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Terragrunt Stacks

Migrating from the terragrunt-infrastructure-live-example repository

If you have an existing repository that was started using the terragrunt-infrastructure-live-example repository as a starting point, follow the steps below to migrate your existing configurations to take advantage of the patterns available using Terragrunt Stacks.

Step 1: Assess your current infrastructure

Before you get started adjusting any of your existing configurations, it’s important to understand the current state of your infrastructure.

How much of it do you regularly update? Does any of it result in frustration or difficulty? Why?

Determine whether it’s a good time to be migrating your infrastructure to new patterns, and if so, how much of it you’re willing to migrate. If you are happy, and successful with your current patterns, you may not need to migrate any existing configuration, and that’s great! Consider this a best practice that you can adopt when you start to introduce new infrastructure, and that you may want to adjust your existing infrastructure configurations over time to take advantage of new patterns.

The advantages of using the new paradigm with Terragrunt Stacks are:

  • You can more easily manage your infrastructure at scale.
  • You can more easily manage your infrastructure in different environments.
  • You can more easily manage your infrastructure across multiple accounts and regions.
  • You can more easily manage your infrastructure across multiple teams and organizations.

We, at Gruntwork, generally consider this paradigm to be the best practice for managing Infrastructure as Code (IaC) at scale, which is why we’ve created this migration guide to help you transition to it.

If you get overwhelmed at any point, read the Support docs to learn how you can get help.

Step 2: Update your Terragrunt version

Now that you’ve determined that you want to migrate some or all of your infrastructure to new patterns, the next step is to ensure that you have a version of Terragrunt that supports the terragrunt.stack.hcl file.

You can do this by updating the version of Terragrunt you use to the latest available version. If you would like more information on how to update your Terragrunt version, see the Installation guide.

Step 3: Add .terragrunt-stack directories to your repository .gitignore file

Now that you’re adopting Terragrunt Stacks, you’ll want to add the .terragrunt-stack directories to your repository .gitignore file.

Terminal window
echo ".terragrunt-stack" >> .gitignore
git add .gitignore
git commit -m "Add .terragrunt-stack to .gitignore"

This will prevent you from accidentally committing .terragrunt-stack directories to your repository, which is good because you can always regenerate them on demand using the terragrunt stack generate command.

All other terragrunt stack commands also automatically generate the .terragrunt-stack directory on demand, so you can safely ignore it.

Step 4: Re-define existing infrastructure using terragrunt.stack.hcl files

The infrastructure that you already have can be re-defined using terragrunt.stack.hcl files, reducing the amount of code that you need to maintain in your repository.

To do this, you’ll need to:

  1. Create an infrastructure-catalog repository if you don’t already have one to store your infrastructure configurations.

  2. Define the units that you want to reproduce from your infrastructure-catalog repository in your infrastructure-live repository via terragrunt.stack.hcl files.

  3. Find a collection of units that you want to abstract into a stack, and define a terragrunt.stack.hcl file for them.

    For example, say you have a collection of units like this, that you want to abstract into a stack:

    • Directorynon-prod
      • Directoryus-east-1
        • Directorystateful-ec2-asg-service
          • Directoryservice
            • terragrunt.hcl
          • Directorydb
            • terragrunt.hcl
          • Directorysgs
            • Directoryasg
              • terragrunt.hcl

    This collection of units can be abstracted into a single stack by creating a terragrunt.stack.hcl file in the stateful-ec2-asg-service directory that references each unit configuration, as defined in your infrastructure-catalog repository (in this example, the infrastructure-catalog repository is hosted at git@github.com:acme/infrastructure-catalog.git):

