Infrastructure as Code (Terraform Basics)

Stop clicking around in cloud consoles. Define your servers, networks, and databases in version-controlled files you can review and apply - that's Infrastructure as Code, and Terraform is how a huge slice of the industry does it.

1. Why Click-Ops Doesn't Scale Clicking through a cloud console is unrepeatable, undocumented, and drifts over time. Infrastructure as Code fixes this by letting you declare the desired state of your infrastructure in version-controlled files - you describe what you want, not the steps to get there.
2. How Terraform Works Terraform reads declarative .tf files describing the resources you want, then runs a core loop - init pulls plugins, plan previews the diff, apply makes it real. State is the file where Terraform records what it built, and for teams that state must be stored remotely and locked.
3. Using It Safely The safety habits that make Terraform trustworthy: always read the plan before you apply, use modules to reuse infrastructure instead of copy-pasting, and respect the three dangers - drift when someone changes things by hand, destroy operations that delete real resources, and secrets that end up readable in state.