Why it matters

Terraform is the dominant IaC tool. Understanding it applies across clouds.

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The architecture

HCL: declarative config language. Blocks (resource, module, variable), expressions, functions.

Workflow: init → plan → apply → destroy.

Terraform workflowInitdownload providersPlandiff to applyApplyexecute changesState locking prevents concurrent applies from corrupting state
Terraform steps.
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How it works end to end

Providers: AWS, GCP, Azure, Kubernetes, GitHub, Datadog, etc.

Modules: reusable configurations. Local or Registry-hosted.

Backend: remote state (S3, GCS, Terraform Cloud) for team collaboration.

Workspaces: multiple envs from same config.