     ## non-prod/us-east-1/stateful-ec2-asg-service/terragrunt.stack.hcl
    

    unit "service" {
      source = "git::git@github.com:acme/infrastructure-catalog.git//units/ec2-asg-stateful-service"
      path   = "service"
    

      no_dot_terragrunt_stack = true
    

      ## Add any additional configuration for the service unit here
    }
    

    unit "db" {
      source = "git::git@github.com:acme/infrastructure-catalog.git//units/mysql"
      path   = "db"
    

      no_dot_terragrunt_stack = true
    

      ## Add any additional configuration for the db unit here
    }
    

    unit "asg-sg" {
      source = "git::git@github.com:acme/infrastructure-catalog.git//units/security-group"
      path   = "sgs/asg"
    

      no_dot_terragrunt_stack = true
    

      ## Add any additional configuration for the asg-sg unit here
    }

    Note the use of the no_dot_terragrunt_stack attribute. This is used to prevent Terragrunt from automatically generating the units into a .terragrunt-stack directory. This is important, because you are probably using path_relative_to_include() in the key attribute of the remote_state block of the root root.hcl file, which is included in every unit. By specifying no_dot_terragrunt_stack = true, the generated units will be generated into the same directory as they were before, and the path_relative_to_include() function will resolve to the same path as before. Migrating to a terragrunt.stack.hcl file in this way allows you to migrate your infrastructure to the new patterns outlined here at your own pace, and to migrate state between the old and new patterns if you want to.

    Now, you can remove the existing unit configurations, and regenerate them on demand using the terragrunt stack generate command.

    Terminal window
    cd non-prod/us-east-1/stateful-ec2-asg-service
    rm -rf service db sgs

    If you have identical unit configurations after performing the following, you can remove the unit configurations again, add them to a .gitignore file, and commit the new terragrunt.stack.hcl file.

    Terminal window
    terragrunt stack generate
    • Directorynon-prod
      • Directoryus-east-1
        • Directorystateful-ec2-asg-service
          • terragrunt.stack.hcl
          • Directoryservice
            • terragrunt.hcl < This should be identical to the unit configuration before
          • Directorydb
            • terragrunt.hcl < This should be identical to the unit configuration before
          • Directorysgs
            • Directoryasg
              • terragrunt.hcl < This should be identical to the unit configuration before

    Now that you’ve confirmed generation is working, you can remove the unit configurations again, add them to a .gitignore file, and commit the new terragrunt.stack.hcl file.

    Terminal window
    rm -rf service db sgs
    git add terragrunt.stack.hcl service db sgs
    git commit -m "Remove unit configurations and add terragrunt.stack.hcl"
    echo "service" >> .gitignore
    echo "db" >> .gitignore
    echo "sgs" >> .gitignore
    git add .gitignore
    git commit -m "Add unit configurations to .gitignore"

    Your repository should now look like this:

    • Directorynon-prod
      • Directoryus-east-1
        • Directorystateful-ec2-asg-service
          • .gitignore
          • terragrunt.stack.hcl

    You can repeat this process as much as you want, abstracting more and more of your infrastructure into Terragrunt Stacks.

Step 5: Remove reliance on the _envcommon directory

The _envcommon directory is no longer needed to create “Don’t Repeat Yourself” (DRY) configurations with Terragrunt, and is no longer recommended as a best practice.

If you would like to remove usage of the _envcommon directory, you can do so by replacing usage of the include block referencing the _envcommon directory with content directly committed to terragrunt.hcl files.

For example, say you have a terragrunt.hcl file that looks like this:

## non-prod/us-east-1/mysql/terragrunt.hcl


include "root" {
  path = find_in_parent_folders("root.hcl")
}


include "envcommon" {
  path = "${dirname(find_in_parent_folders("root.hcl"))}/_envcommon/mysql.hcl"
  expose = true
}


terraform {
  source = "${include.envcommon.locals.base_source_url}?ref=v0.8.0"
}


inputs = {
  instance_class    = "db.t2.medium"
  allocated_storage = 100
}

and an _envcommon/mysql.hcl file that looks like this:

## _envcommon/mysql.hcl


locals {
  environment_vars = read_terragrunt_config(find_in_parent_folders("env.hcl"))


  env = local.environment_vars.locals.environment


  base_source_url = "git::git@github.com:acme/infrastructure-catalog.git//modules/mysql"
}


inputs = {
  name              = "mysql_${local.env}"
  instance_class    = "db.t2.micro"
  allocated_storage = 20
  storage_type      = "standard"
  master_username   = "admin"
}

This pattern was previously used to create “Don’t Repeat Yourself” (DRY) configurations with Terragrunt. However, this pattern is no longer recommended as a best practice, and is no longer needed to create DRY configurations with Terragrunt.

