Syntax

A Terraform configuration consists of one or more .tf files, which are built around blocks, labels and arguments:

<block> "<label>" {
  <argument> = <value>
}

In this tutorial, you'll get familiar with the three most common block types in Terraform:

1. Provider blocks
2. Resource blocks
3. Data blocks

Blocks

Provider blocks

Terraform is a cloud agnostic infrastructure as code tool, which means that it can be used across various different cloud providers (AWS, GCP and Azure among others).

To work with a given cloud provider, Terraform needs to install a plugin for that provider. Plugins are available in the Terraform Registry.

Use provider blocks to configure provider plugins:

provider "<provider>" {
  <argument> = <value>
}

For example, to configure the Azure provider plugin:

provider "azurerm" {
  features {}
}

Module blocks

Use module blocks to create new Azure NoOps resources:

module "mod_<module>" "<name>" {
  source="<module>"
  version="<version>"
  <argument> = <value>
}

For example:

module "mod_storage_account" "example" {
  source="azurenoops/terraform-azurerm-overlays-storage-account/azurerm"
  version="0.1.0"
  name                     = "examplest"  
  location                 = "northeurope"
  account_tier             = "Standard"
  account_replication_type = "LRS"
}

Data blocks

Use data blocks to read an existing resource:

data "<provider>_<resource>" "<name>" {
  <argument> = <value>
}

For example:

data "azurerm_resource_group" "example" {
  name = "example-rg"
}

References

Blocks can reference arguments and attributes from other blocks.

For example:

data "azurerm_resource_group" "example" {
  name = "example-rg"
}

module "mod_storage_account" "example" {
  source="azurenoops/terraform-azurerm-overlays-storage-account/azurerm"
  version="0.1.0"

  existing_resource_group_name   = data.azurerm_resource_group.example.name
  location                       = data.azurerm_resource_group.example.location
  account_tier                   = "Standard"
  account_replication_type       = "LRS"
}

Now that we're familiar with the Terraform block types and references, let's start creating some resources!