can terraform be used simply to create resources in different AWS regions?

Question

I have the following deploy.tf file:

provider "aws" {
  region          = "us-east-1"
}

provider "aws" {
  alias           = "us_west_1"
  region          = "us-west-2"
}

resource "aws_us_east_1" "my_test" {
  # provider        = "aws.us_east_1"
  count           = 1
  ami             = "ami-0820..."
  instance_type   = "t2.micro"
}

resource "aws_us_west_1" "my_test" {
  provider        = "aws.us_west_1"
  count           = 1
  ami             = "ami-0d74..."
  instance_type   = "t2.micro"
}

I am trying to use it to deploy 2 servers, one in each region. I keep getting errors like:

aws_us_east_1.narc_test: Provider doesn't support resource: aws_us_east_1

I have tried setting alias's for both provider blocks, and referring to the correct region in a number of different ways. I've read up on multi region support, and some answers suggest this can be accomplished with modules, however, this is a simple test, and I'd like to keep it simple. Is this currently possible?

Answer 1

Yes it can be used to create resources in different regions even inside just one file. There is no need to use modules for your test scenario.

Your error is caused by a typo probably. If you want to launch an ec2 instance the resource you wanna create is aws_instance and not aws_us_west_1 or aws_us_east_1.

Sure enough Terraform does not know this kind of resource since it does simply not exist. Change it to aws_instance and you should be good to go! Additionally you should probably name them differently to avoid double naming using my_test for both resources.