Terraform Associate Practice Questions 2022

true

True or False? Before a terraform validate can be run, the directory must be initialized.

True

True or False? Each Terraform workspace uses its own state file to manage the infrastructure associated with that particular workspace.

True

True or False? Provisioners should only be used as a last resort.

False "While it's not required, it is highly recommended to specify the version for each module to avoid issues with newer versions of the module that could break your configuration"

True or False? When you are referencing a module, you must specify the version of the module in the calling module block.

TRACE Trace is the most verbose logging level. In order, they go TRACE, DEBUG, INFO, WARN and ERROR

You are having trouble with executing Terraform and want to enable the most verbose logs. What log level should you set for the TF_LOG environment variable?

run a terraform state rm to remove it from state and then destroy the remaining resources by running terraform destroy

You are managing multiple resources using Terraform running in AWS. You want to destroy all the resources except for a single web server. How can you accomplish this?

terraform init -upgrade

You are using Terraform to manage some of your AWS infrastructure. You notice that a new version of the provider now includes additional functionality you want to take advantage of. What command do you need to run to upgrade the provider?

Add the following code to the parent module: output "website" { description = "Outputs the URL of the provisioned website" value = "https://${module.web.public_dns}:8080/index.html }

You are using modules to deploy various resources in your environment. You want to provide a "friendly name" for the DNS of a new web server so you can simply click the CLI output and access the new website. Which of the following code snippets would satisfy these requirements?

execute your terraform on infrastructure either locally or in a Terraform cloud

Beyond storing state, what capability can an enhanced storage backend, such as the remote backend, provide your organization?

Allows infrastructure to be versioned code can be easily shared and reused creates a blueprint of your datacenter

Infrastructure as Code (Iac) provides many benefits to help organizations deploy application infrastructure much faster than clicking around in the console. What are the additional benefits to IaC? (select three)

Terraform makes infrastructure changes defined in your configuration Terraform updates the state file with configuration changes made during execution

What happens when you apply a Terraform configuration using terraform apply? (select two)

Private module registry Remote operations State management

Which of the features below is available in the free version of Terraform Cloud? (select three)

sentinel policies

Which of the following Terraform features is NOT available in the open-source version?

1. update existing infrastructure with new configurations 2. provision new infrastructure 3. destroy infrastructure previously deployed with terraform

Which of the following are tasks that terraform apply can perform? (select three)

enable code reuse supports modules stored locally or remotely supports versioning

Which of the following are the benefits of using modules in Terraform? (select three)

terraform apply -refresh-only

Which of the following commands can be used to detect configuration drift?

terraform console

Which of the following commands will launch the Interactive console to evaluate and experiment with expressions?

standardize your deployment workflow

Which of the following is an advantage of using Infrastructure as Code?

count [count is a reserved word.

Which of the following is an invalid variable name?

it always matches the infrastructure deployed with Terraform

Which of the following is not true about the terraform.tfstate file used by Terraform?

produces nested configuration blocks instead of a complex typed value

Which of the following is the best description of a dynamic block?

a single module can be called many times in a single configuration file

Which of the following is true about working with modules?

Add a data block to your configuration to query the existing resource. Use the available exported attributes of that resource type as needed throughout your configuration to get the values you need.

You have an existing resource in your public cloud that was deployed manually, but you want the ability to reference different attributes of that resource throughout your configuration without hardcoding any values. How can you accomplish this?

True "This is true. If a module or provider is marked as official, it is owned and maintained by HashiCorp themselves."

True or False? Official Terraform providers and modules are owned and maintained by HashiCorp.

False

True or False? Rather than use state, Terraform can inspect cloud resources on every run.

False "A terraform apply will actually run its own "plan" to make sure it knows what resources to update."

True or False? Running a terraform apply will fail if you do not run a terraform plan first.

True

True or False? Terraform Enterprise offers the ability to use Terraform to deploy infrastructure in your local on-premises datacenter as well as a public cloud platform, such as AWS, Azure, or GCP.

False

True or False? Terraform can only manage dependencies between resources if the depends_on argument is explicitly set for the dependent resources.

True "The terraform graph command is used to generate a visual representation of either a configuration or execution plan. The output is in the DOT format, which can be used by GraphViz to generate charts."

True or False? The terraform graph command can be used to generate a visual representation of a configuration or execution plan.

False State is a hard requirement for Terraform

True or False? Under special circumstances, Terraform can be used without state.

False (Starting with Terraform 0.13 and above, terraform init can now automatically download community providers.)

True or False? Using the latest versions of Terraform, terraform init cannot automatically download community providers.

