Terraform Variables & Providers (Part-1)

Kamalesh D
4 min readJul 17, 2023

In this article, I’ll talk about how to use variables in Terraform & Creation of EC2 Instance with it.

Input Variables

Input variables let you customize aspects of Terraform modules without altering the module’s own source code. This functionality allows you to share modules across different Terraform configurations, making your module composable and reusable.

When you declare variables in the root module of your configuration, you can set their values using CLI options and environment variables. When you declare them in child modules, the calling module should pass values in the module block.

Providers

Each provider adds a set of resource types and/or data sources that Terraform can manage.

Every resource type is implemented by a provider; without providers, Terraform can’t manage any kind of infrastructure.

Most providers configure a specific infrastructure platform (either cloud or self-hosted). Providers can also offer local utilities for tasks like generating random numbers for unique resource names.

Terraform installation

  • Check out my old blog for terraform installation.

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Kamalesh D

DevOps and Cloud Enthusiast | Cyber Security | DevSecOps Engineer@FordMotors | https://dev.to/kamaleshseervi