Terraform is a tool that can be used to automate multi-cloud environments. Terraform has been my favorite tool for provisioning infrastructure on AWS and GCP. It has been great for DevOps and I was happy to receive the Terraform Associate certification.
Terraform is for Cloud Engineers who are skilled in IT, operations, or development and have a basic understanding of open source HashiCorp Terraform.
Summary of the Exam for HashiCorp Certified Terraform Associate Exam
The HashiCorp Certified Terraform Associate exam focuses specifically on Terraform as a Code tool and Infrastructure.
The HashiCorp Certified Terraform Associate exam contains 57 questions and a time limit for 60 minutes
Exam contains multiple answer, multiple choice, fill out the blanks, True/False type questions
Questions and answers are very short and if you have Terraform experience they are easy. Topic Summary for the HashiCorp Certified Terraform Associate Exam Topic
Refer Terraform Cheat Sheet for details
Understanding Infrastructure as Code (IaC concepts)
Explain what IaC means.
IaC allows Infrastructure to become versioned and treated the same way as any other code.
Infrastructure can be shared or re-used.
Describe the advantages of IaC patterns makes Infrastructure more reliable
Makes Infrastructure easier to manage
Makes Infrastructure more automated and less susceptible to errors
Multi-cloud and provider-agnostic advantages explained
Terraform is a cloud-agnostic platform that allows you to manage multiple providers and even cross-cloud dependencies with one configuration.
Terraform makes it easy to manage and orchestrate large-scale multicloud infrastructures.
Explain the benefits of stateState is necessary for Terraform to function.
Terraform needs a database to map Terraform’s configuration to the real world.
Terraform uses its state structure to map configurations and resources in the real world.
Terraform state allows you to track metadata such as resource dependencies.
It provides performance because it stores a cache containing all the attribute values for all state resources
Allows for synchronization when working in a team with multiple usersUnderstand Terraform basics
Terraform and provider installation and Versioning
Terraform configurations must specify which providers they require in order for Terraform to install and use them
A required_providers block is used to declare provider requirements.
Describe plugin based architectureTerraform relies on plugins called “providers” to interact with remote systems.
Demonstrate the use of multiple providerssupports multiple instances provider using alias such as e.g. Multiple aws providers with different regions
Terraform can find and fetch providers. Terraform installs providers when it initializes a working directory. Terraform can download providers automatically from a Terraform registry or load them from a cache or local mirror.
Terraform modules must specify which providers they require in order to install and use them.
Explain when provisioners should be used and when they should not be used. Terraform provides remote-exec and local-exec to perform tasks not provided by Terraformlocal exec runs code on the machine running terraform
Remote exec executes the resource provisioned, and supports ssh/winrm
Provisioners should be used only as a last resort.
These are defined in the
HashiCorp Certified Terraform Associate Learning Path