False

True or False? When developing Terraform code, you must include a provider block for each unique provider so Terraform knows which ones you want to download and use.

False

True or False? Workspaces provide similar functionality in the open-source, Terraform Cloud, and Enterprise versions of Terraform.

True "You can change your backend configuration at any time. You can change both the configuration itself as well as the type of backend (for example from "consul" to "s3")."

True or False? You can move Terraform state between supported backends at any time, even after running your first terraform apply.

False These are actually examples of Terraform functions, not expressions. Expressions would be something more in the line of string, number, bool, null, etc.

True or False? min, max, format, join, trim, and length are examples of different expressions in Terraform.

True

True or False? terraform validate will validate the syntax of your HCL files.

terraform provider

What feature of Terraform provides an abstraction above the upstream API and is responsible for understanding API interactions and exposing resources?

update all previously installed plugins to the newest version that complies with the configuration's version contraints

What function does the terraform init -upgrade command perform?

creates an execution plan and determines what changes are required to achieve a desired state in the configuration files

What happens when a terraform plan is executed?

sentinel

Which feature of Terraform Enterprise can be used to enforce fine-grained policies to enforce standardization and cost controls before resources are provisioned with Terraform?

force-unlock

Which of the following Terraform subcommands could be used to remove the lock on the state for the current configuration?

Terraform OSS

Which of the following Terraform versions does NOT support Sentinel?

Terraform Cloud (free) Terraform Cloud for Business Terraform Enterprise

Which of the following Terraform versions offer the ability to use a private module registry? (select three)

1. Terraform can orchestrate large-scale, multi-cloud infrastructure deployments 2. Terraform is cloud agnostic 3. A single configuration file can use multiple providers

Which of the following are true statements regarding Terraform? (select three)

enables terraform to fetch data for use elsewhere in the terraform configuration

Which of the following best describes a "data source"?

terraform { required_providers { aws = ">= 3.0"

Which of the following code snippets will ensure you're using a specific version of the AWS provider?

1. Eliminate technical debt resulting from forgotten or stale resources 2. Easily integrate with application workflows (Gitlab Actions, Azure DevOps, CI/CD tools) 3. Safely test modifications using a "dry run" before applying any actual changes

Which of the following is an advantage of using Infrastructure as Code? (select three)

subnet = module.prod_subnet.subnet_id

You have a module named prod_subnet that outputs the subnet_id of the subnet created by the module. How would you reference the subnet ID when using it for an input of another module?

No, it can only refer to the variables passed to the module

You have a number of different variables in a parent module that calls multiple child modules. Can the child modules refer to any of the variables declared in the parent module?

terraform apply -refresh-only

You have deployed your network architecture in AWS using Terraform. A colleague recently logged in to the AWS console and made a change manually and now you need to be sure your Terraform state reflects the new change. What command should you run to update your Terraform state?

run terraform plan and inspect the proposed changes

You have your production environment deployed with Terraform. A developer request that you update a load balancer configuration to better work with the application. After modifying your Terraform, how can you perform a dry run to ensure no unexpected changes will be made?

use a map to satisfy this requirement

You need to input variables that follow a key/value type structure. What type of variable would be used for this use case?

export TF_VAR_user=dbadmin01 "You need to use TF_VAR_ to set an environment variable for use with Terraform"

You need to set the value for a Terraform input variable. Which of the following allows you to set the value using an environment variable?

see image

You need to use multiple providers in Terraform to accomplish a task. Which of the following can be used to configure the settings for multiple providers?

Terraform OSS/CLI Terraform Enterprise

You want to use Terraform to deploy resources across your on-premises infrastructure and a public cloud provider. However, your internal security policies require that you have full control over both the operating system and deployment of Terraform binaries. What versions of Terraform can you use for this? (select two)

resource block

You want to use a Terraform provisioner to execute a script on the remote machine. What block type would use to declare the provisioner?

