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Terraform

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Technology explained

What is Terraform?

Terraform is an Infrastructure as Code platform used to provision and manage cloud infrastructure across providers like AWS, Azure and Google Cloud using declarative configuration.

Terraform is an open-source Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tool created by HashiCorp that lets teams define cloud and on-premises infrastructure in a declarative configuration language (HCL). Instead of manually clicking through cloud consoles or scripting imperative API calls, engineers describe the desired end state of their infrastructure and Terraform determines the steps needed to reach it.

Terraform maintains a state file that maps configuration to real-world resources, enabling it to plan and apply incremental changes, detect drift, and safely destroy resources it manages. Its provider ecosystem covers most major cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud) as well as SaaS tools, making it a common backbone for multi-cloud and hybrid infrastructure automation.

Primary purpose

Declaratively provisioning and managing cloud infrastructure in a repeatable, version-controlled way.

Typical environments
AWSAzureGoogle CloudKubernetesOn-premises data centers
Typical use cases
  • Provisioning multi-cloud infrastructure from a single configuration
  • Standing up repeatable environments (dev/staging/prod) from the same modules
  • Managing infrastructure drift and change through a plan/apply workflow
  • Integrating infrastructure provisioning into CI/CD pipelines
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