Terraform Associate Study Notes

Infrastructure as Code Concepts

IaC principles, declarative vs procedural, immutable infrastructure

Domain Weight

Understand Infrastructure as Code (IaC) Concepts accounts for 16% of the 004 exam.

Terraform Associate starts with IaC fundamentals — why organizations adopt it and how Terraform fits the declarative model.

Declarative (Terraform)

Describe desired end state; Terraform calculates the diff and applies changes. Idempotent re-runs converge to target config.

Procedural (Scripts/Ansible tasks)

Step-by-step instructions. Order matters; re-running may not be idempotent without careful design.

Concept	Exam Focus
IaC benefits	Repeatability, auditability, faster provisioning, reduced configuration drift
Immutable infra	Replace resources rather than patch in place — new AMI/instance on change
Mutable infra	Configure existing servers — Chef, Puppet, Ansible after provisioning
Version control	All .tf files in Git — PR review before apply

Terraform vs Alternatives

CloudFormation is AWS-only declarative. Pulumi uses general-purpose languages. Ansible is often imperative/configuration after Terraform provisions.

Exam Focus Areas

Declarative = desired state; Terraform plan shows diff from current state
IaC reduces drift — manual console changes cause state mismatch
Immutable infrastructure pairs with container/AMI replacement patterns

Practice This Domain

Test your understanding with free practice questions at /certifications/hashicorp/terraform-associate/practice — focus on: Define IaC and its benefits, Terraform vs other IaC tools, Immutable vs mutable infrastructure.