Terraform Associate

• https://www.hashicorp.com/certification/terraform-associate
• Exam review: https://learn.hashicorp.com/tutorials/terraform/associate-review

• Terraform 0.14 (March 2021)

Objetives

1. Understand infrastructure as code (IaC) concepts

• Explain what IaC is
• Describe advantages of IaC patterns

2. Understand Terraform's purpose (vs other IaC)

• Explain multi-cloud and provider-agnostic benefits
• Explain the benefits of state

3. Understand Terraform basics

• Handle Terraform and provider installation and versioning
• Describe plugin based architecture
• Demonstrate using multiple providers (alias)
• Describe how Terraform finds and fetches providers
• Explain when to use and not use provisioners and when to use local-exec or remote-exec

4. Use the Terraform CLI (outside of core workflow)

• Given a scenario: choose when to use terraform fmt to format code
• Given a scenario: choose when to use terraform taint to taint Terraform resources
• Given a scenario: choose when to use terraform import to import existing infrastructure into your Terraform state
• Given a scenario: choose when to use terraform workspace to create workspaces
• Given a scenario: choose when to use terraform state to view Terraform state
• Given a scenario: choose when to enable verbose logging and what the outcome/value is

5 Interact with Terraform modules

• Contrast module source options
• Interact with module inputs and outputs
• Describe variable scope within modules/child modules
• Discover modules from the public Terraform Module Registry
• Defining module version

6 Navigate Terraform workflow

• Describe Terraform workflow ( Write -> Plan -> Create )
• Initialize a Terraform working directory (terraform init)
• Validate a Terraform configuration (terraform validate)
• Generate and review an execution plan for Terraform (terraform plan)
• Execute changes to infrastructure with Terraform (terraform apply)
• Destroy Terraform managed infrastructure (terraform destroy)

7 Implement and maintain state

• Describe default local backend
• Outline state locking
• Handle backend authentication methods
• Describe remote state storage mechanisms and supported standard backends
• Describe effect of terraform refresh (deprecated) on state (terraform apply -refresh-only)
• Describe backend block in configuration and best practices for partial configurations
• Understand secret management in state files

8 Read, generate, and modify configuration

• Demonstrate use of variables and outputs
• Describe secure secret injection best practice
• Understand the use of collection and structural types
• Create and differentiate resource and data configuration
• Use resource addressing and resource parameters to connect resources together
• Use Terraform built-in functions to write configuration
• Configure resource using a dynamic block
• Describe built-in dependency management (order of execution based)

9 Understand Terraform Cloud and Enterprise capabilities

• Describe the benefits of Sentinel, registry, and workspaces
• Differentiate OSS and TFE workspaces
• Summarize features of Terraform Cloud

Questions examples

• https://learn.hashicorp.com/tutorials/terraform/associate-questions?in=terraform/certification
• https://www.whizlabs.com/blog/terraform-certification-exam-questions/
• 250 questions and answers: https://medium.com/bb-tutorials-and-thoughts/250-practice-questions-for-terraform-associate-certification-7a3ccebe6a1a

Exercise

• Create Terraform Infrastructure with Docker

See also

• Terraform, OpenTofu, Installation, Terraform AWS, Terraform GCP, Terraform commands, Terraform Cloud, Terraform Enterprise (TFE), HCL, HIL, meta-arguments, providers, modules, resource, provisioners, data sources, backends: remote backends, examples, configuration files, state files, variables, types, Terraform Registry, conditionals: depends_on, functions, Blocks, dynamic blocks, errors, Terragrunt, Terraformer, Terratest, Terraform certifications, Terraform map type, Terraform Associate, Terraform: list type, TF_VAR_, TF_LOG, Terraform provider versioning, Terraform Style Conventions, Required version, Terraform plugin, Terraform Named Values, tags, Changelog, tfsec, tflint, Operators, Expressions: for, splat, Debugging, Namespaces, Terraform Landing Zones, CDKTF, Atmos
• Certifications: Security certifications, Enterprise architecture, Coursera, AWS certifications, CertiProf, Pearson VUE, Terraform Associate, Freecram, ExamLabs