You’ve built your cloud infrastructure with Terraform—awesome! But now what? How do you know if your VMs are running smoothly? What if your databases are overloading or your Kubernetes cluster is on fire?
Infrastructure isn’t set it and forget it—you need real-time monitoring to catch issues before users notice.
Good news: Terraform can deploy and configure monitoring tools so you can track metrics, set up alerts, and visualize performance effortlessly!
In this post, we’ll cover:
- Why monitoring Terraform-managed infrastructure is crucial.
- How to set up monitoring in AWS, Azure, and GCP.
- Using Grafana, Prometheus, and other Terraform-powered monitoring tools.
- Setting up alerts so you know when things go wrong.
Let’s get your Terraform infrastructure under 24/7 surveillance!
1. Why Monitor Terraform-Provisioned Infrastructure?
Terraform is great at deploying infrastructure, but once resources are live, Terraform doesn’t manage their health.
Without monitoring, you risk:
- Unexpected downtime because you didn’t track resource failures.
- Over-provisioned resources leading to wasted cloud spend.
- Security vulnerabilities due to missing audit logs.
With monitoring, you can detect failures early, optimize performance, and reduce costs.
2. Deploying Cloud Monitoring with Terraform
Most cloud providers have built-in monitoring tools. Terraform can configure them automatically!
AWS: Terraform + CloudWatch for Logs & Metrics
AWS CloudWatch tracks logs, metrics, and alerts for your resources. Let’s configure Terraform to monitor an EC2 instance.
Step 1: Enable CloudWatch Monitoring for an EC2 Instance
resource "aws_instance" "web" {
ami = "ami-123456"
instance_type = "t2.micro"
monitoring = true # Enables detailed monitoring
}
Step 2: Create a CloudWatch Alarm for High CPU Usage
resource "aws_cloudwatch_metric_alarm" "high_cpu" {
alarm_name = "HighCPUAlarm"
comparison_operator = "GreaterThanThreshold"
threshold = 80
evaluation_periods = 2
metric_name = "CPUUtilization"
namespace = "AWS/EC2"
period = 60
statistic = "Average"
alarm_actions = ["arn:aws:sns:us-east-1:123456789012:alerts"]
}
Now, if CPU usage exceeds 80%, Terraform triggers an alarm!
Azure: Terraform + Azure Monitor
Azure Monitor collects logs and metrics for VMs, databases, and network traffic. Let’s set up Terraform to monitor an Azure VM.
Step 1: Enable Monitoring for an Azure VM
resource "azurerm_monitor_diagnostic_setting" "vm_monitor" {
name = "vm-monitor"
target_resource_id = azurerm_virtual_machine.example.id
log_analytics_workspace_id = azurerm_log_analytics_workspace.example.id
log {
category = "Administrative"
enabled = true
}
metric {
category = "AllMetrics"
enabled = true
}
}
Step 2: Set Up an Alert for High Memory Usage
resource "azurerm_monitor_metric_alert" "high_memory" {
name = "HighMemoryUsage"
resource_group_name = azurerm_resource_group.example.name
scopes = [azurerm_virtual_machine.example.id]
criteria {
metric_name = "Percentage CPU"
aggregation = "Average"
operator = "GreaterThan"
threshold = 85
}
}
Terraform now monitors Azure VMs and triggers alerts when memory usage is high!
GCP: Terraform + Stackdriver (Cloud Monitoring)
Google’s Cloud Monitoring (Stackdriver) collects logs and metrics across GCP services.
Step 1: Enable Cloud Monitoring for a GCP VM
resource "google_monitoring_dashboard" "vm_dashboard" {
dashboard_json = <<EOT
{
"displayName": "VM Monitoring",
"gridLayout": {
"widgets": [
{
"title": "CPU Usage",
"xyChart": {
"dataSets": [
{
"timeSeriesQuery": {
"timeSeriesFilter": {
"filter": "metric.type=\"compute.googleapis.com/instance/cpu/utilization\"",
"aggregation": { "alignmentPeriod": "60s" }
}
}
}
]
}
}
]
}
}
EOT
}
Terraform now sets up a GCP dashboard to track CPU utilization!
3. Visualizing Terraform Infrastructure with Grafana + Prometheus
Terraform can deploy monitoring dashboards with Grafana and Prometheus, giving you real-time insights into your cloud infrastructure.
Deploy Grafana with Terraform
resource "aws_instance" "grafana" {
ami = "ami-123456"
instance_type = "t2.micro"
security_groups = [aws_security_group.grafana.name]
user_data = <<-EOF
#!/bin/bash
sudo apt-get update -y
sudo apt-get install -y grafana
sudo systemctl start grafana-server
sudo systemctl enable grafana-server
EOF
}
Now, Grafana is deployed and ready to monitor Terraform resources!
4. Alerting: Get Notified When Things Go Wrong
What’s the point of monitoring if no one sees alerts? Terraform can send notifications to Slack, email, or PagerDuty when infrastructure fails.
Example: AWS CloudWatch Alarm Sending Alerts to Slack
resource "aws_sns_topic" "alerts" {
name = "cloudwatch-alerts"
}
resource "aws_sns_topic_subscription" "slack_alerts" {
topic_arn = aws_sns_topic.alerts.arn
protocol = "https"
endpoint = "https://hooks.slack.com/services/T00000000/B00000000/XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX"
}
Now, Terraform alerts go straight to Slack!
5. Common Monitoring Mistakes & Fixes
| Mistake | Fix |
|---|---|
| Not enabling detailed monitoring | Use Terraform to enable monitoring when deploying resources. |
| No alerting configured | Set up SNS, Slack, or PagerDuty notifications. |
| Manual setup of dashboards | Deploy Grafana dashboards with Terraform. |
Pro Tip: Always monitor cost usage—Terraform can also track cloud expenses!
Wrapping Up
Terraform doesn’t just provision infrastructure—it can also set up monitoring and alerting so your cloud stays healthy and secure.
Quick Recap:
- Use Terraform to configure AWS CloudWatch, Azure Monitor, and GCP Stackdriver.
- Deploy Grafana and Prometheus for real-time dashboards.
- Set up alerts for CPU, memory, and network spikes.
- Send notifications via Slack, email, or PagerDuty.
Now, go Terraform your monitoring stack and watch your infrastructure in action!
What’s Next?
Terraform has a vast ecosystem of tools that make infrastructure automation even better. In the next post, “Terraform Ecosystem Tools,” we’ll explore Terragrunt, Atlantis, OpenTofu, and other powerful Terraform extensions.