Terraform 102 – Managing Azure Infrastructure with Terraform

As enterprises seek to deploy and maintain increasingly complex Azure cloud infrastructure, there is a necessity to use “Infrastructure as Code” (IaC) tools, like Terraform. An open-source, state management tool developed by HashiCorp, Terraform allows developers to use a common coding interface to work through their various clouds safely and efficiently. Attendees will leave being able to write and understand Terraform code (HCL), have a clear understanding of Terraform’s various components and supporting tools, as well as when to reach for Terraform over another IaC tool, such as Ansible.

Course Objectives

• Writing Terraform HCL code for managing Azure
• Deploying into Azure
• Where Terraform fits in the Enterprise CI/CD model
• Differences between Terraform and Ansible
• Best practices
• Prepare for HashiCorp’s Terraform Associate Certification
• AI LLM prompt engineering for Terraform snippets and jumpstarting solutions

Audience

• DevOps Engineers
• Software Developers
• Technical Managers and Leads
• System and Cloud Administrators
• Network Engineers and Developers

Prerequisites

Although not required, students with some experience programming, or pre-existing knowledge of Azure or other cloud architecture, will most appreciate the technical nature of this hands-on course.

Course Outline

Getting Started

• Vim: A Modal Text Editor
• Efficient CLI Usage with Tmux

AI LLM Toolkit

• Large Language Model toolkit for AI Solution Assistance

Introduction to Terraform

• Terraform Course Map
• Introduction to Terraform

Software Control Management

• SCM Option #1 – GitHub

Overview of Terraform

• Terraform Install
• gitignore for Terraform

Terraform

• Managing Azure with Terraform
• Terraform HCL Syntax
• Azure and Terraform Resources
• Terraform Variables
• Azure and Terraform Variables
• Terraform Locals
• Output Values

Azure

• Exploring Terraform Azure Providers
• Terraform and Azure
• Building a Virtual Network
• Dynamic Provisioning with tfvars Files
• Creating A Windows VM
• Microsoft Verified Modules
• Azure Verified Modules for Terraform

Beyond Basics

• Import pre-existing infrastructure
• Data Sources and HTTP Provider
• Dynamic Operations with Functions
• Creating a Terraform Module

Loops

• for_each
• Looping Constructs – for_each

Provisioning

• local-exec Provisioner

Dynamic Blocks

• Dynamic Blocks

Azure Pipelines

• Azure Pipelines for Terraform

Terraform Review

• HashiCorp Terraform Study Guide