terraform-infrastructure-as-code_skill

Overview

This skill is a comprehensive Terraform Infrastructure as Code guide that covers resources, modules, state management, workspaces, providers, and advanced patterns for cloud-agnostic deployments. It focuses on practical configuration, lifecycle controls, variable management, and reusable modules to help teams standardize provisioning and reduce manual ops. The skill targets engineers automating cloud infrastructure with Terraform best practices and CI/CD integration.

How this skill works

The skill inspects and explains core Terraform concepts: resources, providers, state files, data sources, variables, outputs, local values, and modules. It walks through common resource patterns (VPCs, subnets, EC2, S3, security groups), lifecycle controls, remote state and data source usage, workspace strategies, and provider configuration. It also details advanced topics like versioned state backends, workspaces for environment isolation, module structure, and CI/CD automation commands and workflows.

When to use it

• When you need repeatable, versioned infrastructure deployed to multiple clouds or accounts.
• When standardizing network, compute, and storage provisioning across environments.
• When you want to separate environment-specific values via workspaces or tfvars.
• When building reusable modules to encapsulate VPCs, clusters, or service stacks.
• When implementing remote state, locking, and collaboration in teams.

Best practices

• Keep state remote and locked (S3 + DynamoDB or equivalent) to avoid drift and conflicts.
• Encapsulate common patterns in modules and surface only necessary variables.
• Use terraform plan and saved plan files in CI/CD; never apply directly from unreviewed changes.
• Use lifecycle rules sparingly (create_before_destroy, prevent_destroy) to control replacement risks.
• Parameterize environments with var files, TF_VARs, or workspaces and avoid hard-coded values.

Example use cases

• Provision a production VPC with public/private subnets, NAT, and security groups via a reusable VPC module.
• Deploy an autoscaling web tier (EC2/ASG) with load balancer and S3-backed remote state for multiple regions.
• Create CI pipelines that run terraform init -backend-config, terraform plan -out, and terraform apply tfplan.
• Migrate local state to a remote backend and enforce state locking to support team collaboration.
• Query existing resources with data sources (AMIs, availability zones, Route53 zones) and reference outputs across stacks.