Terraform on Azure

Terraform is a multi-cloud IaC tool that provides first-class support for Azure through the AzureRM provider. Many organisations choose Terraform for Azure because it supports multi-cloud deployments, has a mature ecosystem, and provides explicit state management. This lesson covers how to configure, authenticate, and deploy Azure resources with Terraform.

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Setting Up Terraform for Azure

Install the Azure CLI and Terraform

# Install Azure CLI
brew install azure-cli    # macOS
# or: curl -sL https://aka.ms/InstallAzureCLIDeb | sudo bash  # Linux

# Install Terraform
brew install terraform     # macOS
# or: sudo apt-get install terraform  # Linux (via HashiCorp repo)

# Verify
az version
terraform version

Authenticate with Azure

az login
az account set --subscription "My Subscription"

Terraform uses the Azure CLI credentials by default.

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Configuring the AzureRM Provider

terraform {
  required_version = ">= 1.5"

  required_providers {
    azurerm = {
      source  = "hashicorp/azurerm"
      version = "~> 3.100"
    }
  }

  backend "azurerm" {
    resource_group_name  = "rg-terraform-state"
    storage_account_name = "stterraformstate"
    container_name       = "tfstate"
    key                  = "webapp.terraform.tfstate"
  }
}

provider "azurerm" {
  features {}
  subscription_id = var.subscription_id
}

Authentication Methods