Passing the HashiCorp Certified Terraform Associate Exam

Last weekend I passed the Hashicorp Certified Terraform Associate exam. The exam is part of HashiCorp’s Cloud Engineer Certification program, which includes Terraform, Vault and Consul certifications. The exam is comprised of approximately 50-60 questions and is proctored online with a one-hour time limit to complete the exam.

Exam Objectives

Listed below are the exam objectives for the Terraform Associate exam.

Understand infrastructure as code (IaC) concepts

Explain what IaC is
Describe advantages of IaC patterns

Understand Terraform’s purpose (vs other IaC)

Explain multi-cloud and provider-agnostic benefits
Explain the benefits of state

Understand Terraform basics

Handle Terraform and provider installation and versioning
Describe plugin based architecture
Demonstrate using multiple providers
Describe how Terraform finds and fetches providers
Explain when to use and not use provisioners and when to use local-exec or remote-exec

Use the Terraform CLI (outside of core workflow)

Given a scenario: choose when to use terraform fmt to format code
Given a scenario: choose when to use terraform taint to taint Terraform resources
Given a scenario: choose when to use terraform import to import existing infrastructure into your Terraform state
Given a scenario: choose when to use terraform workspace to create workspaces
Given a scenario: choose when to use terraform state to view Terraform state
Given a scenario: choose when to enable verbose logging and what the outcome/value is

Interact with Terraform modules

Contrast module source options
Interact with module inputs and outputs
Describe variable scope within modules/child
Discover modules from the public Terraform Module Registry modules
Defining module version

Navigate Terraform workflow

Describe Terraform workflow ( Write -> Plan -> Create )
Initialize a Terraform working directory (terraform init)
Validate a Terraform configuration (terraform validate)
Generate and review an execution plan for Terraform (terraform plan)
Execute changes to infrastructure with Terraform (terraform apply)
Destroy Terraform managed infrastructure (terraform destroy)

Implement and maintain state

Describe default local backend
Outline state locking
Handle backend authentication methods
Describe remote state storage mechanisms and supported standard backends
Describe effect of Terraform refresh on state
Describe backend block in configuration and best practices for partial configurations
Understand secret management in state files

Read, generate, and modify configuration

Demonstrate use of variables and outputs
Describe secure secret injection best practice
Understand the use of collection and structural types
Create and differentiate resource and data configuration
Use resource addressing and resource parameters to connect resources together
Use Terraform built-in functions to write configuration
Configure resource using a dynamic block
Describe built-in dependency management (order of execution based)

Understand Terraform Cloud and Enterprise capabilities

Describe the benefits of Sentinel, registry, and workspaces
Differentiate OSS and TFE workspaces
Summarize features of Terraform Cloud

Study Resources

Here are some recommended resources for learning Terraform.

The Exam

The exam is a combination of true/false, multiple choice, and multi-select questions. There are no ‘hands on’ or practical tasks. The exam is pass/fail type requiring a certain number of questions to be answered correctly to pass. Exam results will be provided immediately after taking the exam.

Summary

Multi-cloud is the future and Terraform provides a cloud agnostic Infrastructure as Code tool allowing Cloud Engineers and Developers to provision and manage multiple cloud environments using one technology.

If you’re planning on taking the exam, good luck!

Thank you for reading!