From Zero to Continuous Delivery: Automating AWS EC2 and Infrastructure with Terraform

Description and use

Automating AWS EC2 with Terraform: from manual management to continuous delivery, covering VPC, SG, and CI/CD integration.

Problem

Manual AWS infrastructure management leads to drift, bottlenecks, and deployment anxiety as teams scale.

Outcome

Infrastructure is fully automated, version‑controlled, and secure, reducing manual errors and speeding provisioning from days to minutes.

Workflow

• Define Terraform provider and backend with S3 state and DynamoDB locking
• Create VPC, public subnet, and internet gateway
• Define security group with HTTP and SSH rules
• Provision EC2 instance with user data bootstrap
• Integrate Terraform with CI/CD pipeline for plan, apply, and review
• Run tfsec for security scanning
• Apply changes via automated pipeline
• Validate infrastructure matches desired state

Evidence

Terraform has become the industry standard for this exact workflow because of its provider-driven architecture and robust state management.

Source

Every infrastructure change goes through pull requests, automated linting, security scanning via tools like tfsec, and peer reviews before it ever touches a live environment.

Source