Why are there two "prod" folders in the directory tree?

[trallnag]

Looking at the directory tree I am seeing two "prod" dirs on two different levels? What is the reason for this layout?

[bwhaley]

The top level prod represents an AWS account called "prod". It contains all the configurations for the prod AWS account in all regions. The nested prod represents a VPC called "prod" in the us-east-1 region. It contains all the configuration for resources in the prod account, us-east-1 region, prod VPC.

The reasoning behind this layout is that you can have fine-grained control over what configurations are applied. For example, you could run terragrunt run-all apply (formerly terragrunt apply-all) at the prod/us-east-1/prod level to apply only the configurations in the prod vpc, us-east-1 region, prod account. Or, you could run the same command but at the prod/us-east-1 level to apply all the configurations for the prod account, us-east-1 region. You can think of it as a hierarchy that allows you to have control over what configurations are applied at any given time.

[trallnag]

@bwhaley, makes sense. Thanks for the explanation. I guess in my use case I just don't need such a layout because I use the Terragrunt live repository for a single product / project only and I know from the start that I only need a single region and VPC (per environment like prod, QA, and dev.

[bwhaley]

There are infinite ways to approach the layout so feel free to experiment! We're toying with another approach ourselves as outlined here.