Azure Terraform tutorial: From zero to production

Series Overview

Azure Terraform Tutorial Series: From Zero to Production is a comprehensive, step-by-step learning path designed to transform how you provision and manage Microsoft Azure infrastructure. Whether you’re migrating from manual ClickOps workflows, scaling microservices deployments, or building enterprise-grade cloud platforms, this series equips you with production-ready Terraform skills through practical, real-world examples.

What You’ll Master

This modular curriculum progresses systematically from foundational concepts to advanced production patterns:

Terraform fundamentals on Azure: Configure the azurerm provider, authenticate with Azure CLI or Service Principals, and understand the terraform init/plan/apply workflow
Core Azure resource provisioning: Deploy Resource Groups, Virtual Networks, Subnets, Network Security Groups, Public IPs, and Linux Virtual Machines with secure SSH configuration
State management and collaboration: Implement remote backends using Azure Storage with state locking, manage secrets with Azure Key Vault, and enable team-based workflows
Modular infrastructure design: Build reusable, composable Terraform modules with proper variable abstraction, output exposure, and version control strategies
Dynamic infrastructure patterns: Leverage variables, locals, count, and for_each to create environment-agnostic configurations for dev/staging/prod deployments
CI/CD automation: Integrate Terraform with GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps Pipelines, and GitOps workflows for automated testing, validation, and deployment
Production best practices: Implement tagging standards, cost estimation with Infracost, policy enforcement with Sentinel or OPA, and compliance-ready architectures

Series Structure

Each module builds progressively on previous concepts, following this architectural progression:

Foundations → Resource Provisioning → State & Secrets → Modularization → Automation → Production Hardening

Who This Series Is For

Cloud Engineers transitioning from manual Azure provisioning to automated IaC workflows
DevOps Teams implementing GitOps and infrastructure automation pipelines
Solution Architects designing scalable, multi-region Azure architectures
SRE Practitioners building self-healing infrastructure with declarative configuration
Platform Engineers creating internal developer platforms on Azure

Prerequisites

Basic familiarity with Azure services (Resource Groups, VNets, VMs)
Comfort with command-line interfaces (Bash or PowerShell)
Understanding of version control with Git
No prior Terraform experience required—we start from scratch

What Makes This Series Different

Modular and Reusable: Every example emphasizes DRY principles, producing code you can adapt for your own projects rather than throwaway demos.

Production-Focused: We don’t stop at “hello world” deployments. Each module addresses real concerns: security, state management, team collaboration, and operational resilience.

Azure-Native Integration: Deep coverage of Azure-specific features like Managed Identities, Azure Storage backends, Key Vault secrets, and Azure DevOps integration—not just generic Terraform patterns.

Hands-On Code: Complete, working examples with full HCL source code, not just conceptual explanations. Clone the repository and terraform apply alongside each lesson.

Best Practices Built-In: Learn proper module structure, naming conventions, tagging strategies, and security hardening from day one—not as an afterthought.

Learning Outcomes

By completing this series, you’ll be able to:

Design and deploy production-grade Azure infrastructure using Terraform
Structure Terraform projects with reusable, testable modules
Implement secure state management and secrets handling
Automate infrastructure deployments through CI/CD pipelines
Scale infrastructure across multiple environments and regions
Troubleshoot Terraform state issues and plan failures
Make informed architectural decisions about when to use Terraform vs. ARM templates, Bicep, or Pulumi

Tools and Technologies Covered

Core IaC: Terraform (with OpenTofu compatibility notes), HCL syntax
Azure Services: Resource Groups, VNets, NSGs, VMs, Storage Accounts, AKS (advanced modules)
State Backends: Azure Blob Storage with state locking
Secrets Management: Azure Key Vault, environment variables, Terraform sensitive variables
CI/CD Platforms: GitHub Actions, Azure Pipelines
Testing & Validation: Terratest, terraform validate, tfsec, Checkov, TFLint
Cost & Policy: Infracost, Azure Policy, Sentinel/OPA

Start Your Journey

Ready to transform your Azure infrastructure into code? Begin with Module 1 to establish your development environment and deploy your first resources.

Whether you’re automating a single project or architecting multi-cloud platforms, this series provides the knowledge, patterns, and confidence to succeed with Infrastructure as Code on Azure.