Terraform

Terraform at a glance

Terraform is the leading infrastructure-as-code tool, provisioning cloud and on-prem resources from declarative configuration. HashiCorp ships regular releases; following the license change to the BUSL, the community fork OpenTofu is a drop-in alternative many teams evaluate.

For admins the CLI version and the provider versions both matter — pin them (required_version, provider constraints) so runs are reproducible across a team and CI. Upgrades can bring state-format and provider changes; read the upgrade guides, back up (or rely on versioned remote) state, and test in a non-production workspace first. The state file often contains secrets — store it in a secured remote backend with locking, not in a repo. After upgrading Terraform or providers, run a plan and review the diff carefully before applying. Track your version against the support window.