Intermediate6 hours
Terraform Fundamentals
Learn Infrastructure as Code with Terraform. Define, provision, and manage cloud resources using declarative configuration files.
terraforminfrastructure-as-codedevopscloudaws
About This Course
What Is Terraform?
Terraform is an Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tool that lets you define cloud resources in human-readable configuration files. Instead of clicking through cloud consoles, you write code that describes your infrastructure, and Terraform makes it real.
Why Infrastructure as Code?
Traditional infrastructure management has problems:
- Inconsistency - Manual changes lead to drift between environments
- No history - Who changed what, when, and why?
- Slow recovery - Rebuilding infrastructure manually is painful
- Knowledge silos - Only certain people know how things are set up
IaC solves these by treating infrastructure like software:
- Version controlled
- Peer reviewed
- Reproducible
- Self-documenting
What You'll Learn
This course covers Terraform fundamentals:
- HCL (HashiCorp Configuration Language) syntax
- Providers and resources
- Variables and outputs
- State management
- Modules for reusability
Prerequisites
- Basic command-line skills (see the Unix course if needed)
- An AWS account (free tier works fine)
- Terraform installed locally
- A code editor (VS Code with Terraform extension recommended)
Course Structure
We'll build real infrastructure as we learn, starting with simple resources and progressing to production-ready patterns.
Let's begin!