13. Managing Multiple Environments

Approaches

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1. Workspaces

Multiple named sections within a single backend

$ terraform workspace new dev
$ terraform workspace list
$ terraform workspace select staging

Pros

• easy to get started

• convinient terraform.workspace expression

• minimizes code duplication

Cons

• prone to human error

• state stored with same backend

• codebase doesn't unambigously show deployment configurations

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2. File Structure

Directory layout provides seperation, modules provide reuse

_modules
  module_1
    main.tf
  module_2
    main.tf

dev
  main.tf
  terraform.tfvars

prod
  main.tf
  terraform.tfvars

Pros

• isolation of backends

  • improved security

  • decreased potential for human error

• codebase fully represents deployed state

• referencing resources acrodd configurations is possible using terraform_remote_state

Cons

• multiple terraform apply required to provision environments

• more code duplication, but can be minimized with modules

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