Book Image

HashiCorp Infrastructure Automation Certification Guide

By : Ravi Mishra
Book Image

HashiCorp Infrastructure Automation Certification Guide

By: Ravi Mishra

Overview of this book

Terraform is a highly sought-after technology for orchestrating infrastructure provisioning. This book is a complete reference guide to enhancing your infrastructure automation skills, offering up-to-date coverage of the HashiCorp infrastructure automation certification exam. This book is written in a clear and practical way with self-assessment questions and mock exams that will help you from a HashiCorp infrastructure automation certification exam perspective. This book covers end-to-end activities with Terraform, such as installation, writing its configuration file, Terraform modules, backend configurations, data sources, and infrastructure provisioning. You'll also get to grips with complex enterprise infrastructures and discover how to create thousands of resources with a single click. As you advance, you'll get a clear understanding of maintaining infrastructure as code (IaC) in Repo/GitHub, along with learning how to create, modify, and remove infrastructure resources as and when needed. Finally, you'll learn about Terraform Cloud and Enterprise and their enhanced features. By the end of this book, you'll have a handy, up-to-date desktop reference guide along with everything you need to pass the HashiCorp Certified: Terraform Associate exam with confidence.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
1
Section 1: The Basics
4
Section 2: Core Concepts
10
Section 3: Managing Infrastructure with Terraform
14
Chapter 11: Terraform Glossary

Introducing the Terraform backend

In this section, we are going to talk about the Terraform state file and the Terraform backend. As you know, Terraform follows a desired state configuration model where you describe the environment you would like to build using declarative code and Terraform attempts to make that desired state a reality. A critical component of the desired state model is mapping what currently exists in the environment and what is expressed in the declarative code. Terraform tracks this mapping through a JSON formatted data structure called a state file. We are going to look at where the Terraform state file can be stored, how it can be configured and accessed, and what the best practices for keeping a Terraform tfstate file are.

Terraform state

You are already aware of when you write the Terraform configuration file and how while executing terraform init, plan, and apply, it is used to generate a state file that stores information about your complete infrastructure...