Infrastructure as Code (IAC) Cookbook

Using data sources, templates, and local execution

When we deploy or update an infrastructure with Terraform, it's sometimes enjoyable to have some local content dynamically generated. For example, if you want to provision with Ansible the new virtual machine launched by Terraform, chances are you'll need to populate a hosts file with the public IP address of this host locally on your laptop.

Ansible can use some dynamic inventories with AWS by itself, but we'll see here how to use a template in Terraform and dynamically fill in the required information so we end up with a working Ansible setup, thanks to Terraform.

Getting ready

To step through this recipe, you will need the following:

• A working Terraform installation
• An AWS account with an SSH key ...