🔹 LEVEL 4: Infrastructure as Code (Terraform)

📘 Official Terraform Tutorials Industry Bible

Why these tutorials: HashiCorp's official guides are comprehensive, free, and always up-to-date with latest Terraform features.

What you'll learn:

• Infrastructure as Code fundamentals
• Terraform syntax and workflows
• State management and backends
• Modules for reusable infrastructure
• Best practices and patterns

📖 Terraform Best Practices Free Guide

Why this guide: Community-driven best practices for production Terraform. Completely free.

Use for: Code structure, naming conventions, module design, testing strategies

❌ REMOVED: AWS with Terraform in 30 Days

Why removed: Too long, too drawn out. You don't need 30 days of videos.

✅ REPLACED WITH: Terraform AWS Full Course - freeCodeCamp Free & Focused

Why this course: 2-hour hands-on project. You'll build a real dev environment from scratch.

What you'll build:

• Complete VPC setup
• Public and private subnets
• Internet gateway and route tables
• Security groups
• EC2 instances
• SSH configuration

Instructor: Derek Morgan

Project 1: Terraform Basics

• Set up Terraform with AWS provider
• Create simple resources (S3 bucket, EC2)
• Practice terraform plan, apply, destroy
• Understand state files
• Configure remote state (S3 + DynamoDB)

Project 2: VPC + EC2 + RDS (Main Project)

• Build the complete infrastructure described above
• Use variables for configuration
• Output important values (EC2 IP, RDS endpoint)
• Document the architecture
• Push Terraform code to GitHub

This is your portfolio centerpiece. Make it clean and well-documented.

Project 3: Terraform Modules

• Refactor Project 2 into reusable modules
• Create modules for: VPC, Security Groups, EC2, RDS
• Use module outputs as inputs to other modules
• Demonstrate module versioning

Project 4: Multi-Environment Setup (Advanced)

• Use workspaces or separate state files
• Deploy dev, staging, and prod environments
• Use Terraform variables files (.tfvars)
• Implement proper tagging strategy

Week 1: Terraform Fundamentals

• Read Terraform: Up & Running chapters 1-3
• Install Terraform and set up AWS credentials
• Complete official Terraform tutorials (Get Started collection)
• Start Project 1

Week 2: State Management & Structure

• Read chapters 4-5
• Watch freeCodeCamp Terraform course
• Learn about state management and backends
• Complete Project 1

Week 3: Building Production Infrastructure

• Read chapters 6-7
• Start Project 2 (VPC + EC2 + RDS)
• Practice: variables, outputs, data sources

Week 4: Modules & Best Practices

• Read remaining chapters
• Complete Project 2
• Refactor into modules (Project 3)
• Optionally tackle multi-environment setup (Project 4)