Instead, you can create a terragrunt.hcl file in your infrastructure-catalog repository that looks like this:

## units/mysql/terragrunt.hcl


include "root" {
  path = find_in_parent_folders("root.hcl")
}


terraform {
  source = "git::git@github.com:acme/infrastructure-catalog.git//modules/mysql?ref=${values.version}"
}


inputs = {
  ## Required inputs
  name              = values.name
  instance_class    = values.instance_class
  allocated_storage = values.allocated_storage
  storage_type      = values.storage_type
  master_username   = values.master_username
  master_password   = values.master_password


  ## Optional inputs
  skip_final_snapshot = try(values.skip_final_snapshot, null)
  engine_version      = try(values.engine_version, null)
}

Then reference that terragrunt.hcl file in your terragrunt.stack.hcl files, like so:

## non-prod/us-east-1/terragrunt.stack.hcl


unit "mysql" {
  source = "git::git@github.com:acme/infrastructure-catalog.git//units/mysql"
  path   = "mysql"


  ## As discussed above, this prevents Terragrunt from automatically generating the units into a `.terragrunt-stack` directory.
  no_dot_terragrunt_stack = true


  values = {
    version = "v0.8.0"
    name = "mysql_dev"
    instance_class = "db.t2.micro"
    allocated_storage = 20
    storage_type = "standard"
    master_username = "admin"
  }
}

Now, all your unit configurations can be found directly in the terragrunt.hcl file in the infrastructure-catalog repository, without having to bounce around between different included or referenced files, and you have an explicit interface for the values that can be set externally, via the values attribute.

Different environments can pin different versions of the unit, and that allows for easy atomic updates (and rollbacks) of both OpenTofu/Terraform module versions and Terragrunt unit configurations if needed.

Step 6: Update your CI/CD pipeline

Chances are, if you’re currently performing Terragrunt updates via a CI/CD pipeline (and you aren’t using Gruntwork Pipelines), your CI/CD pipeline doesn’t yet have integration with Terragrunt Stacks.

There are a few options for how to proceed here.

  1. You can simply commit the generated .terragrunt-stack directories to your repository.

    This is the easiest option when managing CI/CD yourself, but it also means that you won’t gain some of the benefits that come from using Terragrunt Stacks. When getting started, however, this is a good way to avoid the additional technical debt that comes from having to update your CI/CD pipeline to support Terragrunt Stacks, while learning how to use terragrunt.stack.hcl files, and reorganizing your infrastructure configurations.

    To do this, remove the .terragrunt-stack entry from your .gitignore file, and commit the changes to your repository. You can then manually run the terragrunt stack generate command to generate the .terragrunt-stack directories on demand, and commit them to your repository, allowing your CI/CD pipeline to completely ignore the fact that you’re using Terragrunt Stacks. The units generated by the terragrunt stack generate command are completely compatible with units that you can author manually, so you don’t have to worry about any incompatibility issues that might arise from this approach.

  2. You can configure your CI/CD pipeline to run the terragrunt stack generate command whenever your pipeline runs, and leverage the generated .terragrunt-stack directories in your pipeline.

    Depending on the complexity of your CI/CD pipeline, this might be as simple as performing the following:

    Terminal window
    terragrunt stack generate
    terragrunt run --all plan/apply --non-interactive

    This doesn’t account for destroys or the reduction of blast radius for changes by carefully inspecting Git diffs, but it’s a good start for users that don’t have CI/CD pipelines that are too complex.

    There is an open RFC in GitHub (Filter Flag) that would allow for this kind of complex filtering out of the box with Terragrunt, but at the moment, it’s still an open RFC.