HUG Lagos/Ibadan Terraform Challenge — Project 1

Deploy a basic Nginx web server on AWS using Terraform, fully provisioned from scratch with Infrastructure as Code with no manual console clicks required.

Live server here: http://13.48.3.121/

Overview

This project provisions a complete, minimal AWS network stack and launches a single EC2 instance running Nginx, which serves a static HTML page on boot via a user_data script.

What gets created:

• A custom VPC

• A public subnet

• An Internet Gateway

• A route table (routing 0.0.0.0/0 → IGW) with a subnet association

• A security group allowing inbound SSH (22) and HTTP (80)

• An SSH key pair (generated by Terraform)

• An EC2 instance in the public subnet, bootstrapped via user_data to install Nginx and serve a custom HTML page

  

Prerequisites

• Terraform >= 1.14.0
• An AWS account with programmatic access (Access Key ID + Secret Access Key)
• AWS CLI configured locally (aws configure), or the equivalent environment variables set:

  export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID="..."
  export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY="..."
  export AWS_DEFAULT_REGION="eu-north-1"

Project structure

.
├── backend.tf      # Terraform backend configuration (state storage)
├── ec2.tf          # Security group, key pair, EC2 instance, AMI data source
├── iam.tf          # IAM user, access key, and minimal policies
├── locals.tf       # Common tags and other local values
├── output.tf       # Outputs (public IP, private key, etc.)
├── provider.tf     # Provider configuration (aws, tls, random)
├── s3.tf           # S3 bucket resource(s)
├── user_data.sh    # Boot script: installs Nginx and serves the HTML page
├── variables.tf    # Input variables (region, project name, team, etc.)
├── version.tf      # Required Terraform and provider version constraints
├── vpc.tf          # VPC, subnet, IGW, route table, route table associations
└── README.md

Usage

1. Initialize Terraform (downloads the aws, tls, and random providers):

terraform init

2. Format and validate scripts

terraform fmt

terraform validate

2. Review the plan:

terraform plan

3. Apply:

terraform apply

Confirm with yes when prompted.

4. Retrieve your SSH key, accesss, secret key, the instance's public IP:

terraform output -raw private_key_pem > server-key.pem
chmod 400 server-key.pem
terraform output -raw instance_public_ip

5. SSH into the instance (optional — Nginx is already running via user_data, so this is only needed for debugging):

ssh -i server-key.pem ubuntu@$(terraform output -raw instance_public_ip)

6. View the web page: Open http://<instance_public_ip> in a browser. You should see a styled page displaying the project name and challenge details.

Variables

Name	Description	Default
region	AWS region to deploy into	eu-north-1
project	Project name, used in resource tags	Web-server-deployment
team	Team name, used in resource tags	Developer Team
environment	Environment tag	production
bucket_name	Name of bucket for terraform state	ogechukwu-web-server-bucket-hug2026

Outputs

Name	Description
private_key_pem	The generated SSH private key (sensitive)
instance_public_ip	Public IP address of the EC2 instance
access and secret key	Access and secret key

Notes

• ec2.tf loads the boot script from user_data.sh (via file()), rather than inlining the script directly — keep the two files in sync if you edit the HTML or install steps.
• user_data only runs on first boot. If you change the boot script after the instance already exists, you'll need to taint and recreate it for the change to take effect:

  terraform taint aws_instance.web
  terraform apply

• The security group currently allows SSH (22) from 0.0.0.0/0 for hackathon convenience. In a real deployment, restrict this to your own IP.
• terraform.tfstate contains sensitive values (including the private key) in plaintext and should never be committed to version control — it's already excluded via .gitignore.

Cleanup

To avoid ongoing AWS charges once you're done:

terraform destroy

This removes every resource created above.

Configured by

Ogechukwu Okoli Linkedin Email