Course Content
Leverage and integrate Terraform with a mix of expert consulting and hands-on engineering The Hashicorp tool suite has found a distinct place in the DevOps community as a fantastic set of solutions for some of the most common DevOps tooling needs and automation use cases. This 2-day engagement focuses on Terraform as a solution for infrastructure management. Led by an expert, your teams will perform real work and establish guidelines for how to integrate and use Terraform for the use cases they need to adopt or progress.
Unlike a typical training engagement, this program is not simply a presentation of prepared content or scripted labs. This program is designed to place an engineering expert who has extensive experience with Terraform into a workshop setting with your teams so they can collaborate on appropriate integration. Our engineers have assisted many large organizations as they improve their DevOps practice and they bring this experience to your teams. Working together, our expert will provide a blend of technical consulting with hands-on instruction as they assist your organization in effectively using Terraform for infrastructure needs.
Who should attend
This Terraform training class is for engineering teams, leaders, and technology stakeholders who need to help their organization create and manage infrastructure as code using Terraform. The workshop is of particular benefit to:
- Application Developers
- Operations Developers
- IT Directors & Managers
- Development Managers
- Site Reliability Engineers
- Teams practicing DevOps
- CTOs
Course Objectives
- Use Terraform for creating and managing infrastructure as code
- Maintain version control of infrastructure assets just as you do with software assets
- Effectively use Terraform with Docker and Kubernetes for DevOps-style workflows
- Develop and present a business case for Terraform and related tools
- Run Terraform with public cloud infrastructure such as AWS
- Integrate Terraform with other technologies in the workspace
- Learn nomenclature and core features of Terraform and how to apply them
- Determine integration needs and plugin needs
Outline: Managing AWS Infrastructure with Terraform (TERRAFORMAWS)
Part 1: Establishing goals and as-is state for Terraform on your teams
We will spend most of day one facilitating discussion among your teams on current use cases of Terraform, where it has worked well (if you’ve used it) and what the desired outcomes are for progressing adoption and usage of Terraform.
- Infrastructure as code best practices
- The DevOps tie-in
- Enabling the developer role
- Enabling the operator role
- Other roles that can benefit from using Terraform
Breakout group: Framing Terraform as an enterprise tool
Group discussion of the value streams and product impacts which can be expected from progressing the adoption and usage of Terraform on your teams. How to align an organization to the value stream using Terraform features and integration.
Part 2: Setting up machines and scripting for Terraform usage
During this segment of the workshop, we will begin getting hands-on with Terraform in your own environment and mapping how it will be used. Along the way, your consultant will review fundamentals, including basic engineering patterns and common vocabulary everyone should be using.
- The Terraform console
- Understanding Terraform and architecture patterns
- Syntax
- Variables
- Managing Terraform resources
Part 3: Terraform Modules
This section of the workshop focuses on modules and how they are used. We will use this section to transition into container usage and how
- Introducing modules
- Root modules
- Container modules
- Image modules
Breakout group: Understanding your teams’ Docker and Kubernetes environment
This breakout session is designed to produce a version one map for how Terraform will integrate with existing “DevOps flavored” tools your teams may already be using, chiefly Docker and Kubernetes. During this session, your teams will produce an agreed-upon plan for how containers are treated when using Terraform and which roles the respective tools will play.
Part 4: Sandboxing Terraform
Now that we have established a basic understanding of the use cases where we want to integrate Terraform, we will play with it in AWS. Led by your facilitator, participants will use common features of Terraform to simulate the types of use cases their teams are likely to encounter after the workshop is over.
- Running Terraform in our AWS test environment
- Setting up storage and application architecture
- Networking with Terraform
- Template files
- Using Terraform with your data
Part 5: Terraform and your own teams’ applications
This final segment of the workshop provides guidance from our engineering consultant as we prioritize your teams’ next steps and come to an agreement on the most immediately available value Terraform offers on your teams. We will provide some talking points, but the priority is to use the remaining workshop time to coach your teams on technical and process obstacles we’ve identified.
- Terraform and your infrastructure
- Automation with Terraform
- Versioning with Terraform
- Terraform challenges
- Internal obstacles to maturing your Terraform integration
- Conclusion and charting your course