7.2 Terraform: providers, resources and state

The same thing, three names

One idea, sold under a different brand by each provider. Learn it once and you can read any job advertisement.

On AWS

AWS provider

On Azure

AzureRM provider

On Google Cloud

Google provider

Work through these

• Providers, resources, variables and outputs

  Providers connect the tool to a cloud, resources are the things you declare, and variables and outputs are how configurations take input and hand back results. These four are enough to write a working configuration.

• The state file: what it is, where it must live, why it is sensitive

  The state file records what the tool believes exists, which is why it must be stored safely and shared carefully. It also contains sensitive values, so treating it as an ordinary file is a mistake.

• plan before apply, always; reading a plan properly

  Previewing changes before applying them is the habit that separates confident infrastructure work from gambling. Reading the preview properly means checking what will be destroyed, not only what will be created.

• Destroying cleanly so a lab does not become a bill

  Tearing an environment down completely is what stops a learning exercise turning into a monthly charge. Practising the teardown is as important as practising the build.