Laravel development: How to manage a server using Laravel Forge and Terraform?

Laravel is a popular PHP framework commonly used for building web applications. In order to run a Laravel application, you need a reliable server to host it. For developers, server hosting and management can be a tedious task.

Laravel Forge is a visual server management tool that simplifies the server configuration and deployment process. Terraform is an infrastructure automation tool that helps you create and manage infrastructure in a repeatable and scalable way.

This article will introduce how to use Laravel Forge and Terraform together to simplify server management and expansion.

1. Installing Laravel Forge

First, you need to register on the Laravel Forge website and subscribe to a plan. You can then install Forge's agent on your server. An agent is a piece of code that runs on the server to communicate with the Forge server and perform automated tasks. You can find agent installation and configuration instructions in the Forge panel. The agent is installed via SSH and requires you to have SSH access to the server.

2. Create Server

Once the agent is installed and configured, you can create a server in Forge. Creating a server in Forge is as easy as selecting your preferred service provider, selecting server specifications, and asking the Forge agent to install the necessary packages and services on the server. Other security settings such as firewall, SSH access and certificate management can also be configured in the Forge panel.

3. Deploy Laravel Application

When the server is created, you can deploy the Laravel application to the server using the tools provided on the Forge panel. You can choose to upload your code to the server using GIT or SFTP, or use the automated deployment options provided by Forge. The automated deployment option deploys code from your GIT repository to the server using a CI/CD pipeline.

4. Deploying Terraform

Now that your application is deployed to the server, you can start setting up Terraform to automate your infrastructure.

Before installing Terraform and debugging environment, it is best to push the code to your GIT repository to avoid the destruction of the earth.

Create the main.tf file in your Terraform directory. In this file, you will define your server and other infrastructure components.

An example of definition is as follows:

In this example, we define a server provided by DigitalOcean and a firewall rule.

5. Create API Key on Laravel Forge

Terraform will use the Laravel Forge API key to manage the server. In the Forge panel you can create an API key. You need to add this key to your Terraform configuration file:

The variable "forge_key" is the variable that references the API key in Terraform.

6. Writing Terraform scripts

After defining the configuration of the infrastructure in main.tf, you need to write a Terraform script to apply it to the server.

The following is a sample script:

This script will create a DigitalOcean droplet, install and configure Nginx and PHP, and apply firewall rules to the server.

7. Terraform Initialization

To use scripts written in Terraform, you need to run the terraform init command in the directory.

This command will download and install the required Terraform plugins and providers.

8. Terraform Deployment

Deploying a server architecture using Terraform is very simple. Enter the Terraform directory and use the command terraform apply to start deployment. Terraform will automatically handle the creation of the infrastructure and configure the servers the way you define.

That’s it, you are now ready to use Laravel Forge and Terraform to simplify server configuration and management. During this combination, you can easily manage servers through Laravel Forge and automate infrastructure deployment through Terraform. It saves you time and significant energy resources, and ensures you perform development work using a repeatable and scalable infrastructure.

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