How do I create an SSH key in Terraform?

Question

I need to spin up few EC2 boxes for different users, each user should be sandboxed from all the others so each EC2 box needs its own SSH key.

What is the best way to accomplish these tasks in Terraform?

Answer 1

Terraform can generate SSL/SSH private keys using the "tls_private_key resource".

So if you want to generate SSH keys on the fly you  could do something like this:

variable "key_name" {}

resource "tls_private_key" "example" {

  algorithm = "RSA"

  rsa_bits  = 4096

}

resource "aws_key_pair" "generated_key" {

  key_name   = "${var.key_name}"

  public_key = "${tls_private_key.example.public_key_openssh}"

}

data "aws_ami" "ubuntu" {

  most_recent = true

  filter {

    name   = "name"

    values = ["ubuntu/images/hvm-ssd/ubuntu-trusty-14.04-amd64-server-*"]

  }

  filter {

    name   = "virtualization-type"

    values = ["hvm"]

  }

  owners = ["099720109477"] # Canonical

}

resource "aws_instance" "web" {

  ami           = "${data.aws_ami.ubuntu.id}"

  instance_type = "t2.micro"

  key_name      = "${aws_key_pair.generated_key.key_name}"

  tags {

    Name = "HelloWorld"

  }

}

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