Terraform AWS Web Infrastructure Project

📌 Project Overview

This project provisions a simple, highly available AWS web infrastructure using Terraform. The goal is to demonstrate core AWS and Infrastructure-as-Code fundamentals, including networking, compute, load balancing, and basic security, in a clean and readable Terraform configuration.

This project is designed as a portfolio piece to showcase my understanding of AWS concepts and Terraform best practices at an entry–mid cloud engineer level.

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🏗️ Architecture Summary

At a high level, this Terraform project creates:

• A custom VPC with a /16 CIDR block
• Two public subnets across different Availability Zones
• An Internet Gateway and public route table
• Two EC2 instances running a web server
• An Application Load Balancer (ALB) to distribute traffic
• A target group and listener for HTTP traffic

Traffic flows from the internet → ALB → EC2 instances.

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🌐 Networking Design

Why a custom VPC?
A custom VPC provides full control over IP addressing, routing, and future expansion, rather than relying on AWS default networking.

CIDR choice (/16)
A /16 CIDR block allows for significant subnet expansion and demonstrates planning for scalability.

Multiple Availability Zones
Subnets are spread across two AZs to improve availability and fault tolerance.

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🔐 Security Considerations

Security Groups

• HTTP (port 80) is allowed from anywhere for public web access
• SSH (port 22) is allowed for administrative access

Notes on production readiness

• SSH access would normally be restricted to a specific IP range or replaced with SSM Session Manager
• HTTPS (TLS) would be added using ACM and an ALB HTTPS listener

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🖥️ Compute Layer (EC2)

Instance Type
t2.micro is used because it is eligible for the AWS Free Tier and suitable for lightweight demo workloads.

User Data Scripts
User data is used to automatically install and configure a web server on instance launch. This ensures:

• Consistent configuration
• No manual setup after deployment
• Faster recovery if instances are replaced

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⚖️ Load Balancing

An Application Load Balancer is used to:

• Distribute traffic evenly between EC2 instances
• Perform health checks
• Improve fault tolerance

If one EC2 instance becomes unhealthy, the ALB automatically stops routing traffic to it.

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📤 Outputs

The project outputs the Load Balancer DNS name, allowing easy access to the deployed web application without manually locating AWS resources.

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🧩 Terraform Design Choices

• Configuration is split across multiple files (provider.tf, variables.tf, main.tf) for clarity and maintainability
• Variables are used for CIDR blocks and configuration values to improve reusability
• The project could be further improved by introducing Terraform modules for networking and compute layers

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🚀 How to Deploy

terraform init
terraform plan
terraform apply

Command breakdown:

• terraform init initializes providers and backend configuration
• terraform plan previews infrastructure changes
• terraform apply provisions the resources

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🔄 Improvements & Next Steps

If this project were extended toward production, I would:

• Add Auto Scaling Groups instead of fixed EC2 instances
• Use private subnets for EC2 and public subnets only for the ALB
• Restrict SSH access or replace it with AWS SSM
• Add HTTPS using AWS Certificate Manager
• Introduce remote state storage (S3 + DynamoDB)
• Separate environments (dev / staging / prod)

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🧠 What This Project Demonstrates

• AWS networking fundamentals (VPC, subnets, routing)
• Load balancing and high availability basics
• Infrastructure as Code using Terraform
• Clean project structure and readability
• Awareness of production vs learning tradeoffs

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📎 Notes for Recruiters

This project was intentionally kept simple to emphasize clarity, correctness, and understanding over unnecessary complexity. Each design choice reflects core AWS best practices and provides a foundation for more advanced architectures.