Terraform can be a great way to automate infrastructure in your system. It’s an infrastructure as code (IaC) open-source tool available through HashiCorp . That allows you to write code in the simplest and most effective way possible.

Rather than having to write your code line-by-line, you describe the end result, and Terraform creates it. The best way to use Terraform, however, is to follow this process.

1. Look Through the Providers Available With Terraform

Terraform partners with over 500 providers to make sure there are as many tools as possible available through Terraform. That means you can find a variety of secondary tools that Terraform can help you.

Write code for. You can more deeply integrate your secondary tools with your overall infrastructure using Terraform. Looking through the list of available providers can help you understand what’s available.

2. Choose Your Providers Wisely and Use Them to the Best of Their Abilities

Next, you need to choose which providers you’re going to use through Terraform. Though you can use Terraform by itself with your current infrastructure provider, the benefit of using a Terraform provider

is that you can dramatically expand the variety of options available to you through Terraform. Not only can you implement these providers into your overall infrastructure, but you can also use them outside Terraform for a variety of other uses.

3. Write Down Your Intended Goals

You should make sure you know your goals with Terraform before you start writing code through it. Even though Terraform uses declarative code.

Which can be much easier to write, you still need to know exactly how you want Terraform to create code, what you want it to do, and what you might not want it to do.

Understanding how you want Terraform to create the code will help you do it more easily, even through the declarative code writing process.

4. Set Down the Code Through Terraform:

Next, you need to actually write the code through Terraform. Terraform uses what’s called “declarative code.”

which differs from traditional code-writing. In traditional code-writing, you write a step-by-step process that the program reads to understand . How to do what you want it to do. Terraform sort of does it the opposite way.

Instead, you describe your ideal end result, and Terraform creates the step-by-step instructions that would be required to make it to that end result.

Of course, due to the potential for errors, it’s still a good idea to look through that code with your own eyes, but typically, Terraform does a great job of crafting the process.

Conclusion:

As you can see, automating your company’s infrastructure with Terraform can be much easier than writing individual pieces of code that allow your company to manage its infrastructure step-by-step.

Plus, with Terraform, it’s much easier to implement third-party elements as part of your company’s infrastructure, as Terraform will automatically help you do so.

No matter what providers you’re hoping to partner with, Terraform provides a great method of doing so.: