Terraform Best Practices for Production

After years of working with Terraform in production environments, I’ve compiled a list of practices that help maintain sanity when managing infrastructure at scale.

Module Structure

Organize your Terraform code into reusable modules:

modules/
├── networking/
├── compute/
├── database/
└── security/

State Management

Remote state is non-negotiable for team environments:

terraform {
  backend "s3" {
    bucket         = "terraform-state"
    key            = "prod/terraform.tfstate"
    region         = "us-west-2"
    encrypt        = true
    dynamodb_table = "terraform-locks"
  }
}

Key Practices

1. Use workspaces sparingly - Prefer separate state files per environment
2. Version your modules - Pin to specific versions in production
3. Implement drift detection - Regularly run terraform plan
4. Use data sources - Reference existing resources safely

Testing

Automated testing is crucial:

• Use terraform validate in CI
• Implement integration tests with Terratest
• Run security scans with tfsec