The Lazy Networker

In modern cloud engineering, Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is more than a best practice—it’s a necessity. But what happens when your AWS infrastructure already exists, created manually through the console or scripts, long before Terraform entered the picture?

This blog post walks through a hybrid solution: using Python and Boto3 to detect and import existing AWS Security Groups into Terraform, then converting them into reproducible, editable .tf files. It’s fast, scalable, and minimizes human error.

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🚩 Problem Statement

Many teams start their cloud journey without IaC. As the environment grows, managing resources manually becomes error-prone and unscalable. Transitioning to Terraform becomes inevitable—but re-creating everything manually in .tf files is:

• Time-consuming
• Risky
• Hard to validate

💡 Solution:

Use Python to automate the Terraform import process and dynamically generate configuration files per AWS Security Group.

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⚙️ Tech Stack

Tool	Role
Terraform	Infrastructure provisioning
Python (Boto3)	AWS resource discovery
AWS CLI / IAM Role	Credentials & API access
Shell Commands	Automating imports

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🔄 Workflow Overview

• Discover all Security Groups in a region
• Create Terraform directories per group
• Write provider.tf and main.tf
• Run terraform import to sync state
• Output the state into HCL format via terraform show
• Format and validate using terraform fmt

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📜 Python Script Breakdown

Here’s the key automation script: securitygroupimporter.py

import boto3
import os

region = "us-west-1"
client = boto3.client('ec2', region_name=region)

for group in client.describe_security_groups()['SecurityGroups']:
    dir_name = group['GroupId']
    os.system("mkdir " + dir_name)

    with open(os.path.join(dir_name, "provider.tf"), "w") as file:
        file.write(f"""provider "aws" {{
    region = "{region}"
}}""")

    with open(os.path.join(dir_name, "main.tf"), "w") as file:
        file.write(f"""resource "aws_security_group" "imported_sg_tf" {{
    name        = "{group['GroupName']}"
    description = "{group['Description']}"
    vpc_id      = "{group['VpcId']}"
}}""")

    os.system(f"cd {dir_name} && terraform init && terraform fmt && terraform import aws_security_group.imported_sg_tf {group['GroupId']} && terraform show -no-color > main.tf")

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🧾 Example Output

The script generates a clean folder structure like:

bashCopyEditsg-0a1b2c3d4e5f67890/
├── provider.tf  # AWS provider config
├── main.tf      # Full resource definition (after import)

This makes it easy to commit, audit, and manage each security group individually.

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📦 Terraform Usage

Once the .tf files are created:

cd sg-0a1b2c3d4e5f67890
terraform plan
terraform apply

You can now modify the SG rules as code and re-apply them safely!

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📈 Benefits of This Approach

✅ No Manual Rewrites: Automates tedious .tf file generation
✅ Version Control: All SGs under Git with Terraform
✅ Audit-Friendly: Clear, editable .tf source
✅ Repeatable: Works in any region with any account
✅ Safe Migration: No downtime or resource recreation

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💡 Possible Enhancements

Here’s how we can take this further:

• ✳️ Add user prompts for selective SG import
• 🔍 Extract individual ingress/egress rules instead of full state dump
• 📦 Refactor into reusable Terraform modules
• 📊 Add CloudWatch alerts for drift detection
• ⚙️ Integrate into CI/CD pipeline

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🌐 Real-World Use Case

Imagine you’re handed an AWS account with 100+ resources but no existing Terraform config. This script gives you a jumpstart, extracting current state and turning it into a fully manageable codebase — all without starting from scratch.

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🔐 Security Considerations

• Use IAM roles with read-only EC2 access
• Validate the Terraform plan before applying changes
• Consider sanitizing or encrypting sensitive outputs if saved

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📸 Architecture Diagram

This tool can be a part of a larger provisioning pipeline (e.g., VPCs, EC2, Load Balancers, etc.).

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🧪 Try It Yourself

pip install boto3
export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=...
export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=...
python securitygroupimporter.py

Each SG is imported and converted into Terraform-ready format in its own folder. You can version it, tweak rules, and manage it from here on out like any other .tf module.

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🧩 Final Thoughts

Cloud infrastructure is not always born as code — but it should evolve that way. With this approach, we take a real-world AWS environment and transform it into Terraform IaC with minimal friction.

This saves hours of repetitive work and brings undocumented infrastructure under the umbrella of security, compliance, and automation.

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🤝 Let’s Connect

If you found this useful or have ideas to improve it, let’s talk!
I’d love to collaborate with other DevOps engineers and cloud enthusiasts.

📬 DM me on LinkedIn or drop a comment below.

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#Terraform #AWS #Python #Boto3 #DevOps #InfrastructureAsCode #IaC #CloudMigration #Security #Automation