Create infrastructure

You now have a Terraform Cloud workspace configured to use AWS credentials defined in a Terraform Cloud variable set. You can further configure your workspace using workspace-specific variables.

In this tutorial, you will customize your workspace by defining Terraform variables for your EC2 settings. You will then use Terraform Cloud to provision your EC2 instance.

Configure Terraform variables

Both workspace-specific variables and reusable variable sets support Terraform variables and environment variables. Terraform Cloud will define Terraform Variables as input variables in Terraform's configuration language. You can use them to customize the infrastructure that Terraform creates from your configuration.

Return to the Terraform Cloud UI and navigate to the Variables page for your learn-terraform-cloud workspace. Find the Workspace variables section to set two variables that Terraform will use to configure your instance. Then, click + Add variable.

First, define a Terraform variable by selecting the Terraform variable radio button. Set the key to instance_type and value to t2.micro.

Click Save variable.

Then, click + Add variable again. Create another Terraform variable with the key instance_name and the value Provisioned by Terraform. Click Save variable.

Your workspace is now configured with 2 workspace-specific input variables and uses the AWS Credentials variable set as configured in the previous tutorial.

Apply planned changes

Now that you have defined your configuration's input variables in your Terraform Cloud workspace, you can provision your infrastructure.

When using the CLI-driven workflow for Terraform Cloud, you can manage your infrastructure using the same familiar workflow as with Terraform Community Edition.

You already initialized your configuration in the previous tutorial to create your new workspace. Now, run terraform apply to create your EC2 instance.

$ terraform apply
Running apply in Terraform Cloud. Output will stream here. Pressing Ctrl-C
will cancel the remote apply if it's still pending. If the apply started it
will stop streaming the logs, but will not stop the apply running remotely.

Preparing the remote apply...

To view this run in a browser, visit:
https://app.terraform.io/app/hashicorp-training/learn-terraform-cloud/runs/run-dzy...

##...

Terraform will trigger your run in Terraform Cloud and stream the output to your terminal. Alternatively, you can follow and manage the run in the Terraform Cloud UI.

Navigate to the run URL that Terraform displays in your command output.

Terraform Cloud referenced your workspace's variables and variable sets to authenticate with the AWS provider and configure your EC2 instance's name and instance type.

Under the planned changes, Terraform displays the count and type of updates. Terraform will not modify your infrastructure until you confirm and apply the plan. This checkpoint gives you and your team an opportunity to review the planned changes before they happen. For the CLI-driven workflow, you can approve the run either in the UI, or in your Terminal.

Once the plan is complete, click the Confirm & Apply button, followed by the Confirm Plan button to apply the change.

After a few minutes, your apply should complete. Terraform Cloud will display a confirmation.

Now return to the workspace's Overview page. Under the details about your latest run, Terraform displays a table of the resources currently managed in the workspace.

It also shows the workspace's outputs in the Outputs tab for easy access.

In this tutorial, you created an AWS EC2 instance using Terraform Cloud. Verify that the infrastructure exists by visiting the AWS web console page for EC2 in the N. California/us-west-1 region, the region specified in the provider configuration.

Next Steps

In this tutorial, you configured your workspace with workspace-specific Terraform variables, and created an EC2 instance using Terraform Cloud. Read more about variables in Terraform Cloud in the documentation.

Now you are ready to modify your EC2 instance by updating your Terraform variables and changing your configuration files.