How to Structure a Terraform Project

New to Terraform and confused by how to structure your projects? Getting your environment and module organization right from the start can save time, reduce bugs, and scale effortlessly. Here’s a simple breakdown of the Terraform project structure and best practices to follow. 1. Separate Environments (dev, staging, prod) Organize your code by environment folders. This keeps development, staging, and production configurations clean, isolated, and easier to manage. 2. Development Environment Setup In your dev/ folder, define your environment-specific files like main. tf, variables. tf, provider. tf, and dev. tfvarsto control how resources are created and configured just for development. 3. Staging Environment Configuration The staging/ folder mirrors the dev/ structure. It helps you test changes before pushing them to production, reducing the risk of breaking anything live. 4. Production Environment Structure The prod/ directory follows the same layout. It keeps your production setup isolated and stable while reusing patterns from dev and staging. 5. Centralized Module Folder The modules/ folder holds reusable Terraform logic—so you don’t repeat yourself. Each module (e.g., network/, compute/) is built once and used across environments. 6. Network Module Contains logic for provisioning networking resources like VPCs and subnets. You define what the network looks like and what variables are needed for configuration. 7. Compute Module Handles compute resources such as EC2 instances. It lets you define instance-specific variables and outputs like IPs and instance IDs. 8. Data Module Used for infrastructure like S3 buckets. Here, you define bucket names, settings, and access details—all modular and reusable. ✅ Use this structure to keep your Terraform code clean, scalable, and easy to manage across all environments. Whether you're launching a dev setup or deploying to production, this template has you covered. Follow Satish Goli For More Such Information !

🚀 How I Structure Terraform for Dev/Test/Prod Environments with Scalable Modules If you're working in DevOps or Cloud Infrastructure, having a modular and environment-based structure in Terraform is not just useful—it's essential for scalability, team collaboration, and reducing risk. Here’s how I set up my Terraform projects to manage environments like dev, test, and prod, while keeping code DRY and organized with reusable modules. ✅ Benefits of This Structure Isolation – Environments have their own state, reducing the blast radius of mistakes. Reusability – Common infrastructure logic is abstracted into modules. Simplicity – Easier collaboration across teams. Promotion-ready – Changes can be tested in dev and safely promoted to prod. 💡 Pro Tips 🔐 Use remote backends (like S3 + DynamoDB for AWS) to store state files securely. ⚙️ Keep variables and backend configs environment-specific, so you can tailor settings per environment. 🧪 Avoid overusing Terraform workspaces for critical infra—they’re not a replacement for isolated state. 👥 Let’s Share and Learn This setup has helped me manage infrastructure across multiple environments with confidence and clarity. ➡️ How do you organize your Terraform code? ➡️ What’s worked well (or gone wrong) in your setups? Let’s connect and grow together in the #DevOps community! #Terraform #InfrastructureAsCode #DevOps #AWS #Azure #GCP #CloudEngineering #TerraformModules #SRE #LinkedInTech