Providers and State Fundamentals

Introduction

This lesson covers the Terraform fundamentals area of the Terraform Associate (004) exam, objectives 2a to 2d. HashiCorp does not publish domain weights; in this course the area gets a share proportional to its four of 37 objectives (about 11%). The exam lasts one hour, tests Terraform 1.12, and mixes true/false, multiple-choice and multiple-answer questions.

Providers and state are the two ideas that make Terraform work. Providers give Terraform knowledge of a platform. State gives Terraform memory of what it has built. Almost every operational question later in the exam (plan output, drift, imports, backends, HCP Terraform) depends on understanding these two.