Workspaces | Terraform Tutorial | #16

[@RamKumar-tk2cb]

I spent a lot of hours to understand how things are segregating bet' workspace and folder based structure flow in terraform. After i pumped into here, got to know how simple it is. Heads up to you Will Brock. Simple and Sweet explanation. Awesome Job. Thanks a lot.

[@WillBrock]

Awesome! I'm glad they were helpful

[@kaypakaipa8559]

Thanks for this course bro. Its perfect for mere mortals like myself. I fully get it now.

[@bajajrahul001]

Thanks Will for these videos ! I finally got my head around the concept of Workspaces. Appreciate it !

[@welingtonws]

Will, thanks a lot for this Terraform course. It's been very useful as I'm dealing with TF currently in my job

[@WillBrock]

No problem, I'm glad it's helping out

[@dilgamr.sharifov6652]

Very useful video, finally with this video i cleared my confusion about Terraform workspaces.

[@WillBrock]

Thanks! Glad it was helpful

[@Emmakungaba]

Great content Will. You cleared my confusion. Thanks

[@gihanmahmoud5651]

So glad someone addressed the initial confusion I had when I first was introduced to Workspace. Because I thought initially that by defining a workspace, it automatically deploys resources to different "profile" automatically on the cloud server I am working on. But that's not the case. It is more of a logical grouping with its own state file that helps manages different prod/non-prod environments GIVEN the right config.

[@virabadrasana]

Very good quality. Thank you.👍👍👍

[@thelemminguk]

Excellent video, very well explained

[@WillBrock]

Thanks!

[@nitishgavankar9666]

Hi Will, What if, In Dev Workspace, I use -var-file prod.tfvars. this will apply the prod vars in Dev workspace. !! if that's the case, It all depends on varfiles, rather than Workspace. Then what is the use of differnt workspaces. - "is it maintaining different tfstate files for same config ? " please correct me if I am wrong.

[@WillBrock]

If you're in the dev workspace it won't affect anything in the prod workspace since each workspace has their own state files.

[@felipeozoski]

Thank you so much for this playlist!!! we all really appreciate it!

[@rakeshjha11]

This was really good explanation of Workspaces, request you to add a video on Workspace, directory, module comparison.

[@shyamcheekoti7216]

Thank you, what is locals resource? I am not clear on that part. And one more doubt when run terraform apply with different variable files at that time only environments Got segregated and accordingly apply ?

[@keithsexton8962]

very clearly explained - thanks for the information.

[@abettertomorrow4311]

This was a good explanation, thanks Curious, what if you define instance name in the dev.tfvars with a dev prefix. Same for PRD. Would you still need workspace? I guess to manage different .tfstate files?

[@ramthirumalai6870]

Thanks Will very useful just learned about workspaces.

[@WillBrock]

Awesome

[@HasanUckun]

it was so helpful Will, thank you very much!

[@vijeeshvijayan9966]

Very well simply explained and much appreciated you for this wonderful video

[@80amnesia]

nice thanks, clean example

[@rajivnayanverma6822]

Thanks Will for this wornderful video. But I have a question here apart from instance name which was picked based on workspace I couldn't understand what else could be the use case . If being in dev workspace you will pass prod.tfvars as argument the script will create the infra with prod configuration I beleive then what is new here ? can you pls clarify ?

[@production-aws6644]

exactly what i was looking for. Nice intro in to terraform ive always used CF instead

[@ramithraghunath1073]

when you changed instance to t2xlarge, why it didn't provision a new instance and instead changed the instance type of existing instance?

[@WillBrock]

Thats how it works when you change it in the aws interface. It modifies the existing resource in place and does not destroy it.

[@wysefavor]

So workspace allows you to have different state files for different environment . Each environment can have its own workspace hence its own state file.. right ?

[@adamkeinan1535]

Great Channel Will. Subscribed!

[@WillBrock]

Thanks!

[@himanshuupadhyay3129]

Excellent video will. Thankyou for this playlist. Are you planning to make a video on workspaces vs directory structure as you mentioned in the video?

[@thumpanekolla2661]

You are amazing mate. Thanks for the explanation in the best possible way with the demo. Keep Up the good work. ( Just subscribed 😀 )

[@WillBrock]

Thanks!

[@ujwaldhakal6004]

One of the good tuts out there... Keep up the good work

[@mayureshpatilvlogs]

Awesome video Dude. Can we use workspace concept if we are using modules in main. tf file.

[@WillBrock]

You can

[@temiwale88]

This is very good. Thank you Will!

[@azy22222]

Hey @Will Brock thanks for this video. Question for you - must you call the -var-file for each environment? Is there a way to add this elsewhere so it's not in the CLI. I'm trying to find use cases to use Terraform workspace over Terragrunt

[@WillBrock]

Hi, yes you need to call the -var-file otherwise it won't know what variables to use. You could also set environment variables.

