5. Resources

Resources are the most important element in Terraform, and represent all the pieces of infrastructure you are managing within Terraform. Every resource is declared in the format:

Syntax

resource "resource_type" "resource_instance" {
    # ... configuration options ...
}

resource_type comes from your provider, e.g. akamai_property, and can (and likely will) be reused many times. However, resource_instance is the name or label you use for the instance of your resource type and as such must be unique. For example, a pair of property resources might look like this:

resource "akamai_property" "my-property" {
    name        = "my-property"
    product_id  = "prd_product"
    contract_id = "ctr_C-0N7RAC7"
    group_id    = "grp_12345"
    rule_format = "v2023-01-05"
}
 
resource "akamai_property" "my-other-property" {
    name        = "my-other-property"
    product_id  = "prd_product"
    contract_id = "ctr_C-0N7RAC7"
    group_id    = "grp_12345"
    rule_format = "v2023-01-05"
}

Your terraform files will likely be largely made up of resources, which can be often different types but it is common to have multiple instances of the same type.

Referencing Resources

When you create a resource in terraform it is common to need to reference some aspect of that resource. This is done in the following format:

<resource type>.<resource instance>.<instance attribute>

For example, if you were configuring a property resource and wanted to refer to the name of an edgehostname you had created above, you could do it like this:

main.tf

resource "akamai_edge_hostname" "ehn" {
  product_id    = "prd_Fresca"
  contract_id   = data.akamai_contract.contract.id
  group_id      = data.akamai_group.group.id
  ip_behavior   = "IPV4"
  edge_hostname = "www.example.com.edgesuite.net"
}
 
resource "akamai_property" "property" {
  name        = "property"
  # ... other configuration ...
  hostnames {
    cname_from             = "www.example.com"
    cname_to               = akamai_edge_hostname.ehn.edge_hostname
    cert_provisioning_type = "CPS_MANAGED"
  }
}

Here, we reference our instance of the akamai_edge_hostname resource type whose label is ehn. Then from that object we use the edge_hostname attribute, and as such the whole reference becomes akamai_edge_hostname.ehn.edge_hostname

Exercises

Exercise #1

New File

Create a terraform file named security.tf with an akamai_appsec_configuration resource and an akamai_appsec_security_policy resource

Configure

Configure the akamai_appsec_security_policy resource to get its config_id from the data.akamai_appsec_configuration.

Apply

Run a terraform apply

Reconfigure

Duplicate the policy resouce and make the necessary modifications to create a new policy.

Apply

Run another terraform apply

Destroy

Run a terraform destroy. What happens?

Re-Apply

Re-apply your terraform code to recreate your resources as we may need them later on.

Commit

Commit your changes and push them to GitHub.

Exercise #2

New File

Create a terraform file named property.tf with the following resources:

CP Code: use the resource akamai_cp_code to create a new CP code with the name, contract_id, group_id, product_id arguments
Edge Hostname: use the resource akamai_edge_hostname to create a new Edge Hostname using the required arguments according to the Akamai provider documentation.
Property: use the resource akamai_property to create a new property using the required arguments according to the Akamai provider documentation.

Configure

Observe you'll need to configure hostnames, rules and rule_format for the akamai_property too.

ℹ️

Hint: check the data.akamai_property_rules_builder data source in Techdocs.

Apply

Run another terraform apply

Commit

Commit your changes and push them to GitHub.

Data Sources Outputs