Terraforming AWS Volume 1: Serverless Foundations

Product Description

Build AWS infrastructure as code — with generative AI as your study partner.This is a hands-on guide to building AWS infrastructure with Terraform. It is written for readers who are new to AWS, or have only used it a little, and want a gentler way in.Why this book existsThe author is a machine learning engineer who once found Terraform too hard to approach — until generative AI made it learnable. This book is the result. You will see how to use AI tools like ChatGPT as a quiet coding partner throughout, without getting lost in prompt engineering.What makes this book differentMany AWS and Terraform books start with VPC and EC2. Networking is a steep first step, and a lot of beginners give up there (the author did, too). This book takes the opposite route: it starts with managed services like Lambda and S3, where AWS handles most of the underlying infrastructure. By the time you reach more complex topics, you will already feel comfortable with both Terraform and the way AWS services are designed.What you'll learnVolume 1 walks through 40+ hands-on examples, including:Terraform basics — variables, locals, collections, providers, and state filesAWS Lambda — from "Hello, Lambda" to scheduled runs, layers, and Docker-based functions on ECRAmazon S3 — buckets, versioning, lifecycle rules, and static website hostingAWS IAM — the minimum you need to set up roles and policies for serverlessLambda with other services — S3 triggers, SQS, SNS, dead-letter queues, reserved concurrency, and Amazon TranslateHandling secrets — SSM Parameter Store and AWS Secrets ManagerAWS Step Functions — connecting Lambdas, passing input and output, conditional branches, retries, wait states, and parallel processingThe book also explains why AWS services are designed the way they are, and how to think about security as you go.Who this book is forEngineers who know some AWS and want to start using Infrastructure as CodeDevelopers who want to bring generative AI into their infrastructure workMachine learning engineers who need solid AWS skillsAnyone who has felt that Terraform looks hard and wants an easier starting pointAbout this English editionThis edition is based on the Japanese edition published in November 2024. References to AI tools and time-sensitive details have been updated for 2026 readers. The chapter on AWS App Runner has been removed because the service is no longer open to new customers, so Case 47 is intentionally absent; all other case numbers match the Japanese edition.Sample codeAll sample code is on GitHub under the MIT License:github.com/koshian2/terraform-aws-bookAbout the seriesThis is Volume 1, covering AWS serverless. Later volumes are planned to cover AWS networking and AI/ML services, and to extend the same approach to Google Cloud and Azure.