How to Set Up AWS IAM Credentials and Infrastructure Before Using Terraform
Before running any Terraform commands against a real AWS account, developers need a dedicated IAM user with programmatic access rather than using the root account, which carries significant security risks. The IAM user should be granted AdministratorAccess for testing purposes, though a least-privilege policy is recommended for production environments. AWS credentials must be exported as environment variables — AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID, AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY, and AWS_REGION — and should never be stored inside Terraform configuration or variable files. The planned infrastructure includes a VPC spanning two AWS Availability Zones, with public and private subnets, a NAT Gateway, an EKS control plane, and EC2 worker nodes running application pods. A Network Load Balancer handles incoming public traffic, while the NAT Gateway manages outbound-only access from private subnets to the internet.
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