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What is Gruntwork Library?

Gruntwork Library (formerly known as the "Gruntwork IaC Library") is a collection of reusable infrastructure-as-code modules that enables you to deploy and manage infrastructure quickly and reliably.

It promotes code reusability, modularity, and consistency in infrastructure deployments. Essentially, we’ve taken the thousands of hours we spent building infrastructure on AWS and condensed all that experience and code into pre-built packages you can deploy into your own infrastructure.

Two types of modules

Gruntwork Library contains two types of modules:

"Building block" modules

"Building block" modules (which we call simply modules) are "infrastructure building blocks" authored by Gruntwork and written in Terraform. They capture a singular best-practice pattern for specific pieces of infrastructure and are designed to be both limited in scope and highly reusable. They typically represent one part of a use case you want to accomplish. For example, the vpc-flow-logs module does not create a VPC, it only adds the VPC Flow Logs functionality to an existing VPC.

To learn more, refer to What is a module?

Service modules

Service modules are opinionated combinations of the "building block" modules described above. They are designed to be used "off the shelf" with no need to assemble a collection of “building block” modules on your own. They typically represent a full use case. For example, the vpc service module deploys a VPC, VPC Flow Logs, and Network ACLs. If you agree with the opinions embedded in a service module, they’re the fastest way to deploy production-grade infrastructure.

To learn more, refer to What is a service module?

Tools used in Library

OpenTofu Support

Gruntwork Library will support OpenTofu when it becomes available. To learn more, see the official OpenTofu website and project status.

Gruntwork Library has been created using the following tools:

  1. Terraform. The Library contains nearly 300 Terraform modules that cover a range of common use cases in AWS. All library modules can be used with vanilla TerraformTerragrunt, or third-party Terraform pipeline tools such as Terraform Cloud and Terraform Enterprise.

  2. Packer. The Library defines machine images (e.g., VM images) using Packer, where the main use case is building Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) that run on EC2 instances whose configuration is all defined in code. Once you’ve built an AMI, you can use Terraform to deploy it into AWS.

  3. Terratest. All modules are functionally validated with automated tests written using Terratest.