My Terraform Resources List (for those that insist on being “cloud agnostic”)

Over the past several months, I have been ramping up on the Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) templating language called Terraform for a project that I am engaged in.

And while I do not have anything against Terraform (after all, it IS very easy to read), I have stated my opinions on the whole “cloud agnostic” statement via my previous articles: Terraform Is NOT the Cloud Agnostic Platform You Think It Is! and Move Over Terraform, You’re Not The Only Code In Town!

Since I am not on this project as a one-man-show (i.e. I have a team of people I’m working with), I started to put together my list of resources that I’ve found most useful and helpful in this endevour.

And so, since fellow MVP Ned Bellavance tagged me in a tweet as others were asking for references for good books, I thought I would oblige and throw my list up for everyone to enjoy and use.

I've heard good things about #Terraform Up & Running. You might want to ask @AdinErmie about his thoughts.

— Ned is 🌮🏃🦖🦖 (@Ned1313) January 5, 2019

NOTE: I have general resource links I’ve already put up on my blog under Resources. And, whenever I read a technical book, I post a book review with all my notes/highlights from the publication.

Now, onto my Terraform specific resource list. Note that these resources are not listed in any particular order, and I just try to group them into categories for easier reference.

Articles

These are the articles that I’ve found most useful/helpful in learning about Terraform (and I’ve read a lot).

• Using Terraform with Azure – What’s the benefit?
• Terraform Best Practices
• How to create reusable infrastructure with Terraform modules
• A Comprehensive Guide to Terraform
• 7 Tips to Start Your Terraform Project the Right Way
• Terraform Enterprise – Repository Structure
• Terraform Recommended Practices

Books

These are the books that I’ve found most useful/helpful in learning about Terraform. And if you know me personally (or check out my Technical Book Reviews page), you know that I read a lot of books.

• Terraform Up & Running book
  • My book review (aka highlights of points I found of value and use), can be found here: https://adinermie.com/resources/technical-book-reviews/book-review-terraform-up-running-writing-infrastructure-as-code/
  • NOTE: I am also planning to purchase 2^nd edition coming out in June 2019. Look for a new review thereafter.
• The Terraform Book
  • My book review (aka highlights of points I found of value and use), can be found here: https://adinermie.com/resources/technical-book-reviews/book-review-the-terraform-book/

Pluralsight Courses

Even though I have a separate section for “Videos” I want to specifically call out the Pluralsight courses by Ned Bellavance.

• Terraform – Getting Started
• Deep Dive – Terraform

Hands-On Labs

In learning anything new, there is only so much you can learn/pick up from reading alone. That’s why I also appreciate it when I find a good hands-on lab guide to help re-enforce my understanding and learning.

One thing that I especially appreciate about the Azure Citadel site, is that the workshops are not just a step-by-step hold-your-hand type of guide. They start out that way to get you started, but very quickly, they change to “this is what you need to do, go figure out how to do it”. I like this, because it forces you to research and learn, and not just copy/paste.

I’ve even had the privilege of directly contributing to this specific hands-on lab, via Richard Cheney requesting a pre-publish review of the content before it’s released.

• Terraform on Azure (Hands-On Lab)

Videos

Finally, the videos list. This is in addition to the Pluralsight courses themselves (as not everyone may have access or a subscription to Pluralsight).

• Evolving Your Infrastructure with Terraform
• Happy Terraforming! Real-world experience and proven best practices
• HashiCorp Terraform adoption: A typical journey
• HashiConf 2018 Day Two Keynote: Terraform is Changing the World
• Scaling with Terraform: The journey from startup to enterprise
• 5 Lessons Learned From Writing Over 300,000 Lines of Infrastructure Code

Conclusion

My journey with Terraform is just getting started. In fact, the project that I am currently engaged on is estimated to last 2 years; and it’s all about architecting and deploying (and managing, maintaining, etc.) and entire global Enterprise environment using Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) via Terraform! So, check back on my blog regularly, follow me on Twitter, and connect with me on LinkedIn, as I’ll definitely be writing about my real-world hands-on experience in this space.

PS: If any of you find other “bookmark worthy” resources that you think should be added to this list, please do reach out, and I’ll update it accordingly.