[Internal Study Group Report] We held an introductory hands-on session on Terraform!

 

Hello, I'm Kita

Spring is fast approaching. (It goes by so quickly.) We
have had many new graduates join us this year, and we are having a friendly training session.
They are also proactive in asking questions, and I feel that we are having a very fulfilling training session.

Well, this time we held an in-house study session on introductory Terraform, which was requested by our internal members, so I would like to report on and reflect on it

Introduction

"Infrastructure as Code (IaC)" is becoming increasingly important in building and operating cloud infrastructure.
To deepen our understanding of infrastructure automation, we held an in-house workshop called "Terraform Hands-on Introduction."

I myself only started using Terraform in earnest a few months ago, and I am still studying it with the occasional help of my superior, Nezumi-san

In this article, we will introduce the background to the study session, the content of the day, feedback from participants, and future initiatives

Why learn Terraform?

Traditional infrastructure construction was often done manually, resulting in issues such as work errors, dependency on individual personnel, and lack of reproducibility.
Terraform is a tool that allows you to manage cloud infrastructure configuration using code, and offers the following benefits:

• Improved reproducibility and speed of work
• Visualize and version control the state of your infrastructure as code
• Eliminate dependency on individuals by standardizing procedures

Given this background, Terraform was a technology that was attracting attention and being used within the company

We decided to hold the study group on this topic, as we believe that by having members of each department gain knowledge about infrastructure construction and management, we can contribute in some way to improving the technical capabilities of the entire organization

The study group was held as a hybrid offline/online format, with participants recruited from within the company

For the teaching materials, I use a hands-on repository I personally created for AWS beginners:
https://github.com/shinkitada/education-terraform

Purpose of holding the study session

This internal study session was aimed at people who have never used Terraform before, and had the following objectives:

• Deepen your understanding of infrastructure construction automation
• Build your Terraform foundational skills
• Improving in-house technology

by having a sense of purpose and narrowing down our target,
we were able to prevent a mismatch with what the participants wanted.

Hands-on content

The lecture was divided into two parts, and the basic concepts of IaC and Terraform were explained using slides and demos

• An introduction to IaC and Terraform
• Explanation and practice of basic operations

The first half of the session was classroom-based, and the second half was hands-on, with participants actually building a VPC and EC2 instance.
Many participants were amazed at how easily they could build and rebuild infrastructure using code through CLI operations.

[Terraform Introduction Course] Overview of IaC and Terraform

[Terraform Introduction Course] Basic operation solution and practice

Participant comments

Non-engineer sales staff and development engineers also participated in
the study session, and after the session we received the following feedback:

• "Terraform seemed difficult, but it was fun to actually use it."
• "I was impressed that resources were created in bulk just by applying."
• "The content made me want to use it in my work."
• "I was grateful that the structure was easy to understand even for non-engineers."

My impression is that it may have lowered the conscious hurdle for IaC even a little, so I'm glad I tried it

Future outlook

Following this introductory course, we plan to hold various study sessions in the future

I also plan to blog about them

Conclusion

Terraform is a tool that has the power to dramatically change the way infrastructure is built.
Through this workshop, we were able to gain exposure to the concepts and practical skills of IaC, and I realized that our company's understanding of it has steadily improved.

We hope to continue creating a space where we can share these learning opportunities in the future!