Review a compact HashiCorp Terraform Associate (004) cheat sheet for IaC, workflow, configuration, modules, state, maintenance, and HCP Terraform before IT Mastery practice.
Use this cheat sheet before a Terraform Associate (004) practice set. Most questions reward disciplined infrastructure-as-code reasoning: know the workflow phase, state boundary, configuration object, and team-control feature before choosing an answer.
| Item | Terraform cue |
|---|---|
| Vendor | HashiCorp |
| Certification | HashiCorp Certified: Terraform Associate (004) |
| Time | 60 minutes |
| Main practice behavior | workflow, configuration, modules, state, and HCP Terraform judgment |
| IT Mastery status | live practice available |
| Objective area | Weight | What to know | Common trap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Infrastructure as Code with Terraform | 8% | declarative configuration, drift, reproducibility, provider-managed infrastructure | treating Terraform as an imperative script runner |
| Terraform fundamentals | 11% | providers, resources, data sources, variables, outputs, versions | confusing provider configuration with resource declaration |
| Core Terraform workflow | 19% | init, validate, plan, apply, destroy, import, refresh, review | skipping plan review before change execution |
| Terraform configuration | 22% | HCL, expressions, dependencies, lifecycle, variables, outputs | tracing runtime changes before checking configuration validity |
| Terraform modules | 11% | root modules, child modules, inputs, outputs, versioning, reuse | using modules as a substitute for state or workspace isolation |
| Terraform state management | 11% | state files, remote backends, locking, workspaces, moved resources | editing state manually when workflow commands are safer |
| Maintain infrastructure with Terraform | 8% | drift, imports, refactors, version upgrades, safe change control | applying a change before understanding drift or dependency impact |
| HCP Terraform | 10% | remote runs, VCS workflow, policies, workspace variables, private modules | mixing local CLI behavior with hosted team controls |
terraform init prepares providers, modules, and backends; it does not propose infrastructure changes.terraform plan previews changes; terraform apply executes an approved change plan.apply for initialization, backend, or provider-install problems.For every miss, label it by workflow phase: initialize, validate, plan, apply, state, module, or hosted workflow. If you cannot say which phase the question is testing, return to focused drills before taking another timed mixed set.