How did I pass HashiCorp Certified: Terraform Associate
HashiCorp recently made the Terraform Associate certification available for all, earlier it was available only to the employees at HashiCorp Partner Network.
Details about the certification can be found here — https://www.hashicorp.com/certification/terraform-associate/
I took the exam recently and got certified. Wanted to share some tips to ace the exam.
Learning Materials:
HashiCorp documentation is the best place to learn and pass the certification. This is your best friend! Do not miss a single documentation in this link.
https://learn.hashicorp.com/terraform/certification/terraform-associate-study-guide
When I started learning Terraform at work, two of my awesome colleagues helped me to learn Terraform. I also watched and learnt from the two YouTube playlists:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLx8IvB9fmFiyAgZvnzXXkHpFo4Zsq0syM
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLx8IvB9fmFiwxAbRcdg3DivQwo2yx3iZz
Question Pattern:
Disclaimer: This is based on the certification that I took. The percentages and easiness could vary based on the question pattern and your experience level.
I would classify the exam into three parts — easy, medium and tough.
1. Basics of Terraform and Terraform CLI related questions — 40% (Easy)
The exam objectives #1, 2, 3, 4 and 6.
2. Terraform configuration related questions — 30% (Medium)
The exam objectives #5 and 8.
3. Terraform best practices, workspace, TF Cloud vs Enterprise — 30% (Tough)
The exam objectives #7 and 9.
New to Terraform:
If you are new or just learning Terraform and want to do this certification to enhance your career, start learning Terraform:
https://learn.hashicorp.com/terraform
You need to be hands-on to crack the exam. Reading through the documentation is not going to help you pass the exam.
1. Install Terraform and just give terraform command and see what happens.
2. Understand what are the available commands and what does it do especially the output of the commands.
a. When you give terraform init after writing the code, the output of the command will be different than the second time you do init.
3. Get a grip on the order of execution — not just the init, plan and apply sequence. Know when to use fmt, validate, refresh, import.
4. Run the commands and see what happens on the CLI.
5. Do not write the correct code. Make mistakes and see what happens when you do init, fmt, validate, plan and apply.
6. Write and play around the code especially with provider, resource, data, module. Read and understand the gotchas mentioned in the documentation.
7. Create a resource using Terraform, manually change/delete the resource in your cloud console, apply the code and see what happens with respect to the state file.
8. Understand in depth about the usage of state file management in TF OSS and TF Cloud. This will help in knowing and appreciate the concepts of workspace and remote backend.
9. If you have an existing Cloud infrastructure which is not managed by Terraform, import that resource into Terraform cloud and see what happens.
10. Terraform Cloud is free to use for up to 5 users. Though it does not have the full-blown features of Terraform Enterprise, it will give you a sense as to why you would need TF Cloud or Enterprise instead of TF OSS. Will be helpful at your work too!
3–6 Months experience with Terraform:
If you have experience in using Terraform and written lot of TF code, you will find this exam little easy. But you will be really challenged with the questions regarding the state file, backend, Terraform Cloud vs Enterprise related questions.
Read through the documentation and understand when and what it takes to move to Terraform Cloud or Enterprise. The table and FQAs listed here is a good starting point:
https://www.hashicorp.com/products/terraform/pricing/
If you have not used the TF Cloud, try and play around with that. Free to use up to 5 users.
Sample Questions:
Once you have prepared for the certification, you can check out these sample questions from Terraform. Do not expect them to appear on the exam.
https://learn.hashicorp.com/terraform/certification/terraform-associate-sample-questions
More questions to practice. Turja Narayan Chaudhuri has done a great job in creating 20 odd sample questions (as of today). These questions will test your TF knowledge in depth.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnZSMxh5xghzx0LArlqURTQ/videos
