Terraform Coding Standards for Azure Infrastructure Projects

Overview

This project aims to establish a comprehensive set of Terraform coding standards designed for enterprise-level projects. The goal is to ensure consistency, maintainability, and best practices across all Terraform configurations within the organization. These standards will guide Terraform code development, enabling teams to collaborate effectively and create robust, scalable, and secure infrastructure.

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Why Coding Standards?
• Scope
• Getting Started
• Coding Standards
  • Directory Structure
  • Domain Specific Files
  • Naming Conventions
  • Resource and State Management
  • Modules
  • Variables and Outputs
  • Version Control
  • Documentation
  • Testing and Validation
• Contributing
• License

Introduction

As organizations scale their infrastructure using Terraform, maintaining consistency and adherence to best practices becomes crucial. This project sets forth a standardized approach to writing, organizing, and managing Terraform code within enterprise environments. The standards outlined here are intended to be flexible enough to accommodate various use cases while being strict enough to ensure quality and security.

Why Coding Standards?

• Consistency: Ensure all Terraform code follows a uniform structure and style, making it easier for teams to collaborate.
• Maintainability: Facilitate code reviews, updates, and debugging by adhering to clear guidelines.
• Security: Incorporate best practices to safeguard against common security vulnerabilities in infrastructure code.
• Scalability: Enable infrastructure to grow and evolve without becoming unmanageable.
• Compliance: Align with organizational policies and regulatory requirements.

Scope

These standards are based on my experience as a DevOps engineer primarily working in the Azure cloud environment. While many of these recommendations are general enough to apply across different cloud platforms—such as AWS and Google Cloud—they are scoped to reflect best practices and lessons learned from Azure-centric projects. Users are encouraged to adapt these standards as necessary to fit the specific needs and characteristics of other cloud environments.

These guidelines are intended for use by DevOps engineers, cloud architects, and developers involved in infrastructure management, particularly within Azure-based projects.

Getting Started

To begin using these standards, clone this repository and review the documentation provided. Ensure that all new Terraform code follows the guidelines outlined in this document. Teams should also conduct code reviews to enforce adherence to these standards.

git clone https://github.com/casa-de-vops/terraform-code-standards.git

Contributing

We welcome contributions from the community! If you'd like to contribute, please follow these steps:

1. Fork the repository.
2. Create a new branch (git checkout -b feature/your-feature).
3. Make your changes and commit them (git commit -m 'Add your feature').
4. Push to the branch (git push origin feature/your-feature).
5. Open a Pull Request.

Please ensure your code adheres to the standards outlined in this document before submitting.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for more details.