPC networking, IAM roles, and CloudWatch logs — all as part of my learning journey as a junior cloud engineer.
👋 Introduction
🟢 Why I chose Terraform + AWS
🟢 My goal: Learn Infrastructure as Code by building, not just reading
🟢 This project: EC2 + VPC + Monitoring + Logging using Terraform
🧱 What I Built
✅ A custom VPC with public & private subnets
✅ A t2.micro EC2 instance with detailed monitoring
✅ A security group that allows SSH (port 22)
✅ CloudWatch integration with VPC Flow Logs
✅ IAM roles and policies to support secure logging
🔧 Tools & Requirements
Terraform >= 1.3.0
AWS CLI (aws configure)
An AWS account with appropriate permissions
Basic knowledge of networking (CIDR blocks, subnets)
📂 File Structure Overview
🔗 main.tf: Core infrastructure
🔗 variables.tf: Input variables
🔗 terraform.tfvars: Your custom deployment config
🔗 outputs.tf: Public IP, subnet IDs, etc.
🔗providers.tf: AWS provider setup
🔗.gitignore(Optional):Ignore Terraform-generated files
⚙️ Configuration
Example terraform.tfvars:
region = "us-east-1"
vpc_cidr = "10.0.0.0/16"
public_subnets = ["10.0.1.0/24"]
private_subnets = ["10.0.2.0/24"]
instance_type = "t2.micro"
ami_id = "ami 0abcdef1234567890"
key_name = "your-key-name"
🚀 Deploying with Terraform
Step 1: Initialize
terraform init
Step 2: Plan changes
terraform plan
Step 3: Apply the configuration
terraform apply
🧠 What I Learned
Terraform structure: Broke code into logical files
Security:Scoped IAM and used safe CIDR blocks
Logs: Learned to trace logs in CloudWatch
Debugging:Fixed syntax and reference issues using Terraform CLI
Dependencies:Understood depends_on and implicit graphs
✅ Terraform Outputs
After deployment, you get:
🌍 Public IP of the EC2 instance
📘 CloudWatch Log Group name
🌐 VPC ID and subnet info
🙌 Final Thoughts
This project helped me go from beginner to builder.
If you’re learning Terraform, I recommend:
Start with small, real projects like this
Focus on understanding IAM + monitoring + VPC basics
Always document what you build (even your mistakes!)
I’m a junior cloud engineer sharing my journey.
🔗 GitHub: https://github.com/Salma22C/SalmaMohamedKassem
🔗 LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/salma-mohamed-kassem
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