> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://blog.kloudops.pro/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Terraform Best Practices To Run Production Infrastructure - URL: https://blog.kloudops.pro/terraform-best-practices-to-run-production-infrastructure/ - Published: 2026-08-22T17:14:06.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-22T17:16:25.000Z - Author: Kloudops Pro - Tags: DevOps, Cloud, #Import 2026-10-20 16:39 If you are in an IT Operation role, you may have the responsibility to provision and maintain IT infrastructure. When it comes to DevOps/Cloud/SRE/Platform role, you mainly have to deal with public/private cloud infrastructure. For an example, Your organization use AWS for infra. Your development team need to provision a new infrastructure for a new app. They basically need a Kubernetes cluster and a database. So Simply you can provision all the necessary infra components that the development team require manually by clicking on web console. But what happens when they request the next environment? Well.. yeah it's a chaos. You have to manually provision the infra each time a new environment required. And it's a BIG NO! 💡****TL;DR:** Managing infrastructure in an automated approach is very important. But doing it correctly is the most important thing. When we are using Terraform for infrastructure automation, always make sure to follow best practices to avoid any unintentional disruptions in live environment. Then how can we automate these with reusable components? In that case IaC is the savior. IaC stands for Infrastructure as Code. We can say it's the way to implement software development concept for infrastructure. Instead of manually provisioning by clicking, we write all the infra component configurations in a text file (YAML, HCL etc). ## Why IaC matters at production scale? - **Consistency** \- eliminates config drift between dev/staging/prod - **Auditability** \- every change is version-controlled & reviewable (Git history = change log) - **Disaster recovery** \- infra can be rebuilt from code, not tribal knowledge - **Collaboration** \- multiple engineers can safely work via PRs instead of manual console changes - **Blast radius control** \- plan/review before apply prevents accidental prod damage - **Compliance** \- policy-as-code enforces security/governance at scale - **Speed** \- automated provisioning vs manual ClickOps Cloud providers have their own native IaC tools like AWS CloudFormation, Azure Bicep, but cloud agnostic/multi-cloud tools like Terraform, OpenTofu, Pulumi are widely being used in the industry. In this post we are going to discuss about "Terraform" best practices. [![Terraform](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d2/5f/d25fda85-4ca3-41fe-a9ba-d6a6b8e486a4/content/images/2026/08/image.png)](https://developer.hashicorp.com/terraform?ref=blog.kloudops.pro) ## Best practices for managing production infrastructure 1. **Implement a Version control/Git workflow and CI/CD for TF code** This is very important. You need to have a VCS for your terraform code. And also must implement a GIT workflow to avoid unnecessary interruptions in PROD environment. 1. Proper branching strategy should be introduced. No direct push to main branch. 2. Always merge changes via a pull request and approvals 3. Include local TF caching files in a .gitignore so that these files won't push to the remote. 4. For base modules always use tags and refer with this tag in project code. Never refer main branch or other branches. 5. Always add an approval (manual review and approve) step to the pipeline and never use auto approve in terraform apply 1. **Maintain a proper project structure** Your code MUST easy to manage, reusable and environment specific. Always build small, reusable modules which commonly used across any project, for an example, Network, Data, Compute etc. And these base modules can be managed in a central repository (Mono repo) or multi-repo for each module then can refer in the project. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d2/5f/d25fda85-4ca3-41fe-a9ba-d6a6b8e486a4/content/images/2026/08/TF-project-1.png) TF Project Structure In your environment specific code, you can include remote modules like below ``` module "app1-vpc" { source = "git::ssh://git@://" } ``` Or if there are components only specific to the project you can include in project module directory. 1. **Always use a remote backend for TF state** This is also a very important point. Never use a local TF state file for a real project as multiple engineers may later work on this project and it will ended up in a chaotic situation. Always configure remote backend like AWS S3, Azure blob with state lock so the state file is always accessible anywhere and can apply changes only one person at a time (Avoid multiple writes to the state file at the same time). And also make sure to enable encryption for the bucket/storage. And also you MUST maintain a ONE TF state file per environment. 1. **Store all sensitive parameters in a vault** This is one of the golden rules. Never hardcode your secrets in code. Always use a vault like AWS parameter store, Azure KeyVault to store all the necessary secrets/sensitive data per environment which will only fetch during the TF execution time. 1. **Always use version pinning for modules and providers** Use pessimistic (\~>) version pinning for providers and module which will avoid any breaking changes. With this approach it will only allow the critical patch updates while keeping major and minor versions locked. 1. **Implement a quality and security testing** It's recommended to implement a quality and security testing tool for TF code when you push it to the repository. You can add tools like checkov to your pipelines which will scan the code and fail pipeline if there is any security issues. Then you can review and fix those things. 1. **Always Plan first, then review and Apply** Never blindly apply TF changes. Always make sure you review the TF plan, understand what's going to be changed, Make sure there is no unknown destructions or changes, and apply if all good only. 1. **Never do manual changes to infra managed by Terraform** This is also a golden rule for IaC. Never do manual changes to the infra already provisioned with Terraform. It's recommended to run scheduled drift detection tests so that you can make sure your infra matches the state file. 1. **Tag resources which created with Terraform** For all the resources provisioned with Terraform, it's recommended to add a tag for audit purposes (such as ManagedBy= Terraform). 1. **Disaster recovery strategy** Implement a disaster recovery strategy for your code as well as the TF state file. It's a very important step as well. You might be affected by accidental deletion of your state file, outage of the region where backend hosted, you have be prepared. --- Okay. That concludes what I have to point out regarding Terraform best practices. Anyway ways implementing these practices might be different in each organization, but the core remains same. Hope you learned something from this post. Happy learning! ### Reference \[1\] [https://developer.hashicorp.com/terraform](https://developer.hashicorp.com/terraform?ref=blog.kloudops.pro) \[2\] [https://registry.terraform.io/browse/modules](https://registry.terraform.io/browse/modules?ref=blog.kloudops.pro) \[3\] [https://developer.hashicorp.com/terraform/cloud-docs/recommended-practices](https://developer.hashicorp.com/terraform/cloud-docs/recommended-practices?ref=blog.kloudops.pro) \[4\] [https://docs.aws.amazon.com/prescriptive-guidance/latest/terraform-aws-provider-best-practices/introduction.html](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/prescriptive-guidance/latest/terraform-aws-provider-best-practices/introduction.html?ref=blog.kloudops.pro) If you wonder what is DevOps, here is a write-up explaining what is actually DevOps means. [Read ](https://blog.kloudops.pro/what-is-devops/)