Free preview lesson · Infrastructure as Code with Terraform · Module 1: Why infrastructure as code
Problems with manual infrastructure
Infrastructure as code means describing servers, networks and services in files that can be reviewed, versioned and applied repeatedly. To see why that matters, start with what goes wrong without it.
Click-ops drift
When infrastructure is created by hand in a web console, nobody has a complete record of what was set up or why. Over time environments drift apart, and recreating one after a failure becomes guesswork.
Declarative configuration
Terraform is declarative: you describe the end state you want, and Terraform works out the changes needed to get there. Running the same configuration twice should make no changes the second time.
Review before change
Because configuration lives in files, changes can go through the same code review as application code. Terraform's plan step shows exactly what will be created, changed or destroyed before anything happens.
Common pitfall
Mixing manual console changes with Terraform-managed resources. Terraform will try to undo changes it does not know about.
Action step
List every cloud resource your team created by hand last month and note which ones you could not rebuild from memory.
This is one lesson from Infrastructure as Code with Terraform.
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