Terraform best practices

• https://www.terraform.io/cloud-docs/guides/recommended-practices
  • One Workspace per Environment per Terraform configuration
• https://cloud.google.com/docs/terraform/best-practices-for-terraform

Best practices from Google Cloud team

https://cloud.google.com/docs/terraform/best-practices-for-terraform

• Protect stateful resources: lifecycle { prevent_destroy = true }
• Expose outputs: outputs.tf
• Use data sources: data.
• Adopt a naming convention.
• Use variables carefully: variables.tf
• Limit the use of custom scripts
• Follow a standard module structure
• Include helper scripts in a separate directory: helpers/
• Put static files in a separate directory: files/
• Use built-in formatting: terraform fmt
• Limit the complexity of expressions
• Use count for conditional values.
• Use for_each for iterated resources.
• Publish modules to a registry.

Operations

• Don't modify Terraform state manually.
• Always plan first, terraform plan
• Implement an automated pipeline.
• Use service account credentials for CI.
• Avoid importing existing resources.
• Regularly review version pins.
• Use application default credentials when running locally.
• Set aliases to Terraform.

Related

• Best practices
• main
• prevent_destroy

Activities

• Read https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-structure-a-terraform-project

See also

• Terraform best practices, helpers/, prevent_destroy