Building Scalable Infrastructure with Terraform

4 Scenarios

4 Hours

Intermediate

Free

12 credits

Industry

general

Skills

approach

quality

data-understanding

Tools

github

terraform

azure

sql

Learning Objectives

Explain the core principles of Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and the declarative, immutable, and agentless nature of Terraform.

Write clean, readable, and effective Terraform configurations using HashiCorp Configuration Language (HCL).

Manage the complete Terraform workflow (init, plan, apply, destroy) to safely provision and manage cloud resources.

Utilize essential building blocks like variables, outputs, and data sources to create flexible and dynamic configurations.

Distinguish between different block types, including managed resources, data sources, and utility resources, and know when to use each.

Organize your Terraform code into logical, maintainable file structures for complex projects.

Control resource creation and behavior with powerful meta-arguments like for_each, depends_on, and the lifecycle block.

Implement reusable infrastructure with Terraform Modules and manage state securely for team collaboration using remote backends.

Design and deploy complex, multi-resource environments on Microsoft Azure, applying your skills to solve real-world industrial problems.

Overview

At InfraAutomate Inc., a pioneering cloud services company, the platform engineering team is facing a growing crisis. Their flagship product, a multi-tenant analytics platform on Azure, is expanding rapidly. However, every new client onboarding is a nightmare. The process involves manually clicking through the Azure portal to create dozens of resources, a method that is slow, error-prone, and completely unscalable. To solve this, the company has decided to adopt Terraform to automate their entire cloud infrastructure lifecycle. This masterclass puts you in the shoes of Leo, a new engineer at InfraAutomate, learning from senior engineer Maya. You will journey from a manual, click-based approach to mastering Infrastructure as Code.

This is not just a syntax guide; it's a comprehensive, story-driven journey designed to make you a confident and capable Terraform practitioner. We begin with the absolute basics, exploring the "why" behind Infrastructure as Code and the core philosophy that makes Terraform so powerful. From there, we dive into the fundamental workflow (init, plan, apply, destroy) and the essential building blocks of the HCL language, including resources, variables, outputs, and data sources. As your skills grow, we will tackle industry-standard best practices for organizing, scaling, and securing your configurations using modules, remote state backends, and advanced techniques with meta-arguments.

Our unique learning approach is built on the engaging dialogue between our characters, Maya and Leo, who face real-world challenges at InfraAutomate Inc. Each section includes practical, hands-on examples that you can follow along with, reinforced by interactive multiple-choice questions, code challenges, and clear visual diagrams. By the end of this masterclass, you will not only have mastered the commands but will have deeply understood the concepts, enabling you to design, build, and manage sophisticated cloud environments on Azure with the efficiency and reliability of a true infrastructure hero.

Prerequisites

Understanding of what a "Resource Group," "Virtual Machine," "Storage Account," and "Virtual Network" are. No need of expertise, but familiarity with the concepts is essential.
Hands-on experience navigating a cloud provider's web portal (Microsoft Azure is preferred, but AWS or GCP is also fine) will provide valuable context for what Terraform is automating.
Comfortable opening a terminal or command prompt and running basic commands.