[@azy22222]

@@WillBrock hmmm interesting

[@erikwhitesides]

i think the way Will Brock presented this is bound to fail.... someone will accidentally apply prod variables to dev environment. unless you set up a pipeline and no one actually runs terraform plan/apply on their terminal. in variables.tf you could do a map like variable "testing" { default = { dev = "abc" prod = "def"}} , then you call it like var.testing[terraform.workspace]. if you want values to come from tfvars you could probably use some other technique like an if statement

[@ThiagoTorresFaioli]

but there is a problem! When you change workspace and run "terraform plan" the existing resource that was created previously will be marked as ... "1 to change" ...

[@WillBrock]

No it won't. They are isolated from each other.

[@dvirpashut3023]

thks will.... the best explenation i found... your great!!!!!!!!!!!!11

[@WillBrock]

Glad it helped!

[@DevOps-AWS55]

Awesome Training

[@WillBrock]

Thanks

[@AvinashReddy21]

Awesome video ! Question- How can I further break down the project into infrastructure types ? Lets say under dev --> App(a folder), database(a folder). How can I maintain separate state for apps and database under dev ?

[@WillBrock]

If you want separate state for databases and app you need to create two separate configurations not in the same workspace. Depending on your needs it might make sense to keep them both in the same state files.

[@Ronnie9P]

how do you destroy the resources created under each workspace ? you forgot to mention that

[@WillBrock]

terraform destroy just like you would do without using a workspace

[@Ronnie9P]

@@WillBrockyou also have to add the variables when you use terraform destroy

[@chandrashekhar2461]

appreciate it! so easy to understand

[@WillBrock]

Glad to hear

[@Techtalkswithrahul]

Still waiting for workspace vs directory structure video which you mentioned in the video that you will create

[@hamidapremani6151]

Very well-explained.

[@karenzhu6100]

Thanks sooo much!!! Need this!

[@saeedsherani7275]

Hi Will. Such an amazing teaching for terraform. Can you please make a video on how to use workspace for different account. Like sandbox and dev accounts in AWS>

[@fxy2933]

Why do such amazing videos come to me so late ??? 😃

[@WillBrock]

Lol thanks for the kind words

[@swalkers8008]

Excellent demo and explanation. Thanks so much. I have a few questions: 1) After setting up the two separate workspaces, is there still a point for the terraform.tfvars 2) how would git keep track of the workspace?

[@WillBrock]

For number 1 you can still have a terraform.tfvars depending on your needs. You would use git to keep track of the code only and not the state files. You could use git to track the state files but it's not recommend. Instead you should use a remote backend like S3 to keep track of the state.

[@swalkers8008]

@@WillBrock thank you for the reply. Let me put the state file to gitignore. I will also research more on remote state

[@WillBrock]

@@swalkers8008 no problem. There is a video in my terraform playlist on backends if you wanted to learn more

[@matthewwarner1633]

Thanks for the awesome tutorials! Is it possible to have a workspace default to a .tfvars file? I find it easy to forget which workspace I'm in and apply the wrong .tfvars file. I have a dev, qa and prod.tfvars files and want to use them in my dev, qa and prod workspace respectively.

[@WillBrock]

Not that I know of. I have the same problem and forget to specify the var file sometimes.

[@njabulongwenyama]

​@@WillBrock Enterim solution on this could be coloring your terminal to display different colors on different environments.

[@stockrt]

you could automate the commands using a Makefile to create shortcuts. $ make apply dev $ make apply prod

[@vinodchunchuwar3660]

Please add video on usage of data "terraform_remote_state"

[@WillBrock]

Is this what you're looking for? kzbin.info/www/bejne/iHO6Y2hpdpmGrLs

[@thrilochanpakkapoti99]

your videos are good. i would suggest you create the course in udemy with some practice exams.

[@sahdevchauhan]

Will (B)Rock!

[@abraund]

Workspaces do not seem to add a great deal of value? When you run terraform apply you select the right tfvars file yourself, and so the main use-case for a workspace, env differentiation, is handled via a different mechanism. A most likely naive first glance suggests one should be able to associate tfvars files with workspaces.

[@TheAlexdoka]

Good work!

[@desiboyz4695]

Sir pls make a video on dockers using terraform from installation to pushing image to ecr . Thanks

[@mamun001]

Thank you

[@DigitalDave65]

How many keyboards do you go through? You hit them keys hard! However, great video. You made it very simple to understand.

[@WillBrock]

Haha, I was using the built in computer mic so it makes it sound loud.

[@000djw000]

Ok so, to summarise, workspaces is a state thing and nothing else!

[@billtoner1960]

That was great, thanks.

[@Oswee]

I am looking more like for multicloud setup where some things are spin up on own bare metal VM's, some dev envirionment on GCP and some prod env are provisioned on AWS. Or... demo env is set up on local VM's, but later transfered to the AWS. From the code organization perspective.

[@mediatwinkleTV]

This is some good sh*t !

[@WillBrock]

Thanks!

[@aravindaninfo]

Awsome

[@ProWannabe88]

Please learn to type!