Gain insights into Infrastructure as Code with Terraform, sharpen your skills, and prepare for the HashiCorp Terraform Associate certification in a cloud-agnostic way.

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This course is designed to help learners obtain the Terraform Associate certification from HashiCorp. 

You’ve likely picked up this course because you dabbled in Terraform as a hobbyist or in a
development environment, and you’re excited about the possibilities of deploying Infrastructure 
as Code (IaC). It will enable you to sharpen your skills and prove your knowledge with a certification from HashiCorp. Terraform is an amazing tool to deploy Infrastructure as Code in a cloud-agnostic way. We’re excited to share our accumulated knowledge with you through this course.

HashiCorp Terraform Certified Associate Preparation Guide

The command `terraform init` is used to initialize the directory containing a Terraform configuration. Once we’ve written a configuration or cloned one from source control, this is the first command we run.




# Operations of the `terraform init` command

The `terraform init` command performs operations to prepare the directory holding the configuration for use. In general, they’re as follows:

+ **Prepare the state storage**: Whether we’re using a local or remote back-end, `terraform init` prepares that back-end for use by Terraform’s state.

+ **Retrieve modules**: The `terraform init` process checks for any modules being used, retrieves the modules from their source location, and places them in the config directory.

+ **Retrieve plugins:**  The `terraform init` process looks for all references, direct and indirect, to providers and provisioners and then retrieves the plugins from the desired location.

# When to run the initialization

Initialization is safe to run multiple times against a configuration. If nothing has changed about the configuration, Terraform doesn’t make any changes. There are several reasons to run initialization again:


+ We’ve added a new module, provider, or provisioner.
+ We’ve updated the required version of a module, provider, or provisioner.
+ We want to change the configured back-end.


# Arguments

The `terraform init` command has several arguments. The most commonly used ones are listed below:

+ `-backend-config` is used along with back-end information in the configuration file to prepare the back-end for state storage.

+ `-input` can be set to false so that `terraform init` won’t prompt the user for missing information. This is useful in automation scenarios where there’s no user to provide the required input.

+ `-plugin-dir` sets a directory containing the required plugins for the configuration. It prevents the automatic installation of plugins and is useful for regulated and highly secure environments.

+ `-upgrade` can be set to true, which forces the update of any plugins and modules to the newest version allowed by the constraints and update the lock file.

+ `-chdir` specifies the working directory for the command. It assumes the current working directory if it’s not specified.

# Plugins

The `terraform init` command automatically downloads and installs plugins if necessary. Additional plugins can be manually installed in the user plugins directory, which is located at `~/.terraform.d/plugins` on Linux/Mac operating systems and `%APPDATA%\terraform.d\plugins` on Windows.

>Note: The behavior of provider plugin installation changed significantly in Terraform version 0.13 with the use of the `required_providers` block to specify alternative plugin registries, both public and private.

# Examples

Let’s take a look at a Terraform configuration example to demonstrate how `terraform init` performs its actions. In the following example, we’re using the `aws` provider and `vpc` module.

Learn when and how to initialize a terraform working directory.

Introduction to the Course

Introduction to Infrastructure as Code

Basics of Terraform

Outside the Workflow: Using the Terraform CLI

Terraform Modules

Navigate Terraform Workflow

Implement and Maintain State

Read, Generate, and Modify Configuration

Understand Terraform Enterprise Capabilities

Conclusion

Initialize a Terraform Working Directory

Operations of the `terraform init` command

Initialize a Terraform Working Directory

Operations of the terraform init command

Operations of the `terraform init` command