🚀 Terraform Day 3: Creating My First AWS Resource with Terraform (S3 Bucket)

Source: Dev.to

“Infrastructure becomes real when code creates something in the cloud.”

Day 3 was the most exciting day so far in my Terraform journey. Until now, Terraform was just concepts, providers, and commands. Today, I built real cloud infrastructure using code — an AWS S3 bucket.

This was my first full Terraform workflow:

1. Write code
2. Initialize
3. Plan
4. Apply
5. Modify
6. Destroy

Seeing AWS respond to my code felt powerful.

🎯 Objective of Day 3

• ✅ Learn how to provision AWS resources using Terraform
• ✅ Practice Terraform command workflow
• ✅ Understand how Terraform tracks infrastructure
• ✅ Learn safe deployment and deletion
• ✅ Build confidence working with real cloud services

🛠️ Writing the Terraform Code

I started by creating a configuration file (main.tf).

Provider Configuration

provider "aws" {
  region = "us-east-1"
}

S3 Resource Configuration

resource "aws_s3_bucket" "demo" {
  bucket = "my-terraform-first-bucket-1234"

  tags = {
    Name = "Terraform S3 Bucket"
  }
}

⚠️ S3 bucket names must be globally unique.

⚙️ Terraform in Action

Terraform follows a simple but powerful workflow.

Step 1: Initialize

terraform init

Downloads providers and sets up your project.

Step 2: Plan

terraform plan

Shows what will change before anything breaks.

Step 3: Apply

terraform apply

Creates actual cloud resources. Terraform showed my S3 bucket in AWS — created in seconds ✅

🧩 Updating Infrastructure

I updated tags in the configuration and ran:

terraform plan
terraform apply

Terraform:

• ✅ Detected change
• ✅ Modified resource
• ✅ Updated state file

No recreation—only updates.

💣 Destroying Everything

terraform destroy

Terraform:

• ✅ Identified managed resources
• ✅ Deleted safely
• ✅ Left nothing behind

Clean infrastructure, zero cost risk.

🔐 AWS Authentication

Before running Terraform:

aws configure

Terraform uses credentials from:

• AWS CLI
• Environment variables
• IAM roles

No credentials = No cloud access.

🧠 Key Lessons from Day 3

• Terraform manages the full lifecycle.
• State tracks reality.
• plan prevents mistakes.
• Code controls the cloud.
• destroy is safe and simple.
• Documentation > autocomplete.

🏁 Conclusion

This day changed how I see infrastructure. Terraform didn’t just describe resources — it created them. And then it removed them just as cleanly.

Tomorrow: Even deeper into Terraform’s core 🚀