Building a Server Configuration Automation Process Using Terraform

KakaoBank operates both cloud and on-premises environments simultaneously, and adopted an automation approach using Terraform to reduce the repetitive manual work involved in server creation.

Previously, infrastructure was provisioned with Terraform, and then software installation and configuration were performed via Ansible. However, additional setup work was required to register the created VM resources with automation tools like AWX and to automatically register them with monitoring tools such as Prometheus.

To address this, a 3-stage automation process was built as follows.

• Automating the creation of key resources (servers, firewalls, etc.) via the Terraform Provider
• Automatically linking the created resources with automation solutions like AWX
• Configuring the monitoring solution to automatically recognize new resources

Terraform uses a declarative language approach, managing the final state as code and maintaining idempotency. It also stores the infrastructure's state information in a Backend, enabling tracking of resource creation, deletion, and modification, and allowing for automated responses.