Infrastructure as Code with Terraform for Laravel

Why Infrastructure as Code?

Manual infrastructure setup is error-prone and undocumented. Infrastructure as Code makes infrastructure reproducible, version-controlled, and reviewable.

Basic Terraform Structure

# main.tf
terraform {
  required_providers {
    aws = {
      source  = "hashicorp/aws"
      version = "~> 5.0"
    }
  }
}

provider "aws" {
  region = var.aws_region
}

# variables.tf
variable "aws_region" {
  default = "us-east-1"
}

variable "environment" {
  default = "production"
}

EC2 Instance

resource "aws_instance" "web" {
  ami           = "ami-0c55b159cbfafe1f0"
  instance_type = "t3.medium"

  vpc_security_group_ids = [aws_security_group.web.id]
  key_name               = aws_key_pair.deployer.key_name

  root_block_device {
    volume_size = 50
    volume_type = "gp3"
  }

  tags = {
    Name        = "${var.environment}-web"
    Environment = var.environment
  }
}

RDS Database

resource "aws_db_instance" "mysql" {
  identifier        = "${var.environment}-mysql"
  engine            = "mysql"
  engine_version    = "8.0"
  instance_class    = "db.t3.medium"
  allocated_storage = 100

  db_name  = "laravel"
  username = var.db_username
  password = var.db_password

  vpc_security_group_ids = [aws_security_group.database.id]
  db_subnet_group_name   = aws_db_subnet_group.main.name

  backup_retention_period = 7
  multi_az               = true
  skip_final_snapshot    = false

  tags = {
    Environment = var.environment
  }
}

Applying Infrastructure

# Initialize Terraform
terraform init

# Preview changes
terraform plan

# Apply changes
terraform apply

# Destroy when needed
terraform destroy

State Management

# Backend for remote state
terraform {
  backend "s3" {
    bucket = "terraform-state-bucket"
    key    = "laravel/production/terraform.tfstate"
    region = "us-east-1"
    encrypt = true
    dynamodb_table = "terraform-locks"
  }
}

Conclusion

Terraform makes infrastructure reproducible and version-controlled. Start with basic resources, use modules for reusability, and store state remotely for team collaboration.