🌱 Day 1 — Introduction to Terraform | 30 Days Terraform Challenge

#aws #awschallenge #terraform #devops

Infrastructure provisioning has evolved from manual setup to complete automation using Infrastructure as Code (IaC). Today, we begin the Terraform 30-Day Challenge with the fundamentals that every DevOps Engineer must know.

🚀 What You Will Learn Today

What is Infrastructure as Code (IaC)
Why IaC is needed in modern DevOps
What Terraform is & its benefits
Problems with traditional provisioning
Terraform workflow lifecycle
Installing Terraform (Windows / Mac / Linux)
Hands-on practice tasks

🧱 What is Infrastructure as Code (IaC)?

Infrastructure as Code means provisioning and managing your servers, networks, databases, and cloud infrastructure using code instead of manual steps.

Simply put:

Manual steps → replaced by code automation.

⚡ Why Do We Need IaC?

✅ 1. Consistency

No more “It works on my machine”.
Same environment for Dev, Staging & Production.

✅ 2. Time Efficiency

Automation can create 50 servers in seconds, not hours.

✅ 3. Cost Management
Easier to:

track resources
delete unused infra
schedule cleanup

✅ 4. Scalability
Deploy to 100+ servers with the same effort as deploying to one.

✅ 5. Version Control
Infra changes stored in Git → rollback anytime.

✅ 6. Reduced Human Error
No manual mistakes.

✅ 7. Team Collaboration
Everyone works on the same infrastructure codebase.

🌍 Benefits of IaC (Quick Summary)

Consistent deployments
Easy cost tracking
Reusable code (write once → deploy anywhere)
Automation saves time
Fewer manual mistakes
Better productivity
Easy to create identical environments
Automated cleanup
Git-based version control
Developers can focus on features instead of infrastructure

🛠️ What is Terraform?

Terraform is an open-source Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tool that automates cloud provisioning across:

AWS
Azure
Google Cloud
Kubernetes
On-Prem
And 200+ providers

You define your infrastructure in simple .tf files, and Terraform handles the rest.

🔁 How Terraform Works (Simple Explanation)

🧩 Terraform Workflow (Core Commands)

Here is the exact lifecycle you use every day as a DevOps Engineer:

terraform init      # Initialize directory
terraform validate  # Validate .tf files
terraform plan      # Preview changes
terraform apply     # Provision infra
terraform destroy   # Delete everything created