7. Terraform with Pipeline

We will learn how to integrate Terraform into GitLab CI/CD pipelines to automate infrastructure provisioning and enforce code quality in a team workflow.

Why Terraform in CI/CD?

Running Terraform manually from a local machine works fine for learning but is not suitable for teams or production environments:

• Consistency – different engineers may have different Terraform or provider versions installed
• Auditability – there is no record of who ran which command and when
• Security – cloud credentials should not be stored on developer laptops
• Enforcement – there is no guarantee that code was validated or formatted before it was applied

What you will learn

• The key building blocks of a GitLab CI/CD pipeline (.gitlab-ci.yml, stages, jobs, variables)
• How to run terraform validate, terraform plan, and terraform apply inside a pipeline
• How to provision a self-hosted GitLab Runner on Azure using Terraform
• How to build a custom Docker image with linting tools and run checks automatically in CI

Prerequisites

• A GitLab account on gitlab.com or a self-hosted instance
• The Azure Workshop from Chapter 6 completed (remote state storage account + AKS cluster)
• Docker installed locally for building the CI image