Terraform Basics

Terraform is an open-source tool for building, changing, and versioning infrastructure safely and efficiently. It uses a declarative configuration language (HCL - HashiCorp Configuration Language) to describe the desired state of your infrastructure.

• Providers: Plugins that interact with APIs of cloud providers (e.g., AWS, Azure).
• Resources: Basic building blocks of your infrastructure (e.g., virtual machines, storage accounts).
• Modules: Containers for multiple resources that are used together.
• State: A file that keeps track of resources in the infrastructure.
• Plan: The action that Terraform will take to reach the desired state.

To install Terraform, follow these steps:

1. Download the Terraform binary from the official website.
2. Unzip the downloaded file and move it to a directory included in your system's PATH.
3. Verify the installation by running terraform -v in your terminal.

Create a Terraform configuration file with the .tf extension. Here's an example of configuring an AWS EC2 instance:

provider "aws" {
    region = "us-east-1"
}

resource "aws_instance" "example" {
    ami           = "ami-0c55b159cbfafe1f0"
    instance_type = "t2.micro"
}

Here are some best practices to follow:

• Use version control for your Terraform configuration files.
• Organize your files into modules for better reusability.
• Keep sensitive data out of your configuration files.
• Use Terraform workspaces to manage different environments.
• Regularly backup your state files.