Workspaces

expected time	requirements
30 minutes	A computer with Terraform installed, terraform knowledge.

Goal: Get familiar with Terraform workspaces.

Explanation

Terraform workspaces can be used create different locations to store state. It also introduces an extra variable: terraform.workspace.

You’re always working in a workspace, but if you do no select one, you’re in the default workspace.

Howto

The arguments can be either of new, select, list, delete or show.

terraform workspace new my_workspace
terraform workspace select default
terraform workspace list
terraform workspace delete my_workspace

Demo

See this Azure repo or use the generic repo.

Assignment Azure

• From an existing repository, create a new workspace.
• Reuse the terraform.workspace variable to change the name of a resource.
• Map the workspaces to a parameter of the resource, like location or size. (locals.tf)

Assignment Generic

• Clone the repo.
• Run terraform apply
• Create a namespace called production and run terraform apply again.
• Bonus: Change the locals.tf, to fall back to default if the workspace can’t be found in _amount_of_machines. Hint: Use the try function.

Questions:

1. What are good use-cases?
2. Do you see where you could apply this in your situation?
3. For the generic repo, why was terraform init not required?