Develop code that provisions new application servers programmatically. Use monitoring software to trigger a pipeline that deploys additional servers during periods of increased demand

You work for a retail organization that has multiple peak seasons throughout the year. During those peak seasons, your applications need to be scaled up quickly to handle the increased demand. However, the deployment of application servers is manual and new servers are only deployed when problems are reported by users. How can you reduce the effort required to deploy new resources, increase the speed of deployments, and reduce or eliminate the negative experiences of your customers?

in the .terraform/modules folder in the working directory

You've included two different modules from the official Terraform registry in a new configuration file. When you run a terraform init, where does Terraform OSS download and store the modules locally?

environment variables credentials file

Your co-worker has decided to migrate Terraform state to a remote backend. They configure Terraform with the backend configuration, including the type, location, and credentials. However, you want to better secure this configuration. Rather than storing them in plaintext, where should you store the credentials? (select two)

terraform fmt

Your colleague provided you with a Terraform configuration file and you're having trouble reading it because parameters and blocks are not properly aligned. What command can you run to quickly update the file configuration file to make it easier to consume?

using terraform import, import the existing infrastructure into your terraform state

Your organization has moved to AWS and has manually deployed infrastructure using the console. Recently, a decision has been made to standardize on Terraform for all deployments moving forward. What can you do to ensure that the existing resources are managed by Terraform moving forward without causing interruption to existing resources?

terraform apply -refresh-only

Your organization has multiple engineers that have permission to manage Terraform as well as administrative access to the public cloud where these resources are provisioned. If an engineer makes a change outside of Terraform, what command can you run to detect drift and update the state file?

False

True or False? A provider block is required in every configuration file so Terraform can download the proper plugin.

using the same provider with different configurations for different resources

A provider alias is used for what purpose in a Terraform configuration file?

terraform workspace new stage

A user has created three workspaces using the command line - prod, dev, and test. The user wants to create a fourth workspace named stage. Which command will the user execute to accomplish this?

use terraform apply -replace to tag the resource for replace

After deploying a new virtual machine using Terraform, you find that the local script didn't run properly. However, Terraform reports the virtual machine was successfully created. How can you force Terraform to replace the virtual machine without impacting the rest of the managed infrastructure?

in the terrafrom.tfstate file on the backend

By default, where does Terraform CLI store its state?

current working directory

By default, where does Terraform OSS/CLI store its state file?

modify the current state, such as removing items

Complete the following sentence: The terraform state command and subcommands can be used to ___________.

TF_VAR

Environment variables can be used to set the value of input variables. The environment variables must be in the format "____"_<variablename>. Select the correct prefix string from the following list.

run a terraform state rm command to remove the Cloud SQL instance from terraform management before running the terraform destroy command

Freddy and his co-worker Jason are deploying resources in GCP using Terraform for their team. After resources have been deployed, they need to destroy the cloud-based resources to save on costs. However, two other team members, Michael and Chucky, are using a Cloud SQL instance for testing and are asking to keep it running. How can Freddy and Jason easily destroy all other resources without negatively impacting the database?

Private module registry

Given the definition below, what Terraform feature is being described? "helps you share Terraform providers and Terraform modules across your organization. It includes support for versioning, a searchable list of available providers and modules, and a configuration designer to help you build new workspaces faster."

This prevents others from acquiring the lock and potentially corrupting your state

If supported by your backend, Terraform will lock your state for all operations that could write state. What purpose does this serve?

Terraform analyzes any expressions within a resource block to find references to other objects and treats those references as implicit ordering requirements when creating, updating, or destroying resources

In Terraform, most resource dependencies are handled automatically. Which of the following statements describes best how Terraform resource dependencies are handled?

input variables

In order to make a Terraform configuration file dynamic and/or reusable, static values should be converted to use what?

10 -parallelism=n

In order to reduce the time it takes to provision resources, Terraform uses parallelism. By default, how many resources will Terraform provision concurrently during a terraform apply?

eliminates API communication to the target platform

Infrastructure as Code (IaC) provides many benefits to help organizations deploy application infrastructure much faster than manually clicking in the console. Which is NOT an additional benefit to IaC?

terraform cloud for business

Terraform Cloud Agents are a feature that allows Terraform Cloud to communicate with private infrastructure, such as VMware hosts running on-premises. Which version of Terraform Cloud supports this feature?

terraform fmt

Larissa is an experienced IT professional and is working to learn Terraform to manage the F5 load balancers that front-end customer-facing applications. Larissa writes great code, but her formatting seldom meets the Terraform canonical formatting and style recommended by HashiCorp. What built-in tool or command can Larissa use to easily format her code to meet the recommendations for formatting Terraform code?

multiple provider blocks using an alias

Scenario: You are deploying a new application and want to deploy it to multiple AWS regions within the same configuration file. Which of the following features will allow you to configure this?

terraform validate

Stephen is writing brand new code and needs to ensure it is syntactically valid and internally consistent. Stephen doesn't want to wait for Terraform to access any remote services while making sure his code is valid. What command can he use to accomplish this?

terraform state show aws_instance.frontend

Steve is a developer who is deploying resources to AWS using Terraform. Steve needs to gather detailed information about an EC2 instance that he deployed earlier in the day. What command can Steve use to view this detailed information?

Trace

Terraform has detailed logs that can be enabled using the TF_LOG environment variable. Which of the following log levels is the most verbose, meaning it will log the most specific logs?

TF_LOG

Terraform has detailed logs which can be enabled by setting the _________ environmental variable.

local-exec provisioner

Terraform includes two types of provisioners. Which provisioner type will invoke a process on the machine executing Terraform?

macOS Linux FreeBSD Windows Solaris

Terraform is distributed as a single binary and available for many different platforms. Select all Operating Systems that Terraform is available for. (select five)

run terraform plan -out=thomas

Thomas has recently developed a new Terraform configuration in a new working directory and is very cost-conscious. After running a terraform init, how can Thomas perform a dry run to ensure Terraform will create the right resources without deploying real-world resources?

can be used across major cloud providers and VM hypervisors

Using multi-cloud and provider-agnostic tools like Terraform provides which of the following benefit?

.tfvars file

Variables and their default values are typically declared in a main.tf or variables.tf file. What type of file can be used to set explicit values for the current working directory that will override the default variable values?

terraform destroy terraform apply -destroy

What CLI commands will completely tear down and delete all resources that Terraform is currently managing? (select two)

state - Parallelism is the way Terraform can deploy many resources at the same time to speed up the deployment - Local variables are used to reduce repeating the same expressions or values over and over in your code - Resource blocks are the block type that deploys actual resources

What feature does Terraform use to map configuration to resources in the real world?

terraform console

What Terraform command can be used to evaluate and experiment with expressions in your configuration?

downloads plugins and retrieves the code for referenced modules

What actions does a terraform init perform for you?

determine the correct order to destroy resources increased performance mapping config to real world resources

What are some of the features of Terraform state? (select three)

rewrite terraform configuration files to a canonical format and style

What does the command terraform fmt do?

private module registry

What feature of Terraform Cloud and/or Terraform Enterprise allows you to publish and maintain a set of custom modules which can be used within your organization?

secrets are persisted to the state file

What is the downside to using Terraform to interact with sensitive data, such as reading secrets from Vault?

1. the ability to programmatically deploy infrastructure 2. the reduction of misconfigurations 3. your infra configurations can be version controlled and stored in a code repository alongside the application code

What of the following are benefits of using Infrastructure as Code? (select three)

in the .terraform/modules subdirectory in the current working directory

When initializing Terraform, you notice that Terraform's CLI output states it is downloading the modules referenced in your code. Where does Terraform cache these modules?

Plugins directory Terraform registry Official HashiCorp releases site Terraform plugin cache

When using Terraform, where can you install providers from? (select four)

use environmental variables directly in the provider block by hardcoding or using a variable integrated services (AWS IAM)

When using a Terraform provider, it's common that Terraform needs credentials to access the API for the underlying platform, such as VMware, AWS, or Google Cloud. While there are many ways to accomplish this, what are three options that you can provide these credentials? (select three)

defined outside of terraform

Where is the most secure place to store credentials when using a remote backend?

terraform validate

Which Terraform command will check and report errors within modules, attribute names, and value types to make sure they are syntactically valid and internally consistent?

terraform apply -replace=<address>

Which Terraform command will force a resource to be destroyed and recreated even if there are no configuration changes that would require it?

It can be versioned It can be shared It can be reused

Which are some of the benefits of using Infrastructure as Code in general? (select three)

terraform state list

Which common action does not cause Terraform to refresh its state?

Sentinel runs before a configuration is applied, therefore potentially reducing cost for public cloud resources

Which statement below is true regarding using Sentinel in Terraform Enterprise?

terraform workspace

You have a configuration file that you've deployed to one AWS region already but you want to deploy the same configuration file to a second AWS region without making changes to the configuration file. What feature of Terraform can you use to accomplish this?

use the s3 backend using the encrypt option to ensure state is encrypted store in a remote backend that encrypts state at rest

You are worried about unauthorized access to the Terraform state file since it might contain sensitive information. What are some ways you can protect the state file? (select two)

JSON

While Terraform is generally written using the HashiCorp Configuration Language (HCL). What other syntax can Terraform be expressed in?

terraform apply -refresh-only

You are an Infrastructure Engineer at Strategies, Inc, which is a new organization that provides marketing services to startups. All of your infrastructure is provisioned and managed by Terraform. Despite your pleas to not make changes outside of Terraform, sometimes the other engineers log into the cloud platform and make minor changes to resolve problems. What Terraform command can you use to reconcile the state with the real-world infrastructure in order to detect any drift from the last-known state?

Before applying the new configuration, Terraform will refresh the state and recognize the manual change. It will update the resource based on the desired state as configured in the Terraform configuration. The manual change will no longer exist

You are working on updating your infrastructure managed by Terraform. Before lunch, you update your configuration file and run a terraform plan to validate the changes. While you are away, a colleague manually updates a tag on a managed resource directly in the console (UI). What will happen when you run a terraform apply?

Nothing will happen. Terraform will validate the infrastructure matches the desired state

You have infrastructure deployed with Terraform. A developer recently submitted a support ticket to update a security group to permit a new port. To satisfy the ticket, you update the Terraform configuration to reflect the changes and run a terraform plan. However, a co-worker has since logged into the console and manually updated the security group. What will happen when you run a terraform apply?

Terraform needs to initialize the directory and download the required plugins

You have recently cloned a repo containing Terraform that you want to test in your environment. Once you customize the configuration, you run a terraform apply but it immediately fails. Why would the apply fail?

output block

A child module created a new subnet for some new workloads. What Terraform block type would allow you to pass the subnet ID back to the parent module?

terraform init

After hours of development, you've created a new Terraform configuration from scratch and now you want to test it. Before you can provision the resources, what is the first command that you should run?

TRACE

After running into issues with Terraform, you need to enable verbose logging to assist with troubleshooting the error. Which of the following values provides the MOST verbose logging?

TF_LOG=TRACE

After running terraform apply, you notice some odd behavior and need to investigate. Which of the following environment variables will configure Terraform to write more detailed logs to assist with troubleshooting?

terraform cloud maintains the state version and run history for each workspace CLI workspaces are alternative state files in the same working directory

Both Terraform CLI and Terraform Cloud offer a feature called "workspaces". Which of the following statements are true regarding workspaces? (select three)

state locking

Both you and a colleague are responsible for maintaining resources that host multiple applications using Terraform CLI. What feature of Terraform helps ensure only a single person can update or make changes to the resources Terraform is managing?

the resource is marked as tainted

During a terraform apply, a resource is successfully created but eventually fails during provisioning. What happens to the resource?

use terraform import to import the existing resources under terraform management

Harry has deployed resources on Azure for his organization using Terraform. However, he has discovered that his co-workers Ron and Ginny have manually created a few resources using the Azure console. Since it's company policy to manage production workloads using IaC, how can Harry start managing these resources in Terraform without negatively impacting the availability of the deployed resources?

since he has introduced a new provider, a terraform init needs to be run to download the infobox plugins

Henry has been working hard on automating his infrastructure for a new application using Terraform. His organization has standardized on Azure for application workloads. Currently, he has his application running successfully, but he has added a new resource to create a DNS record using the Infoblox provider. He has added the new resource but gets an error when he runs a terraform plan. What should Henry do first before running a plan and apply?

run a terraform plan and validate the changes that will be made

Oscar is modifying his Terraform configuration file but isn't 100% sure it's correct. He is afraid that changes made could negatively affect production workloads. How can Oscar validate the changes that will be made without impacting existing workloads?

state

Rather than having to scan and inspect every resource on every run, Terraform relies on what feature to help manage resources?

Bitbucket Cloud Github Enterprise Github.com Azure DevOps server

Terraform Cloud is more powerful when you integrate it with your version control system (VCS) provider. Select all the supported VCS providers from the answers below. (select four)

VCS connections remote runs private module registry

Terraform Cloud provides organizations with many features not available to those running Terraform open-source to deploy infrastructure. Select the ADDITIONAL features that organizations can take advantage of by moving to Terraform Cloud. (select three)

False "You don't have to specify a provider block since Terraform is smart enough to download the right provider based on the specified resources."

True or False? A provider block is required in every configuration file so Terraform can download the proper plugin.

False

True or False? A remote backend configuration is required for using Terraform.

False [If no explicit plan file is given on the command line, terraform apply will create a new plan automatically and prompt for approval to apply it]

True or False? A terraform plan is a required step before running a terraform apply?

true

True or False? Any sensitive values referenced in the Terraform code, even as variables, will end up in plain text in the state file.

True

True or False? By default, Terraform destroy will prompt for confirmation before proceeding.

True

True or False? In Terraform OSS, workspaces generally use the same code repository while workspaces in Terraform Enterprise/Cloud are often mapped to different code repositories.

True

True or False? Infrastructure as code (IaC) tools allow you to manage infrastructure with configuration files rather than through a graphical user interface.

False

True or False? Input variables that are marked as sensitive are NOT written to Terraform state.