🚀 Spinning Up 100 AWS EC2 Instances in Under a Minute with Terraform

Ever wondered how to launch 100 EC2 instances in under a minute, without clicking through the AWS Console like a maniac? That’s where Terraform and Infrastructure as Code (IaC) shine. Let’s break it down.

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🧰 Tools of the Trade

• AWS – Our cloud provider of choice

• EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) – Virtual machines in the cloud

• Terraform – IaC tool by HashiCorp for provisioning cloud infrastructure

• AWS CLI (optional) – For setup and credential configuration

• ⚙️ Step 1: Set Up Terraform for AWS

  Install Terraform and configure your AWS credentials locally (or use an IAM role if you're deploying from an EC2 instance or CI/CD pipeline).

    aws configure
  

  Make sure you’ve got the necessary permissions: ec2:RunInstances, ec2:DescribeInstances, etc.

• 🏗️ Step 2: Terraform Configuration – Create 100 Instances

  Here’s a simple Terraform file (main.tf) that will launch 100 EC2 instances using a count meta-argument:

    provider "aws" {
      region = "us-east-1"
    }
  
    resource "aws_instance" "bulk_launch" {
      count         = 100
      ami           = "ami-0c02fb55956c7d316"  # Amazon Linux 2 AMI (example)
      instance_type = "t2.micro"
  
      tags = {
        Name = "TerraformInstance-${count.index}"
      }
    }
  

  You can adjust the instance_type and ami ID based on your needs and limits.

  ⚠️ Note: Make sure your EC2 quota (vCPU, instances per region) allows launching 100 instances. You might need to request a service quota increase from AWS beforehand.

  🚀 Step 3: Initialize and Deploy

    terraform init
    terraform apply -auto-approve
  

  Terraform will provision 100 EC2 instances in parallel using its graph-based execution model, dramatically speeding up deployment.

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  💰 Cost Awareness

  Even t2.micro instances can add up. Keep an eye on your usage via AWS Cost Explorer or use budget alerts to stay safe.

• 🧼 Clean Up

  When you're done:

    terraform destroy -auto-approve