Terraform foundations
Declarative configuration, providers, resources, dependencies, variables, locals, outputs, and data sources.
A deliberate beginner scope
Learn Terraform before automating Terraform
The workshop concentrates on the Terraform skills engineers need to understand, review, and operate infrastructure changes. Participants deploy real Azure infrastructure themselves from the VS Code terminal.
Primary outcomeTerraform fluency
Deployment methodVS Code terminal
AutomationAdvanced follow-up
Included
A complete Terraform workflow
Predictable change
Formatting, validation, saved plans, plan review, apply, replacement, lifecycle controls, and safe destruction.
State and backends
Why state exists, how locking and remote storage work, and why state must be protected as critical data.
Reusable design
Module boundaries, input and output contracts, composition, iteration, versioning, and consistent tagging.
Git collaboration
Branches, focused commits, pull requests, peer review, and explaining the risk, cost, and intent of a change.
Day-two operations
Drift, import, moved resources, provider upgrades, troubleshooting, decommissioning, and responsible cleanup.
Hands-on sequence
Participants operate every stage
01
Author
Write and format Terraform configuration in VS Code.
02
Validate
Initialize providers and check configuration before planning.
03
Review
Save and inspect the plan, then explain the proposed change.
04
Apply and verify
Apply the reviewed plan, inspect Azure, and clean up safely.
Not included in the beginner path
Delivery automation comes later
Deploying Terraform through GitHub Actions introduces several concepts at once: workflow syntax, OIDC, federated identities, GitHub environments, Azure RBAC, remote state, runner networking, approvals, and troubleshooting across multiple systems. Those are useful topics, but they compete with the primary goal of learning Terraform.
CI/CD deployment pipelines
Participants do not build or run Terraform deployment workflows in GitHub Actions or Azure DevOps. This removes pipeline access, workload identities, protected environments, and runner infrastructure from the workshop prerequisites.
Production promotion
Multi-environment promotion, production approvals, release orchestration, and enterprise runner operations are not beginner exercises. They require governance decisions beyond Terraform language and workflow fundamentals.
Natural continuation
Automation is a focused next course
After participants can reason about Terraform plans, state, authentication, and failure modes, a follow-up workshop can automate the same lifecycle with GitHub Actions, workload identity federation, protected environments, private runner connectivity, policy checks, and deployment approvals.