Installing Terraform

In this lesson, you'll learn how to install Terraform—a powerful tool for managing infrastructure as code. Terraform is distributed as a single binary that you can download from the official Terraform website. Once downloaded, simply place the executable in your system's PATH and verify the installation by checking its version.

Terraform supports Windows, macOS, and a range of Linux distributions. For the purposes of this lesson, all examples and labs will use Terraform version 0.13 on a Linux machine.

Installing Terraform 0.13 on Linux

Follow these steps to install Terraform 0.13 on a Linux system:

1. Open your terminal.
2. Download the Terraform 0.13 binary.
3. Unzip the downloaded file.
4. Move the Terraform executable to /usr/local/bin so that it is accessible from anywhere.
5. Verify the installation by checking the Terraform version.

Run the following commands:

wget https://releases.hashicorp.com/terraform/0.13.0/terraform_0.13.0_linux_amd64.zip
unzip terraform_0.13.0_linux_amd64.zip
mv terraform /usr/local/bin
terraform version

You should see output similar to:

Terraform v0.13.0

Working with Terraform

After installing Terraform, you can begin deploying resources using configuration files written in the HashiCorp Configuration Language (HCL). These files have a .tf extension and can be edited with any text editor or IDE.

For example, consider the following HCL snippet that defines an AWS EC2 instance resource:

resource "aws_instance" "webserver" {
  ami           = "ami-0c2f25c1f66a1ff4d"
  instance_type = "t2.micro"
}

Understanding Terraform Resources

A resource in Terraform represents an object managed by the tool. This can range from local files to virtual machines, cloud services, and beyond. Here’s a quick overview of some common resource types:

Terraform enables you to provision hundreds of resources across multiple cloud providers (such as AWS, GCP, or Azure) as well as manage on-premises infrastructure.

Getting Started with Simple Resources

In the initial sections of this lesson, we focus on two simple resource types:

• A local file resource.
• A special resource called a random pet.

These examples are designed to help you understand key concepts such as resource lifecycle management and the basics of HCL syntax. Once you have a solid grasp of these fundamentals, you'll be better prepared to deploy more complex, real-world infrastructure scenarios later in the lesson.