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

 

Hello, I'm Kita

Spring is almost over, isn't it? (Time flies!) We
've had so many new graduates join us this year, and we're conducting their training in a friendly and harmonious atmosphere.
They're actively asking questions, and I feel like we're having a really fulfilling training experience.

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

The importance of "Infrastructure as Code (IaC)" is increasing in the construction and operation of cloud infrastructure. Against
this backdrop, we held an internal study session, "Introduction to Terraform Hands-on," to deepen our understanding of infrastructure automation.

To be honest, I only started seriously using Terraform a few months ago, and I, Nezumi-san'm still learning from my

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 is often done manually, leading to challenges such as errors, reliance on specific individuals, and lack of reproducibility.
Terraform is a tool that allows you to manage cloud infrastructure configurations with code, offering the following advantages:

• 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

The course materials utilize 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 clear purpose and narrowing down the target audience,
I think we were able to prevent a mismatch between what the participants wanted and what we offered.

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 consisted of lectures, while the second half was a hands-on session where participants actually built VPCs and EC2 instances.
Many participants expressed surprise at the experience of easily building and rebuilding infrastructure using code through CLI operations.

[Terraform Introduction Course] Overview of IaC and Terraform

[Terraform Introduction Course] Basic operation solution and practice

Participant comments

We had sales staff who weren't engineers, as well as development engineers, participate in
the study session, and afterwards 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 with the power to significantly change the way infrastructure is built.
Through this study session, I felt that our understanding of IaC (Infrastructure as Code) has steadily improved within our company by introducing us to the concept and practical skills involved.

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