Infrastructure-as-Code with LocalStack—Building & testing your configurations locally!

Infrastructure-as-Code refers to the practice of defining and provisioning cloud resources using code and automation scripts, thus eliminating the need for manual configurations. With frameworks like AWS CloudFormation, AWS CDK (Cloud Development Kit), AWS Serverless Application Model (SAM), Pulumi, and Terraform, users can specify their desired infrastructure state in code, enabling rapid and consistent deployment of resources. However, as with any code, IaC scripts require thorough testing to ensure their correctness and proper functionality. Traditional cloud environments for testing can be expensive, slow, and error-prone due to complexities in provisioning and configuration. With LocalStack, you can leverage a local emulation of various cloud services, such as S3, DynamoDB, EKS, and more! LocalStack simulates these cloud services on a developer's machine, allowing for comprehensive and efficient testing of IaC scripts before deployment to actual cloud environments. In this video, we explain how you can use LocalStack to be more efficient and cost-effective at testing these major IaC frameworks: Terraform, Pulumi, Cloud Development Kit, CloudFormation, and Serverless Application Model. As organizations will continue to embrace IaC, cloud emulation framework like LocalStack will play an increasingly vital role in ensuring the quality and robustness of cloud infrastructure implementations.

Related Talks

Testing Terraform Modules in Local and CI Environments with LocalStack

Terraform 1.6 introduced native Terraform tests, but running them against real cloud resources leads to long deployment times and unnecessary costs. With LocalStack's Terraform integration (tflocal), you can validate configurations locally while closely emulating real cloud behaviour. By combining Terraform tests with LocalStack, developers can run integration tests in CI/CD environments, test event-driven serverless workflows, and establish a rapid feedback loop for cloud development. In this presentation, Harsh Mishra provides a hands-on demo of Terraform testing with LocalStack, exploring how to configure tests, validate infrastructure locally, and reduce costs and complexity while improving confidence in deployments.

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Testing Terraform AWS Modules in Harness CI with LocalStack

LocalStack enables organizations to automate their application testing and integration process through DevOps practices, such as continuous integration (CI). LocalStack allows organizations to move away from complicated AWS testing and staging environments by enabling a key component of testing and delivering cloud-native applications. To further automate the process, we use Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) frameworks like Terraform that allow you to create your resources declaratively and apply those resources. Testing your Terraform modules against the real AWS cloud can be time-consuming and costly and can make you run into the risk of dangling resources after an unsuccessful CI run. Using LocalStack to emulate a mock ephemeral AWS infrastructure on CI pipelines allows you to work on the same functionality the real AWS cloud provides while cutting down testing costs and deployment times. In this session, Jim Sheldon, Senior Developer Advocate at Harness, will demonstrate how to use LocalStack to test Terraform modules on Harness CI. Harness CI allows you to create software pipelines that will enable you to check out your code, build the software, run your tests, and validate every code change. We wind up the session with updates about the all-new LocalStack release!

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Smarter Serverless Dev with LocalStack VS Code Toolkit & Lambda Debugging

In this hands-on session, you’ll learn how to level up your serverless development by integrating the AWS Toolkit for VS Code with LocalStack — enabling faster Lambda development, debugging, and testing without needing a live AWS account. 👨‍💻 Featuring: Joel Scheuner, Senior Software Engineer at LocalStack, will show you how to configure the AWS Toolkit for VS Code to connect with LocalStack, deploy and test Lambda functions locally with full AWS emulation, set breakpoints and debug functions right from your IDE, and iterate quickly on code changes with minimal setup overhead. You’ll also hear from an AWS engineer sharing real-world insights and best practices for modern serverless workflows. Whether you’re new to serverless or already deep in AWS development, this session will help you code with confidence and streamline your Lambda workflow from start to finish — all from your laptop.

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