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What is Terraform?

IT infrastructure management across different clouds, servers, and environments can become complicated and cumbersome. However, Terraform, an Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) solution, is one of the best ways for businesses to manage and expand infrastructure at scale.


Let's discuss about different aspects of Terraform in this article.


What is Terraform?

Terraform is an Infrastructure as Code tool created by HashiCorp used primarily to automate various infrastructure tasks. It lets us define both cloud and on-prem resources in human-readable configuration files that you can version, reuse, and share. We can then use a consistent workflow to provision and manage all of our infrastructure throughout its lifecycle. Terraform can manage low-level components like compute, storage, and networking resources, as well as high-level components like DNS entries and SaaS features.


What is Terraform used for?

Whether it's a single cloud, a multi-cloud or a custom deployment, Terraform enables us to manage whole IT environment via IaC.


One of the main functions of Terraform is for public cloud provisioning on the different Cloud Service providers like AWS, Azure, GCP, etc.


The second main use for Terraform is performing multi-cloud deployments. Being able to deploy resources into multiple cloud providers is useful because software engineers can then use the same syntax and toolchain, without needing to familiarize themselves with multiple tools and technologies.


The third most common use of Terraform is deploying, managing, and orchestrating resources with custom cloud providers. A provider is a way in Terraform to wrap an existing API and convert it to the Terraform declarative syntax, and this can be done even if you’re not using AWS or another one of the major cloud services.


Terraform Architecture -

Terraform architecture mainly comprises of the following components:

- Terraform Core

- Providers

- State file


1. Terraform Core

Terraform’s core (also known as Terraform CLI) is built on a statically-compiled binary that’s developed using the Go programming language.


The command line program (CLI) "terraform," which serves as the main interface for Terraform users, is created using this binary. It is accessible on the Terraform GitHub repository and is open source.


2. Providers

Terraform providers are modules that enable Terraform to communicate with a wide range of services and resources, including but not limited to cloud providers, databases, and DNS services.


Each provider is in charge of defining the resources that Terraform is capable of managing within that service and converting Terraform configurations into API calls that are particular to that service.


Providers are available for multiple services and resources like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, as well as community-supported providers for various services. By utilizing providers, Terraform users can maintain their infrastructure in a consistent and reproducible manner, regardless of the underlying service or provider.


3. State File

The Terraform state file is an essential aspect of Terraform’s functionality. It is a JSON file that stores information about the resources that Terraform manages, as well as their current state and dependencies.


Terraform utilizes the state file to determine the changes that need to be made to the infrastructure when a new configuration is applied. It also ensures that resources are not unnecessarily recreated across multiple runs of Terraform. The state file can be kept locally on the machine running Terraform or remotely using a remote backend like Azure Storage Account or Amazon S3, or HashiCorp Consul. The state file contains critical data about the infrastructure being managed, so it is essential to protect it and keep regular backups.


How does Terraform work?

The core Terraform workflow consists of three stages:

  1. Write: You define resources, which may be across multiple cloud providers and services. For example, you might create a configuration to deploy an application on virtual machines in a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) network with security groups and a load balancer.

  2. Plan: Terraform creates an execution plan describing the infrastructure it will create, update, or destroy based on the existing infrastructure and your configuration.

  3. Apply: On approval, Terraform performs the proposed operations in the correct order, respecting any resource dependencies. For example, if you update the properties of a VPC and change the number of virtual machines in that VPC, Terraform will recreate the VPC before scaling the virtual machines.


Why Terraform?

1. Infrastructure as code

Taking advantage of Terraform, you can manage and maintain resources through code.


2. Reduced development costs

You can reduce costs by creating on-demand development and deployment environments.


3. Reduced time to provision

Organizations often utilize outdated click-ops deployment techniques that take days or even weeks and are prone to mistakes. With Terraform, full deployment can take just minutes.


4. Automated infrastructure management

Terraform can create configuration file templates to define, provision, and configure ECS resources in a repeatable and predictable manner, reducing deployment and management errors resulting from human intervention.


In conclusion, Terraform is an excellent and rapidly expanding IaC solution that will surely increase the productivity of DevOps installations. It can help in achieving the levels of agility required to pave a successful path by automating the orchestration of infrastructure across various cloud platforms.


The core Terraform features and use cases that will get you started were quickly covered in this post. I hope you find this useful.


Thank you for reading!


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