Terraform Advanced — Importing Infrastructure Exercises

Practice importing existing resources.

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Exercise 1 — Import Block

Task: Write an import block to import an existing VPC with ID vpc-abc123 into aws_vpc.main.

Answer

import {
  to = aws_vpc.main
  id = "vpc-abc123"
}

resource "aws_vpc" "main" {
  cidr_block = "10.0.0.0/16"   # Must match actual
  tags       = { Name = "main-vpc" }
}

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Exercise 2 — Generate Config

Task: Write the commands to auto-generate config for an imported resource.

Answer

# imports.tf
import {
  to = aws_vpc.main
  id = "vpc-abc123"
}

$ terraform plan -generate-config-out=generated.tf
$ cat generated.tf   # Review the generated config
$ terraform apply     # Import into state

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Exercise 3 — Remove Without Destroy

Task: Remove aws_rds_cluster.legacy from Terraform without destroying the actual database.

Answer

# Terraform 1.7+
removed {
  from = aws_rds_cluster.legacy
  lifecycle {
    destroy = false
  }
}

# Or with CLI
$ terraform state rm aws_rds_cluster.legacy

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Chapter Summary

• terraform import CLI: one resource at a time, manual config writing
• import block: declarative, plan-able, supports for_each
• -generate-config-out: auto-generates HCL from actual resource state
• Bulk import: script + import blocks, or Terraformer
• removed block: removes from state without destroying the resource

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← The removed Block Chapter 7: Meta-Arguments →