Advanced Terraform - 3 Days Training Course

Terraform Core Concepts Review

• The Command Line Interface (CLI) and all available sub-commands
• The flow of Terraform operations
• The importance and fragility of state management
• HashiCorp Configuration Language (HCL), pre 0.12 and post 0.12 versions

Designing More Complex Terraform Projects and Modules

• Approaches to Modularization
  • Single-project, multi-module scenarios
  • Multi-project related infrastructure for single and hybrid cloud or platform environments
  • Root module decomposition
    • Strategies for organizing new and legacy monolithic projects to enhance Terraform project management

Developing and Managing More Complex Terraform Projects and Modules

• Comprehensive best practices
• Module versioning strategies
• Sharing modules to avoid redundancy (DRY principle)
• Managing complex provider scenarios across projects and modules
• Utilizing Terraform Null Label for specific use cases

An Introduction to Make + Makefile

• Automating repetitive tasks in Terraform projects using a reliable, standard Linux tool

Advanced Terraform Tool and CLI Understanding

• Understanding state and the state file
• State migration and management in complex scenarios
• Terraform import approaches for intricate situations
• Addressing mistakes and messes
  • Managing significant drift
  • Handling corrupted or irreparable state files
  • Identifying issues that cannot be resolved
  • Taking proactive measures to prevent such issues in Terraform workflows for government

HCL Advanced Topics

• Advanced configuration language expression features:
  • Strategies for reusability
  • Loops and meta-arguments
  • For expressions
  • Types in the context of expressions

Hardening Security for Terraform

• Implementing shift-left security practices, defense in depth
• Securing state files and managing credentials and secrets with least privilege, rotation, and protection mechanisms
• Identifying where and how security can be compromised in Terraform workflows for government

Reliability of Infrastructure and Testing

• Available automated and manual testing frameworks and methods
  • Current limitations, such as with terratest
• Mitigating drift and unexpected consequences in realistic scenarios
• Balancing developer responsibility with automated testing, using git hooks for validation, terraform-pre-commit, etc.

Automating Terraform, Terraform in Pipelines

• Terraform integration with Spinnaker
• Using automated delivery pipelines to enhance quality assurance, stability, and reliability of infrastructure and Terraform deployments for government
• Adopting GitOps practices in Terraform workflows for government
• Overview of Terraform Cloud and Enterprise, including how these offerings improve Terraform workflows and the availability of other tools and processes such as custom CI/CD pipelines for Terraform, tools like Atlantis, etc.

Complex AWS Infrastructure with Terraform

• Designing and deploying VPCs with Terraform
• Managing EC2 instances and other compute resources
• Configuring AWS networking components
• Integrating AWS services into Terraform-managed infrastructure
• Implementing security best practices for AWS resources in government environments

Summary and Next Steps