Getting Started with Terraform

Terraform is an Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tool by HashiCorp that lets you define and provision infrastructure using a declarative configuration language called HCL (HashiCorp Configuration Language). Rather than clicking through a cloud console or writing imperative scripts, you describe the end state you want and Terraform figures out how to get there.

Why Terraform?

• Cloud-agnostic — Works with AWS, GCP, Azure, and hundreds of providers including Cloudflare, GitHub, and Datadog
• State management — Tracks what’s actually deployed via a state file, so it knows what needs to change
• Plan before apply — Preview exactly what will be created, modified, or destroyed before anything happens
• Declarative — You describe what you want, not how to create it
• Idempotent — Running the same configuration multiple times produces the same result

Installing Terraform

On macOS with Homebrew: