Terraform works because of one core concept that often gets misunderstood: state. Most tutorials mention it briefly, but in real environments, Terraform state is one of the most important parts of your entire setup. If you don’t understand it properly, you’ll eventually run into problems, especially when working in teams or deploying production infrastructure. This… Continue reading Terraform State Explained (Simply and Practically)
Author: Rob Richley
Rob Richley is a Lead Cloud Engineer working with Azure and Terraform in real environments, sharing real world projects, Terraform builds, and practical architecture patterns.
Declarative vs Imperative: Why Terraform Works the Way It Does
When people first start learning Terraform, they often hear that it uses something called a declarative language. If you’re new to Infrastructure as Code, that phrase might not mean very much at first. However, understanding the difference between declarative and imperative approaches will help you understand why Terraform works the way it does. More importantly,… Continue reading Declarative vs Imperative: Why Terraform Works the Way It Does
What is Terraform and Why is Everyone Using It?
If you work in cloud engineering, DevOps, or infrastructure, you’ve probably heard people talking about Terraform. It often comes up in conversations about automation, cloud platforms, and Infrastructure as Code. But what exactly is Terraform, and why has it become such an important tool for modern infrastructure teams? In this article, we’ll explain Terraform in… Continue reading What is Terraform and Why is Everyone Using It?
Azure DDoS Protection with Terraform: What Actually Works (and What Doesn’t)
Azure DDoS Protection is one of those services that sounds simple on paper but becomes confusing once you try to implement it properly with Infrastructure as Code. Microsoft Learn walks you through the concepts in the portal, but if you’re serious about Terraform, you quickly discover that not everything shown in the UI is exposed… Continue reading Azure DDoS Protection with Terraform: What Actually Works (and What Doesn’t)
Building an Azure Application Gateway with Terraform (A Simple, Practical Lab)
I recently put together a small but realistic lab to deploy an Azure Application Gateway using Terraform. The goal wasn’t to build anything clever or cutting-edge, but to create something simple, repeatable, and close to how this would be done in a real Azure environment. The setup uses an Application Gateway with a public frontend… Continue reading Building an Azure Application Gateway with Terraform (A Simple, Practical Lab)
Designing Azure ExpressRoute from Scratch: Part 5: Configuring ExpressRoute Peering
At this stage in the ExpressRoute journey, a lot of groundwork has already been done. Azure is ready to accept a private connection, and Microsoft has reserved capacity at the edge of its network. You’ve created a virtual network with an ExpressRoute gateway, and you’ve provisioned an ExpressRoute circuit with a chosen provider, bandwidth, and… Continue reading Designing Azure ExpressRoute from Scratch: Part 5: Configuring ExpressRoute Peering
Designing Azure ExpressRoute from Scratch: Part 4: Creating the ExpressRoute Circuit
Up to this point in the ExpressRoute journey, everything we’ve built has lived entirely inside Azure. That prepared Azure to accept a private connection, but there still isn’t one. This next step is where the private connection itself comes into existence. That’s exactly what an ExpressRoute circuit is. What an ExpressRoute Circuit Really Is An… Continue reading Designing Azure ExpressRoute from Scratch: Part 4: Creating the ExpressRoute Circuit
Designing Azure ExpressRoute from Scratch: Part 3: Preparing Azure to Accept an ExpressRoute Connection
In the previous part of this series, we decided why an organisation needs ExpressRoute and what kind of ExpressRoute makes sense. At this point, nothing has been deployed yet, we’ve only made design decisions. This next step is where we start preparing Azure itself. Before Azure can connect to anything on-premises, it needs a dedicated… Continue reading Designing Azure ExpressRoute from Scratch: Part 3: Preparing Azure to Accept an ExpressRoute Connection
Designing Azure ExpressRoute from Scratch: Part 2: Choosing What You Actually Need
Now that we understand why an organisation would consider ExpressRoute in the first place (private, reliable connectivity into Azure), the next step is where most people accidentally start too late: picking a SKU, clicking through the portal, or trying to “just build the lab.” But the real design work happens before any deployment At this… Continue reading Designing Azure ExpressRoute from Scratch: Part 2: Choosing What You Actually Need
Designing Azure ExpressRoute from Scratch: Part 1: Why Choose ExpressRoute?
Why Would an Organisation Need ExpressRoute? When organisations first move workloads to Azure, connectivity is usually not a complex discussion. Applications are accessed over the public internet, often protected by encryption and, in some cases, a VPN. For many businesses, this approach works perfectly well in the early stages of cloud adoption. However, as reliance… Continue reading Designing Azure ExpressRoute from Scratch: Part 1: Why Choose ExpressRoute?