Background
I passed the HashiCorp Certified: Terraform Associate 002 exam on Jan 14th 2023. This was my first try, fortunately.
In terms of my Terraform experience prior to the exams, I have yet to build any Terraform project at a production level. My recent exposure was mainly around trying to play around with CircleCI’s Nomad client Terraform setup.
Motivations
In my past career, I have used loads of AWS CloudFormation. _Yes, I have had some battle scars re: IaC._I always wanted to learn more about Terraform, given that it supports more than 1 cloud platform.
In particular, I am interested in contributing a Terraform provider for CircleCI. This means creating a provider/plugin for creating CircleCI webhooks / scheduled pipelines via Terraform for example.
This above may likely be a lofty ambition, but I thought I’d hedge this by also trying for the certification. Kill two birds in one quarter, as they say.
Breakdown of Score
| Content Area | Score (%) |
|---|---|
| Understand infrastructure as code (IaC) concepts | 100 |
| Understand Terraform’s purpose (vs other IaC) | 100 |
| Understand Terraform basics | 85 |
| Use the Terraform CLI (outside of core workflow) | 100 |
| Interact with Terraform modules | 50 |
| Navigate Terraform Workflow | 100 |
| Implement and maintain state | 75 |
| Read, generate and modify configuration | 72 |
| Understand Terraform Cloud and Enterprise capabilities | 100 |
Overall, I scored 84% (70% required).
Word of Advice
If you are not using Terraform on a daily basis, practice Terraform CLI commands definitely!
The exam has a few questions where they may test you to type the code / command required. See sample questions here.
I did have a “doh!” moment, since it wasn’t clear how “complete“ the answer should be.
In particular, one question I got was: How would you reference the vpc_id from this module in the code snippet?
To reference the module output, it would be module.aws_vpc.vpc_id for example. I think the full answer should be: vpc_id = module.aws_vpc.vpc_id.
I had only typed module.aws_vpc.vpc_id due to lack of clarity in the question. I think I likely lost points there!
In terms of studying for it, I highly recommend the following Udemy course + practice exam!
Lastly, there will be a newer exam version (003). I understand this update would remove older questions referring to already-deprecated commands (e.g., taint). So if you can wait, do go for the 003 version instead!
Final Thoughts
It was a fun exam to take, for sure!
Given that it is really about a tool and its ecosystem, I’d highly encourage folks to try out Terraform while practicing for the exam.
Your mileage on the Terraform tool will go a long way if you practice. This way, the exam questions will make way more sense too, as you practice.
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