Destroy an EC2 instance in Terraform?

Question

I'm creating an EC2 instance and loading it up with some "on start" scripts as well as installing desired software. This becomes the base image to be used when spinning up new instances.

Once created, I create an AMI. At this point, there is no need to keep the EC2 image used to create the AMI.

So, the sequence is:

Create EC2
Install packages
Configure packages
Create AMI
Destroy EC2

How do I tell Terraform to then delete the EC2 in the final step?

Have you taken a look at Hashicorp's Packer tool? It specializes in building AMIs for use in Terraform and could save you a few manual steps here. In the meantime though, you could issue a terraform destroy -target aws_instance.NAME command to destroy your instance. — Adil B
As mentioned, this is not a good use of Terraform which is better at managing a long lived lifecycle of a resource. Packer is a much better tool for creating AMIs or any other type of image that can then be deployed using Terraform. — ydaetskcoR

Adil B Adil B · Accepted Answer · 2019-01-22T19:52:10

Have you taken a look at Hashicorp's Packer tool? It specializes in building AMIs for use in Terraform and could save you a few manual steps here.

In the meantime though, you can issue a terraform destroy -target aws_instance.<NAME> (substitute your Terraformed EC2 instance's name) command to destroy your instance.

Destroy an EC2 instance in Terraform?

1 Answers