Prepare your infrastructure-live repository

Terragrunt not required

This guide uses Terragrunt and its associated file and folder structure to deploy Terraform modules. Please note that Terragrunt is NOT required for using Terraform modules from the Gruntwork Infrastructure as Code Library. Check out our Introduction to Gruntwork for instructions on alternative options, such as deploying with plain Terraform.

Now we’re going to make some HCL files that store variables to be used across your modules. You won’t be able to fill everything out just yet. Your AWS account IDs will be generated after applying the account-baseline-root to the root account. At that point you can update these files. Create them now to have them ready to use.

For example, assuming us-east-1 is your default region, your directory structure would look like the following, with _global and <region> directories in each account directory:

infrastructure-live
  └ common.hcl
  └ accounts.json
  └ terragrunt.hcl
  └ dev
  └ logs
  └ stage
  └ security
  └ shared
  └ prod
    └ _global
      └ region.hcl
    └ us-east-1
      └ region.hcl

The Terraform modules in the Service Catalog do not define some blocks that are required for Terraform to operate (e.g., the provider and terraform state backend blocks). This is to allow the modules to be flexibly used in different contexts. We’ll define a root terragrunt.hcl that injects these these required blocks.

Create a terragrunt.hcl at the root of your infrastructure-live repo and insert the following contents. As you can see, it references common, account, and region HCL files which we’ll create shortly.

infrastructure-live/terragrunt.hcl

# -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
# TERRAGRUNT CONFIGURATION
# -----------------------------------------------------------------------------

locals {
  common_vars  = read_terragrunt_config("${get_terragrunt_dir()}/common.hcl")
  account_vars = read_terragrunt_config(find_in_parent_folders("account.hcl"))
  region_vars  = read_terragrunt_config(find_in_parent_folders("region.hcl"))

  name_prefix    = local.common_vars.locals.name_prefix
  account_name   = local.account_vars.locals.account_name
  account_id     = local.account_vars.locals.account_id
  default_region = local.common_vars.locals.default_region
  aws_region     = local.region_vars["aws_region"]
}

# -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
# GENERATED PROVIDER BLOCK
# -----------------------------------------------------------------------------

generate "provider" {
  path      = "provider.tf"
  if_exists = "overwrite_terragrunt"
  contents  = <<EOF
provider "aws" {
  region = "${local.aws_region}"
  version = ">= 3.13.0"
  # Only these AWS Account IDs may be operated on by this template
  allowed_account_ids = ["${local.account_id}"]
}
EOF
}

# -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
# GENERATED REMOTE STATE BLOCK
# -----------------------------------------------------------------------------

remote_state {
  backend = "s3"
  generate = {
    path      = "backend.tf"
    if_exists = "overwrite_terragrunt"
  }
  config = {
    encrypt        = true
    bucket         = "${local.name_prefix}-${local.account_name}-${local.aws_region}-terraform-state"
    key            = "${path_relative_to_include()}/terraform.tfstate"
    region         = local.default_region
    dynamodb_table = "terraform-locks"
  }
}

# -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
# GLOBAL PARAMETERS
# -----------------------------------------------------------------------------

inputs = {
  # Set commonly used inputs globally to keep child terragrunt.hcl files DRY
  aws_account_id = local.account_id
  aws_region     = local.aws_region
  name_prefix    = local.name_prefix
}

Also create a common.hcl file at the root of your infrastructure-live repo, with the following contents.

infrastructure-live/common.hcl

locals {
  # TODO: Enter a unique name prefix to set for all resources created in your accounts, e.g., your org name.
  name_prefix = ""
  # TODO: Enter the default AWS region, the same as where the terraform state S3 bucket is currently provisioned.
  default_region = ""

  # TODO: Fill these in after applying the account-baseline-root to the root account.
  config_s3_bucket_name      = ""
  cloudtrail_s3_bucket_name  = ""
  cloudtrail_kms_key_arn     = ""

  # TODO: An accounts map to conveniently store all account IDs.
  # Centrally define all the AWS account IDs. We use JSON so that it can be readily parsed outside of Terraform.
  accounts = jsondecode(file("accounts.json"))
}

This file references an accounts.json, which you should also create at the root of the repo. You will fill out the account IDs after applying the account-baseline-root to the root account.

infrastructure-live/accounts.json

{
  "dev": "",
  "logs": "",
  "prod": "",
  "security": "",
  "shared": "",
  "stage": ""
}

In each account folder (e.g., infrastructure-live/dev, infrastructure-live/shared, etc.), add a file named account.hcl with the following contents. Leave account_id blank until after the account-baseline-root has been applied to the root account.

locals {
  # TODO: Update with the actual information of each account
  # The user friendly name of the AWS account. Usually matches the folder name.
  account_name = ""
  # The 12 digit ID number of your AWS account.
  account_id = ""
}

Now in each infrastructure-live/<account_name>/_global/ folder, create a region.hcl file.

# Modules in the account _global folder don't live in any specific AWS region, but you still have to send the API calls
# to _some_ AWS region, so here we use the default region for those API calls.
locals {
  aws_region = read_terragrunt_config(find_in_parent_folders("common.hcl")).locals.default_region
}

Do the same in each region folder (e.g., infrastructure-live/dev/us-east-1/). This region.hcl file is a bit different.

locals {
# TODO: Enter the region to use for all resources in this subfolder.
  aws_region = ""
}