HashiCorp Certified: Terraform Associate

Explain what IaC is and its benefits over manual infrastructure management.

Describe the advantages of IaC patterns (idempotency, consistency, reproducibility, version control).

Explain the difference between declarative and imperative approaches to infrastructure provisioning.

Explain multi-cloud and provider-agnostic benefits of Terraform.

Describe how Terraform compares to other IaC tools (CloudFormation, Pulumi, Ansible, Chef).

Install and configure Terraform CLI and use multiple provider configurations.

Describe Terraform workflow steps (Write → Plan → Apply).

Initialize a Terraform working directory using terraform init.

Validate and format Terraform configuration with terraform validate and terraform fmt.

Use terraform plan to preview changes before applying.

Apply changes with terraform apply and destroy resources with terraform destroy.

Understand Terraform's input variables, output values, and local values.

Debug Terraform using TF_LOG and terraform console.

Manage resource imports using terraform import.

Describe when to use terraform taint and terraform replace.

Use terraform state commands to manage state (list, show, mv, rm).

Manage state locks and understand the implications of state corruption.

Describe the benefits of using modules (reusability, encapsulation, consistency).

Differentiate between root modules, child modules, and published modules.

Use modules from the Terraform Registry and local file paths.

Describe module versioning and input/output variable patterns.

Describe Terraform backends and their purpose (local, remote, S3, Terraform Cloud).

Describe how Terraform Cloud enables team collaboration (remote state, runs, policy enforcement).

Configure a remote backend for team-based workflows.