Lab 13: Terraform IaC¶

Field	Value
Tier	3 — Operations
Estimated Time	60 minutes
Prerequisites	Terraform, Docker
Auto-Grade	Yes

Scenario¶

Your infrastructure team has been provisioning resources manually through cloud consoles. There is no version control, no reproducibility, and no audit trail. Last quarter, someone accidentally deleted a production database because they clicked the wrong button in the AWS console. The VP of Engineering has mandated infrastructure-as-code for all new resources.

You are starting with a local exercise using Terraform's Docker provider. You need to create a reusable module that provisions a Docker network and three containers (web, API, database) with proper configuration. The infrastructure must be fully described in Terraform code, use variables for customization, output useful values, and manage state correctly.

Objectives¶

Initialize a Terraform project with the Docker provider
Create a module app-stack that provisions a Docker network + 3 containers
Use variables for image tags, container names, and network name
Define outputs for container IDs and network ID
Run terraform plan successfully with no errors
Run terraform apply to create all resources
Verify all three containers are running

Setup¶

./setup.sh

Creates a Terraform project skeleton at /tmp/lab-terraform/.

Hints¶

Hint 1: Docker provider

terraform {
  required_providers {
    docker = {
      source  = "kreuzwerker/docker"
      version = "~> 3.0"
    }
  }
}
provider "docker" {}

Hint 2: Module structure

Create `modules/app-stack/` with `main.tf`, `variables.tf`, and `outputs.tf`. Call it from the root module with `module "stack" { source = "./modules/app-stack" }`.

Hint 3: Docker network resource

resource "docker_network" "app" {
  name = var.network_name
}

Hint 4: Docker container resource

resource "docker_container" "web" {
  name  = var.web_name
  image = docker_image.nginx.image_id
  networks_advanced {
    name = docker_network.app.name
  }
}

Hint 5: State management

For this lab, local state is fine. The state file `terraform.tfstate` is created automatically. Never commit state files to git.

Grading¶

./grade.sh

Solution¶

See the solution/ directory for complete Terraform configuration.