AWS DevOps Homelab Infrastructure with Terraform

This project automates the provisioning of my AWS homelab environment using Terraform and GitHub Actions. It covers core AWS resources like VPC, IAM roles, security groups, S3 buckets, and EC2 instances.

Currently, it’s tailored for personal use but can be adapted for other setups.

Background

I built this project as part of my homelab to sharpen my AWS DevOps skills using Terraform and GitHub Actions. Since I use A Cloud Guru's playground which limits sessions to 8 hours and deletes resources after expiry, this setup helps me quickly rebuild my entire infrastructure when needed.

Currently, this setup targets a single AWS account but is designed with modularity and environment segregation to enable multi-account expansion in the future.

What It Creates

• VPC with subnetting and routing
• IAM Roles and Policies scoped for different application components
• Security Groups for controlling network access
• S3 Buckets for storage and Terraform state backend
• EC2 Instances as virtual machines for various workloads
• Modular Terraform code for easier management and reuse

Repository Structure

aws-devops-homelab/
├── README.md
├── environments/
│   └── dev/
│       ├── iam/                  # IAM roles and policies for dev environment
│       ├── s3/                   # S3 buckets and backend configs
│       ├── security_groups/      # Security group configs
│       ├── vm/                   # Virtual machine (EC2) configs
│       └── vpc/                  # VPC and networking configs
└── modules/
    ├── ec2/                     # Reusable EC2 module
    ├── iam/                     # Reusable IAM roles/policies module
    ├── s3/                      # Reusable S3 bucket module
    ├── security_groups/         # Reusable security group module
    └── vpc/                     # Reusable VPC module

Automation with GitHub Actions Workflows

All Terraform provisioning steps in this project are fully automated via GitHub Actions workflows. The workflows are triggered on pushes to the main branch and run on a self-hosted GitHub runner. They orchestrate the deployment in stages, including:

• Initializing Terraform
• Planning changes and saving plan artifacts
• Applying the approved plan for each infrastructure component in sequence (VPC → Security Groups → IAM → VM)

This ensures consistent, repeatable, and auditable deployments without manual intervention, enabling true Infrastructure-as-Code CI/CD.

Usage (Local Terraform CLI)

If you prefer running Terraform manually for testing or development, you can:

1. Clone this repository:

   git clone https://github.com/yourusername/aws-devops-homelab.git
   cd aws-devops-homelab/environments/dev

2. Review and update variables in terraform.tfvars and other .tf files as needed.

3. Initialize Terraform:

   terraform init

4. Validate and apply the infrastructure:

   terraform plan
   terraform apply

Notes

• This repo currently targets a single AWS account deployment.
• The structure is modular and organized to support multi-account architectures with minimal changes.
• Backend configurations (backend.tf) use S3 and DynamoDB (where applicable) to securely manage Terraform state.
• Customize each environment under environments/ for dev, qa, prod, etc.
• Expand and reuse modules in modules/ for consistent resource creation.
• Ensure your AWS credentials are configured on your local machine or securely via GitHub Secrets when using workflows.

Future Plans

• Add Ansible for configuration management
• Investigate setting up monitoring with Grafana and Prometheus
• Plan to expand to hybrid cloud environments
• Support additional AWS services like RDS and Lambda

Contribution

Contributions are welcome! Feel free to open issues or submit pull requests to improve modules, add new environments, or enhance documentation.

Acknowledgments

This README file was generated with the assistance of AI tools to help streamline the documentation process.