Updated June 2026

Manage and Automate Azure Infrastructure with Terraform

Class Duration

21 hours of live training delivered over 3-5 days to accommodate your scheduling needs

Student Prerequisites

Familiarity with Azure Cloud resources and services.
Command-line terminal and basic scripting experience.
Comfortable using an editor such as VSCode or VIM.

Target Audience

Designed for cloud engineers, DevOps/SREs, platform engineers, and software architects delivering on Azure at scale, as well as engineering managers and L&D leaders standardizing infrastructure delivery. Teams seeking consistent, compliant, and auditable provisioning - spanning greenfield and brownfield estates - will gain practical patterns for modularization, state management, policy enforcement, and pipeline integration that accelerate delivery while controlling cost and risk. Engineers wanting deeper platform context can pair this with Designing Azure Infrastructure Essentials.

Description

This live, expert-led course equips engineering teams to deliver secure, scalable Azure infrastructure with Terraform. Participants move from IaC fundamentals and the Terraform CLI to hands-on HCL design, Azure provider setup, and creation of production-grade resources, then master state management, module architecture, and techniques to prevent drift and accelerate reuse. The course advances into enterprise concerns (security and compliance, RBAC, secrets management, performance optimization, and rigorous troubleshooting) before closing with CI/CD, GitOps, automated testing, and governance patterns. The result is a repeatable, auditable infrastructure delivery pipeline that shortens release cycles, reduces risk, and drives cloud ROI. Note that HashiCorp's 2023 license change spawned the OpenTofu open-source fork (a Linux Foundation project with stable 1.x releases since 2024): this course teaches Terraform's HCL and workflows, which work with both Terraform CLI and OpenTofu CLI, and discusses the trade-offs and migration path explicitly.

Learning Outcomes

Explain IaC principles, Terraform’s role on Azure, and when to prefer Terraform over ARM/Bicep.
Execute the Terraform CLI workflow (init/plan/apply/destroy) and organize projects with HCL and providers.
Author robust HCL using variables, locals, validations, functions, tfvars, and environment variables.
Build core Azure resources (RGs, VNets, compute, storage, databases, identity) with secure provider auth.
Design, publish, and version reusable modules with clear interfaces, dependencies, and scalability in mind.
Manage state safely across local and remote backends, handle drift, and import existing Azure resources.
Apply best practices for security, compliance, RBAC/least-privilege, performance tuning, and troubleshooting.
Integrate Terraform into CI/CD and GitOps workflows with automated testing, policy, governance, and monitoring.

Training Materials

All students receive comprehensive courseware covering all topics in the course. Students will access the courseware through GitHub. The courseware is a collection of documents and extensive code samples. Students practice the topics covered through challenging hands-on lab exercises.

Software Requirements

Students will need a free, personal GitHub account to access the courseware. Students will need a computer with a modern web browser, Visual Studio Code, Azure CLI, and Terraform installed.

Training Topics

Introduction to Infrastructure as Code (IaC)

IaC principles and benefits
IaC vs traditional scripting
Terraform overview and role in Azure automation

Getting Started with Terraform

Terraform CLI workflow: plan, apply, destroy
Project structure and HCL files
Providers and resource configuration
Using Terraform documentation
Managing Azure resources

Building Infrastructure on Azure

Terraform architecture and state management
Local and remote backends
Azure provider (azurerm 4.x) authentication and setup
Creating resource groups, networks, and compute
Managing storage, databases, and identity
Terraform vs ARM templates and Bicep

HCL Programming and Configuration Skills

HCL syntax, variables, locals, outputs
Input variable types and validation
Expressions and operators
Functions for dynamic infrastructure
TFVARS and environment variables

Deep Dive into Resources and Modules

Resource blocks, dependencies, meta arguments
Data sources and Azure-specific resources
Designing and using custom modules
Publishing and maintaining reusable modules
Module best practices for scalability

State Management and Importing Resources

State architecture and backends (local, remote, Azure storage)
Managing drift and out-of-band changes
Importing existing Azure resources
Third-party tools for state management

Best Practices and Troubleshooting

Debugging: logs, errors, audit trails
Common state and configuration issues
IaC best practices: version control, modularization, automation
Security and compliance: secrets, least privilege, RBAC
Optimizing performance and resource creation

Advanced Concepts and Enterprise Integration

Terraform in hybrid and enterprise contexts
HCP Terraform (formerly Terraform Cloud) and Terraform Enterprise
DevOps and GitOps with Terraform
CI/CD pipeline integration
Automated testing and validation
Governance and compliance management

Integrating Terraform with Azure and HashiCorp Ecosystem

Azure Key Vault, Monitor, and native integrations
Integration with Vault, Consul, Packer, Nomad
Provisioners for configuration management
End-to-end automation workflows