How to Import an AWS Elastic IP into Terraform

Import AWS Elastic IP with Terraback (recommended)

Terraback reverse-engineers your live infrastructure: it reads the Amazon EC2 resource with read-only credentials, generates the HCL, and produces the exact import block. Two commands take you from a live AWS Elastic IP to managed Terraform.

terraback scan all aws --region us-east-1

terraback aws import --method bulk

The Terraform import block

Terraback emits a Terraform 1.5+ import block like the one below. Because the block lives in your configuration, the import is reviewable in a pull request and repeatable across environments.

import {
  to = aws_eip.nat
  id = "eipalloc-0a1b2c3d4e5f6a7b8"
}

Example aws_eip configuration

Here is a realistic AWS Elastic IP block. Terraback generates a fuller version from your actual resource attributes; this is a minimal, valid starting point.

resource "aws_eip" "nat" {
  domain = "vpc"

  tags = {
    Name = "nat-eip"
  }
}

Gotchas when importing a AWS Elastic IP

• Import by the allocation ID (eipalloc-...), not the public IP address itself.
• The association between the EIP and an instance or network interface can be a separate aws_eip_association resource; mixing inline instance/network_interface with that resource causes conflicts.
• domain should be 'vpc' for all modern accounts; the legacy 'standard' (EC2-Classic) value no longer applies.
• An EIP allocated but not associated still incurs an hourly charge, which Terraform will not warn about.

Doing it manually with terraform import

The native approach is to write the aws_eip block by hand, then run terraform import aws_eip.example <import-id> for every resource, one at a time. That works for a handful of resources, but it does not scale: you author all the HCL yourself and repeat the command for each item. Terraback generates the HCL and the import blocks for your whole account in one pass.

Import other AWS resources