Understand Terraform Cloud and Enterprise capabilities

Question 1

What is Sentinel?

Answer 1

Sentinel is an embedded policy-as-code framework integrated with the HashiCorp Enterprise products. It enables fine-grained, logic-based policy decisions, and can be extended to use information from external sources.

Question 2

What is the benefit of Sentinel?

Answer 2

Codifying policy removes the need for ticketing queues, without sacrificing enforcement.
One of the other benefits of Sentinel is that it also has a full testing framework.
Avoiding a ticketing workflow allows organizations to provide more self-service capabilities and end-to-end automation, minimizing the friction for developers and operators.
https://www.hashicorp.com/blog/why-policy-as-code/

Question 3

What is the Private Module Registry?

Answer 3

Terraform Cloud’s private module registry helps you share Terraform modules across your organization. It includes support for module versioning, a searchable and filterable list of available modules, and a configuration designer to help you build new workspaces faster.

Question 4

What is the difference between public and private module registries when defined source?

Answer 4

The public registry uses a three-part // format

private modules use a four-part /// format

// example
module "vpc" {
    source = "app.terraform.io/example_corp/vpc/aws"
    version = "1.0.4"
}

Question 5

Where is the Terraform Module Registry available at?

Answer 5

https://registry.terraform.io/

Question 6

What is a workspace?

Answer 6

A workspace contains everything Terraform needs to manage a given collection of infrastructure, and separate workspaces function like completely separate working directories

Question 7

What are the benefits of workspaces?

Answer 7

https://www.hashicorp.com/resources/terraform-enterprise-understanding-workspaces-and-modules/

Question 8

You are configuring a remote backend in the terraform cloud. You didn’t create an organization before you do terraform init. Does it work?

Answer 8

While the organization defined in the backend stanza must already exist

Question 9

You are configuring a remote backend in the terraform cloud. You didn’t create a workspace before you do terraform init. Does it work?

Answer 9

Terraform Cloud will create it if necessary. If you opt to use a workspace that already exists, the workspace must not have anyexisting states.

Question 10

Terraform workspaces when you are working with CLI and Terraform workspaces in the Terraform cloud. Is this correct?

Answer 10

If you are familiar with running Terraform using the CLI, you may have used Terraform workspaces. Terraform Cloud workspaces behave differently than Terraform CLI workspaces. Terraform CLI workspaces allow multiple state files to exist within a single directory,
enabling you to use one configuration for multiple environments. Terraform Cloud workspaces contain everything needed to manage a given set of infrastructure, and function like separate working
directories.

Question 11

How do you authenticate the CLI with the terraform cloud?

Answer 11

Newer Versions:

1. terraform login
2. it will open the terraform cloud and generate the token
3. paste that token back in the CLI
   https: //learn.hashicorp.com/terraform/tfc/tfc_login

Older versions:
keep the following token in the CLI configuration file
credentials “app.terraform.io” {
token = “xxxxxx.atlasv1.zzzzzzzzzzzzz”
}
https://www.terraform.io/docs/commands/cli-config.html#credentials

Question 12

You are building infrastructure on your local machine and you changed your backend to remote backend with the Terraform cloud. What should you do to migrate the state to the remote backend?

Answer 12

terraform init

Once you have authenticated the remote backend, you’re ready to migrate your local state file to Terraform Cloud. To begin the migration, reinitialize. This causes Terraform to recognize your changed backend configuration.
During reinitialization, Terraform presents a prompt saying that it will copy the state file to the new backend. Enter “yes” and Terraform will migrate the state from your local machine to Terraform Cloud.
https://learn.hashicorp.com/terraform/tfc/tfc_migration#migrate-the-state-file

Question 13

How do you configure remote backend with the terraform cloud?

Answer 13

You need to configure in the terraform block
terraform {
    backend "remote" {
        hostname = "app.terraform.io"
        organization = ""
        workspaces {
             name = "state-migration"
       }
    }
 }

Question 14

What is Run Triggers?

Answer 14

Terraform Cloud’s run triggers allow you to link workspaces so that a successful apply in a source workspace will queue a run in the
workspace linked to it with a run trigger.
For example, adding new subnets to your network configuration could trigger an update to your application configuration to rebalance servers across the new subnets.

Question 15

What is the benefit of Run Triggers?

Answer 15

When managing complex infrastructure with Terraform Cloud, organizing your configuration into different workspaces helps you to better manage and design your infrastructure.
Configuring run triggers between workspaces allows you to set up infrastructure pipelines as part of your overall deployment strategy.

Question 16

What are the available permissions that terraform clouds can have?

Answer 16

Terraform Cloud teams can have read, plan, write, or admin permissions on individual workspaces.

Question 17

Who can grant permissions on the workspaces?

Answer 17

Organization owners grant permissions by grouping users into teams and giving those teams priviliges based on their need for access to individual workspaces.

Question 18

Which plan do you need to manage teams on Terraform cloud?

Answer 18

Team Plan

Question 19

How can you add users to an organization?

Answer 19

You can add users to an organization by inviting them using their email address.
Even if your team member has not signed up for Terraform Cloud yet, they can still accept the invitation and create a new account.

Question 20

The Terraform Cloud Team plan charges you on a per-user basis. Is this true?

Answer 20

Yes. The Terraform Cloud Team plan is charged on a per-user basis so adding new users to your organization incurs cost.