How to Pass your Terraform Associate Exam in 30 Days!
Tags: iac, aws, azure, googlecloud
Published: 2022-12-18 09:36:37

**<u>This post was designed to provide an easy to use guideline on how to pass your Terraform Associate</u>**

So you are probably reading this post as either your company / organization is transitioning to using Terraform as IaC standard tool in your environment or you are taking this course on as a personal challenge. For either reason, adding the Terraform certification to your Resume' is gonna make you stand out for that promotion or get you contacted for Interviews in no time.

First up there is a common spread rumor that the terraform associate exam is a expert level exam that requires months on end studying and labbing, whilst I agree both Labbing and Theory based understanding of the technology will help you pass, it is definitely not a expert level qualification. As per the image below, once you have passed the exam your Credly badge even states this exam is at Foundational level. De-mystifying thoughts that this exam incredibly difficult.


![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/j60iceeiovtvspxt44bj.png)

I would recommend you spend 30 Days getting the actual credential as its also fairly cheaper than most Certification exams at $70.50 dollars at the time of writing this article. If you spend at least 1 Hour a day of studying and pulling in a few extra hours on the weekend, you stand a very good chance of passing. I have quite a Demanding Job, working for an MSP Environment supporting multiple clients with their AWS Infrastructure across the EMEA Region.

**<u>What is Terraform? (For those completely new to it)</u>**

Terraform by HashiCorp is an open-source DevOps tool. It allows to build, manage, and define infrastructure across cloud providers. The Terraform tool, also called the Infrastructure Build tool, enables developers to create and modify infrastructure in a secure and efficient environment.

What is awesome about Terraform is that its Vendor Agnostic, most of the Code required construct Infrastructure can be found on the Terraform Registry (https://registry.terraform.io/), I used to spend quite a bit of time using CloudFormation, it took quite some time to learn and construct proper AWS Scripts for re-use across our client landscape however Terraform makes things much more flexible, whilst CloudFormation is an AWS Native tool, Terraform can be used to create and build infrastructure for many Providers, such as Google Cloud Platform, AWS, Azure & Kubernetes. Its a powerful tool that I have grown to love.

**<u>Nice to Have's but not a must</u>**

1.) JSON - Interpretation (Not necessarily construct) being able to read and understand JSON.
2.) Experience with other IaC tools, such as Ansible & CloudFormation.
3.) Bash Experience.

As mentioned above these are just nice to have's considering you are already in the DevOps / Cloud Space you should already have such knowledge or have started looking into studying such toolsets. It would definitely cut down some study time.

**<u>Training Providers Used</u>** 

1.) For those whom can afford the Cloud Academy Subscription - I definitely recommend Jeremy Cook's Terraform Associate course. It has recently been updated and what is awesome about the course is that after each module on the subject matter being studied you get a pop quiz to test your knowledge, followed by Hand's on Labs that you can dig into and get started working on Terraform straight away. I know for me that is what got me confident in my ability and know how of when I would actually be ready to take the exam. So definitely check it out, right at the very end they have a Challenge Exam and Lab where you can test your Exam Readiness, I did this twice over as on the first run, I did not score that great, I went back and read some of the documentation and I was good to go!

https://cloudacademy.com/learning-paths/terraform-associate-certification-exam-preparation-1-2814/

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/j3hul9kdvuq812v2dicf.png)

2.) HashiCorp Certified: Terraform Associate 2023 by Zeal Vora

Whilst I may have skipped a few of the video's as there were modules I was quite confident on, Zeal Vora's course takes a deep dive into how Terraform is used in the perspective of different organizations needs and requirements, how teams work together using Terraform Enterprise / Terrafrom cloud, he walks you through from creating your first GIT Repo, to joining his Discord channel where you can participate and interact with other learners, getting certified as well. He also touches on topics such as Terraform Taint, which is still fair game on the Terraform Exam even though it may not be on the blueprint, so just a tip there.

https://www.udemy.com/course/terraform-beginner-to-advanced/


![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/td1yzycjb2xiqi4zijib.png)

Lastly I challenge you to work and design a personal project of your own using Terraform as you may encounter challenges on your own that may require some  outta the box thinking where you can get to go through the Terraform documentation and actually apply the principles to your own Project and get solutions that way, thats how I actually started out in IT, fixing and solving local tech issues.

In conclusion don't get wrapped around in how complex the exam may look, jump in head first, don't procrastinate and build, share projects on LinkedIN and get recognized for your hard work. A certification after all is just a piece of paper to validate that your have the skills, but the most important takeaway from the course is the Skill itself, Certs will be Certs, But Technical Ability gets you Hired!!!