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!

Related Talks

Test Your Cloud Workflows Locally Like a Boss

Why wait for the cloud to test your app? In this episode, we’ll write and run an integration test to validate our LocalStack app. You’ll learn how to upload a file, trigger the Lambda-SQS-DynamoDB flow, and assert the results all locally.

Watch recording
Watch recording
Emulating AWS CI CD pipelines with LocalStack

Testing AWS CI/CD pipelines in the cloud can be slow, error-prone, and hard to debug, especially when you're wrestling with IAM permissions or waiting on long feedback cycles. This session walks through how you can now emulate complete DevOps workflows locally using LocalStack.We cover recent additions to LocalStack that support new service providers such as: CodeBuild: Run build processes across different runtimes directly on your machine CodeDeploy: Emulate deployment steps without touching the real infrastructure CodePipeline: Create and test CI pipelines, transitions, and triggers locallyThrough a live demo, we’ll walk through a working example of a CI/CD pipeline — building a Rust project, deploying it, and running the pipeline stages — all without leaving your laptop.This session is useful for developers building or debugging AWS-native CI/CD workflows and looking for faster, more controlled ways to test them.

Watch recording
Watch recording
Running dbt workflows locally with LocalStack

dbt (Data Build Tool) helps data engineers manage data transformations using modular SQL and brings version control, testing, and documentation to their transformation logic. However, running dbt against production data warehouses like Snowflake can be slow, expensive, and risky.This session introduces a new way to develop and test dbt workflows locally using the Snowflake emulator in LocalStack. You'll learn how to: Set up a local dbt environment Configure dbt to connect to the Snowflake emulator Run and validate dbt models locally without using a real Snowflake account Iterate quickly on transformations before pushing them to productionThrough a hands-on factory app example, we’ll walk through how to use the Snowflake emulator to run dbt models on your laptop, helping you test logic, catch issues early, and reduce cloud costs.

Watch recording
Watch recording

Launch yourself in the world of local cloud development

Try for free
Try for free
Talk to Sales
Talk to Sales