Why Terraform?

With Terraform, you can use a simple configuration syntax to deploy:

• Cloud infrastructure resources (including compute and storage services).
• Cloud resources (such as Cloud Build and Cloud Deploy) for automating CI/CD pipelines.

This is known as Infrastructure as Code, and advantages include:

• Using a declarative approach to define an outcome that the Terraform engine will strive to achieve
• Tracking changes to configuration using version control

Full stack developers are generally already familiar with using a variety of configuration files for managing various settings for their applications. A typical sampling of these files might include:

• package.json (opens in a new tab)
• tsconfig.json (opens in a new tab)
• next.config.ts (opens in a new tab)
• .eslintrc (opens in a new tab)
• .editorconfig (opens in a new tab)
• .prettierrc (opens in a new tab)
• launch.json (opens in a new tab)

Terraform adds a few more files to the developer's configuration repertoire, but don't let this discourage you. This guide will walk you through the basics of what you need to know to get up and running quickly. Once you become familiar with Terraform, you'll appreciate the effort saved from trying to wrangle infrastructure manually.