Terraform Patterns

Azure Terraform Patterns Skill

Composable architecture building blocks for Azure Terraform. Complements iac-terraform-best-practices.instructions.md (style) and azure-defaults skill (naming, tags, regions).

Canonical sources — the security baseline, AVM-first mandate, naming conventions, required tags, and unique-suffix rule live in azure-defaults/SKILL.md and iac-policy-compliance.md. This skill restates the rules tersely below for IaC-output convenience only; in conflict, the canonical sources win.

Quick Reference

Canonical Example — Module Composition

Wire AVM child modules by passing outputs as inputs (module.<name>.<output>); never hardcode IDs. AVM-TF module versions in APEX-generated code MUST be exact semver (version = "X.Y.Z") — pinned at plan time from registry.terraform.io (newest stable in modules[0].versions[]). Range constraints (~> X.Y, >= X.Y.Z) are NOT allowed in 04-iac-contract.json and will be flagged by npm run validate:avm-versions. Full code sample (resource group + key vault) and rationale in references/module-composition.md.

Rules

• AVM-first: Use Azure/avm-res-* registry modules over raw azurerm_* resources
• AVM-TF version pins: Use exact semver resolved from the Registry API at plan time; follow the azure-defaults exception policy
• Hub-spoke: Spokes peer to hub only; never spoke-to-spoke
• Private endpoints: Three resources per service — PE, DNS zone, VNet link
• Diagnostics: Every resource MUST have a diagnostic setting → Log Analytics
• Conditional: Use for_each (keyed) over count (indexed) for named resources
• Identity: SystemAssigned managed identity + RBAC; avoid keys/connection strings
• Provider pin: ~> 4.0 (allows 4.x patches, blocks 5.0)
• Telemetry: Set enable_telemetry = false in restricted-network environments
• Moved blocks: Use moved {} when renaming resources to prevent destroy/recreate
• Budget: Follow the canonical cost-monitoring contract; amount and notification inputs MUST be variables

Steps

Applying a Terraform pattern in a root module:

1. Identify the pattern — match your need to a row in Quick Reference (hub-spoke, private endpoint, diagnostics, conditional, identity, budget, plan interpretation)
2. Load the reference — read the linked references/*.md; do not load all at once
3. Compose AVM modules — wire outputs as inputs (see Canonical Example); never hardcode IDs
4. Pin the provider — ~> 4.0 only; do not use >= 3.0 or exact = 4.x.y
5. Add diagnostics + budget — every resource gets diagnostics; every deployment implements the governed cost-monitoring contract
6. Plan before apply — terraform plan -out=plan.tfplan; review for ~/-/+/- operations against references/plan-interpretation.md
7. Validate — terraform fmt -check, terraform validate, npm run validate:terraform, npm run validate:iac-security-baseline

Gotchas

• Set-type phantom diffs — azurerm_application_gateway, azurerm_lb, azurerm_network_security_group, azurerm_firewall, azurerm_frontdoor: adding ONE element causes ALL elements to show ~ changes. Mitigation: ignore_changes on set-type blocks.
• Provider pin ~> 4.0 is critical — >= 3.0 crosses breaking versions; = 4.1.0 blocks patches. MUST use ~> 4.0.
• for_each over count for named resources — count causes drift when items are inserted/removed (Terraform reindexes). Use for_each = toset().
• moved block required for renaming — Renaming a resource ID without a moved {} block causes destroy + recreate.
• azurerm 4.x renamed attributes — allow_blob_public_access → allow_nested_items_to_be_public; enable_https_traffic_only → https_traffic_only_enabled; azurerm_app_service removed → use azurerm_linux_web_app.

Reference Index