Getting Started with Terraform: Your First IaC Project

Last updated: Apr 13, 2025

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: What is Terraform?

Terraform, developed by HashiCorp, is a leading open-source Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tool. It allows you to define, provision, and manage infrastructure resources (like virtual machines, networks, databases, DNS entries) across various cloud providers (AWS, Azure, GCP) and other services using a declarative configuration language.

Instead of manually clicking through web consoles or writing complex scripts, you describe your desired infrastructure in configuration files. Terraform then figures out how to create, update, or delete resources to match your definition, making infrastructure management more predictable, repeatable, and versionable.

This guide provides a hands-on introduction to get you started with Terraform basics.

2. Installation

Terraform is distributed as a single binary. Download the appropriate package for your operating system from the official Terraform downloads page.

Download the ZIP archive.
Unzip the package. You’ll find a single binary file named terraform (or terraform.exe on Windows).
Move the binary to a directory included in your system’s PATH environment variable (e.g., /usr/local/bin on Linux/macOS, or a dedicated folder added to PATH on Windows).

Verify the installation by opening a new terminal session and running:

terraform --version

Alternatively, use package managers like Homebrew (macOS) or Chocolatey (Windows):

# macOS (Homebrew)
brew tap hashicorp/tap
brew install hashicorp/tap/terraform

# Windows (Chocolatey)
choco install terraform

3. Core Terraform Concepts

3.1 HCL (HashiCorp Configuration Language)

Terraform configurations are written in HCL, a declarative language designed to be human-readable and machine-friendly. Files typically have a .tf extension.

3.2 Providers

Providers are plugins that allow Terraform to interact with specific APIs (e.g., AWS, Azure, GCP, Docker, GitHub). You declare which providers your configuration needs, and Terraform downloads them automatically during initialization.