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# Terraform for Developers

Say goodbye to slow, error-prone manual deployments. Terraform treats cloud infrastructure just like application code. Master core workflows to automate and scale your environments anywhere.

- **Speakers:** Devlin Duldulao
- **Event:** WeAreDevelopers LIVE
- **Published:** June 12, 2020
- **Duration:** 42:10
- **URL:** https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/3-terraform-for-developers

## Summary

Manual infrastructure provisioning often leads to slow deployments, inconsistent environments, and a high risk of manual errors. Infrastructure as Code (IaC) solves this by treating server configurations like application software, enabling automated, repeatable, and scalable deployments. HashiCorp's Terraform stands out as a powerful open-source provisioning tool compiled in Go that manages the entire lifecycle of cloud resources across major providers like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud (GCP). By translating infrastructure needs into configuration code, developers can leverage standard software practices such as version control, code reviews, and CI/CD pipelines.

The standard Terraform developer workflow relies on specific core commands: initializing the environment to download provider plugins, running a strict dry-run plan to safely predict resource changes, and applying those modifications. Crucially, Terraform tracks resource metadata and history within a state file. Directly editing this generated JSON file compromises the integrity of the infrastructure. For team stability and safety, best practices mandate storing this shared backend state remotely in designated storage buckets completely isolated from routine application resource groups to prevent accidental deletion.

Integrating Terraform into automated release pipelines ensures a predictable operational cadence from pull request to production. While configuration management tools like Chef, Puppet, or Ansible primarily update software on existing servers, Terraform excels at provisioning the underlying immutable hardware and networking layers. For comprehensive automation, development teams frequently orchestrate infrastructure via Terraform, build immutable machine images with Packer, and manage software deployments via Ansible or Kubernetes. Unlike cloud-specific solutions such as AWS CloudFormation or Azure Resource Manager, Terraform provides a unified orchestration workflow regardless of the underlying cloud provider.

**Keywords:** infrastructure as code, cloud infrastructure provisioning, hashicorp terraform, multi-cloud deployment, terraform state management, remote backend storage, immutable infrastructure, CI/CD pipeline integration, configuration management tools, automated server configuration, AWS, azure resources, GCP, packer machine images, ansible deployment, kubernetes orchestration, cloudformation

## Chapters

1. **Understanding the fundamentals of infrastructure as code** (00:00) — How automation eliminates manual provisioning errors and increases deployment speed.
1. **Overview of Terraform and Terraform Cloud features** (01:55) — An overview of using Terraform for lifecycle management and remote team collaboration.
1. **Terraform configuration syntax and core CLI commands** (04:28) — Understanding basic resource blocks, variables, expressions, and common execution commands.
1. **Deploying Azure infrastructure resources with Terraform code** (08:12) — A live demonstration of provisioning an app service and SQL database in Azure.
1. **Provisioning and modifying Google Cloud compute resources** (17:00) — Applying configurations to safely create, update, and destroy compute instances in Google Cloud.
1. **Reviewing AWS infrastructure deployment configuration and planning** (21:49) — Examining basic compute and security group setup scripts for AWS environments.
1. **Managing Terraform state and automating CI/CD pipelines** (26:12) — Best practices for securing remote state files within automated release pipelines.
1. **Comparing Terraform to popular configuration management tools** (31:05) — How declarative infrastructure provisioning differs from mutable configuration approaches like Chef, Puppet, and Ansible.
1. **Structuring Terraform with Packer, Docker, and Kubernetes** (35:07) — Orchestrating hardware provisioning alongside containerized application deployments and baked virtual machine images.
1. **Contrasting Terraform with Pulumi and cloud-specific tools** (38:21) — Evaluating differences between Terraform, general-purpose language IaC tools, and proprietary cloud managers.
1. **Infrastructure as code summary and learning resources** (40:16) — A recap of automation benefits alongside recommended certifications and reading material for practitioners.

## Related Moments

- [How Terraform translates code into cloud infrastructure](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/531-implementing-feature-environments-with-aws-and-terraform) (from "Implementing Feature Environments with AWS and Terraform")
- [Overview of infrastructure as code tools](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/740-the-power-of-cloud-development-kit-cdk-how-to-get-the-most-out-of-it) (from "The power of Cloud Development Kit (CDK): How to get the most out of it")
- [Core features of Terraform and HashiCorp Configuration Language](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/1221-infrastructure-as-code-the-developer-s-secret-weapon) (from "Infrastructure as Code: The Developer's Secret Weapon")
- [Choosing tools and environments for infrastructure as code](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/1221-infrastructure-as-code-the-developer-s-secret-weapon) (from "Infrastructure as Code: The Developer's Secret Weapon")
- [Automating cloud provisioning with infrastructure as code](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/887-building-applications-with-infrastructure-as-code) (from "Building Applications with Infrastructure as Code")
- [Executing the core Terraform provisioning workflow](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/887-building-applications-with-infrastructure-as-code) (from "Building Applications with Infrastructure as Code")

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