Infrastructure as Code Deployment

Deploy AWS infrastructure to LocalStack using popular IaC tools including Terraform, AWS CDK, CloudFormation, and Pulumi.

Capabilities

• Deploy Terraform configurations to LocalStack

• Run AWS CDK deployments locally

• Deploy CloudFormation stacks

• Execute Pulumi programs against LocalStack

• Validate infrastructure before deployment

Terraform

Using tflocal (Preferred)

The tflocal wrapper is the preferred way to deploy Terraform configurations to LocalStack. It automatically configures all AWS provider endpoints to point to LocalStack, requiring no changes to your Terraform files.

Install tflocal wrapper

pip install terraform-local

Use tflocal instead of terraform - no provider changes needed

tflocal init tflocal plan tflocal apply -auto-approve tflocal destroy -auto-approve

Manual Provider Configuration (Fallback)

Only use manual provider configuration if tflocal cannot be installed (e.g., Python/pip is not available in the environment). This approach requires modifying your Terraform files:

In your provider configuration:

provider "aws" { access_key = "test" secret_key = "test" region = "us-east-1"

endpoints { s3 = "http://localhost:4566" dynamodb = "http://localhost:4566" lambda = "http://localhost:4566" # Add other services as needed }

skip_credentials_validation = true skip_metadata_api_check = true skip_requesting_account_id = true }

Note: When using manual configuration, you must list endpoints for each AWS service used in your configuration.

AWS CDK

Setup

Install cdklocal wrapper

npm install -g aws-cdk-local aws-cdk

Bootstrap (first time only)

cdklocal bootstrap

Deploy

Deploy all stacks

cdklocal deploy --all --require-approval never

Deploy specific stack

cdklocal deploy MyStack

Destroy

cdklocal destroy --all --force

CloudFormation

Deploy with awslocal

Create stack

awslocal cloudformation create-stack
--stack-name my-stack
--template-body file://template.yaml

Update stack

awslocal cloudformation update-stack
--stack-name my-stack
--template-body file://template.yaml

Delete stack

awslocal cloudformation delete-stack --stack-name my-stack

Describe stack

awslocal cloudformation describe-stacks --stack-name my-stack

Pulumi

Using pulumilocal (Preferred)

The pulumilocal wrapper is the preferred way to deploy Pulumi programs to LocalStack. It automatically configures AWS endpoints, requiring no changes to your Pulumi configuration.

Install pulumilocal wrapper

pip install pulumi-local

Use pulumilocal instead of pulumi - no config changes needed

pulumilocal preview pulumilocal up --yes pulumilocal destroy --yes

Manual Configuration (Fallback)

Only use manual configuration if pulumilocal cannot be installed (e.g., Python/pip is not available in the environment):

Configure Pulumi for LocalStack

pulumi config set aws:accessKey test pulumi config set aws:secretKey test pulumi config set aws:region us-east-1 pulumi config set aws:endpoints '[{"s3":"http://localhost:4566"}]'

Deploy with standard pulumi commands

pulumi preview pulumi up --yes pulumi destroy --yes

Best Practices

• Use wrapper tools (tflocal , cdklocal , awslocal ) for simplified configuration

• Test infrastructure changes locally before deploying to AWS

• Use PERSISTENCE=1 to retain state across LocalStack restarts

• Leverage Cloud Pods to save/restore infrastructure state