Terraform Directory Structure - The Right Way

Are you managing your Terraform projects correctly? A well-structured Terraform directory ensures scalability, reusability, and efficient infrastructure management. Let's dive into best practices!

Environments

Separate Configs for Dev, Staging & Prod

Managing multiple environments? Here's how to structure them:

Each contains:

main.tf - Defines cloud resources.

variables.tf - Declares variables without values.

outputs.tf - Stores Terraform outputs for dependencies.

terraform.tfvars - Provides values for variables.

This will isolates Dev, Staging, and Production setups. Avoids accidental production changes. Makes configurations modular & reusable.

Modules - Reusable Infrastructure Components

Instead of repeating code, Terraform Modules help reuse configurations.

This helps in following:

Eliminates duplicate code - Define once, use everywhere.

Ensures consistency across environments.

Faster deployment - Just call the module.

Scripts - Automate Terraform Workflows

Automation is key in DevOps & laC.Saves time by automating Terraform operations.Reduces errors while setting up infrastructure.

Core Terraform Files - The Brains of Your Infrastructure

These files are the foundation of your Terraform project:

This helps in following:

Keeps Terraform state secure instead of local files.

Prevents conflicts in team environments.

Why This Directory Structure Matters?

Organized, modular, and scalable Terraform projects.

Prevents accidental changes in production.

Reusable infrastructure with Terraform Modules.

Automated setup & cleanup with scripts.

Summary and Conclusions

Proper Terraform Directory Structure helps a lot in scalability and adoption across multiple environments of project more easy to achieve and stablity is by-product of such an structure with projects.

Author

Sagar Mehta is Atgen Software Solutions Founder and a recognised expert in the field of Intelligent Automation, including Robotic Process Automation, Workload Automation, DevOps, SRE and Advanced Analytics. Sagar advocates a pragmatic approach to Automation, encouraging a policy of using ‘the best tool for the job’.

Prior to co-founding Atgen Software Solutions, Sagar worked in Senior Automation roles, architecting and delivering robust, scalable solutions for many of the world’s biggest banks and working with leading Automation vendors. He developed his first automated solution in 2006 and has continued to deliver robust, scalable and sophisticated Automation ever since.

Sagar is a regular guest speaker and panellist at Automation seminars, conferences and user group events.