Set Up Your First Terraform Environment on Windows

If you want to create your own or contribute to an existing GitHub project using Terraform, here is how to get your first environment up and running on Windows.

Prerequisites

IDE: Visual Studio Code
Terraform executable: Releases · hashicorp/terraform or the official downloads page
An Azure subscription
Azure CLI: How to install the Azure CLI

Install Terraform

Download the Terraform executable and add it to your PATH. Verify the install with:

bash

terraform --version

Create a service principal or managed identity

Create a new service principal (or use a managed identity) that Terraform will use to authenticate against Azure, then test the connection.

bash

az login --use-device-code --tenant <your_tenant_id>

Set the subscription if you have multiple subscriptions:

bash

az account set --subscription <your_subscription_id>

Create a container to store the Terraform state

Store the Terraform state in an Azure Storage account container. See Store Terraform state in Azure Storage for more details.

bash

$RESOURCE_GROUP_NAME='<your_rg_name>'
$STORAGE_ACCOUNT_NAME='<your_sta_name>'
$CONTAINER_NAME='tfstate'
$LOCATION = "westeurope"

# Create resource group
az group create --name $RESOURCE_GROUP_NAME --location $LOCATION

# Create storage account
az storage account create --resource-group $RESOURCE_GROUP_NAME --name $STORAGE_ACCOUNT_NAME --sku Standard_LRS --encryption-services blob

Create the container, then grant your identity the Storage Blob Data Contributor role on it.

Create a backend file

bash

terraform {
  backend "azurerm" {
    resource_group_name  = "rg-terraform"
    storage_account_name = "<your_sta_name>"
    container_name       = "tfstate"
    key                  = "mystatefile.terraform.tfstate"
  }
}

Run the following command to initialize the configuration:

bash

terraform init

A new state file will be created in the storage account.

Write, validate, format, and apply

Create your Terraform code, then validate it:

bash

terraform validate

Format the code:

bash

terraform fmt -recursive

Plan or apply:

bash

terraform apply -auto-approve