Introduction

In this post, I’ll share how I passed the Terraform Associate certification (HashiCorp Certified: Terraform Associate 003) with a combination of free and paid resources, hands-on labs, and some tips I wish I knew earlier. If you’re preparing for this cert, I hope my experience helps streamline your path.

Why Terraform?

As someone passionate about DevOps and cloud infrastructure, learning Terraform felt like a natural next step. It’s declarative, cloud-agnostic, and widely adopted in production environments. Earning the certification helped validate my skills and gave me more confidence when building infrastructure as code (IaC) for personal and professional projects.

What I Used to Study

🎥 YouTube: Study Guide Video

I started with this free and very helpful Terraform Associate study guide by Andrew Brown.
It breaks down every exam objective clearly and is perfect for building a mental model before diving deeper.

🧪 Udemy: Practice Tests

I then reinforced my knowledge with this Udemy practice test course.
These questions were incredibly close to the real exam format and helped me identify weak areas quickly.

🧰 Hands-On Lab: My GitHub Automation Lab

Theory alone isn’t enough, so I practiced by setting up real infrastructure using my automation-lab GitHub repo.
This included writing HCL from scratch, managing state, using backends, and deploying to various environments — the best way to learn is by doing.

How I Structured My Study Plan

  • Week 1: Watched the full YouTube course and skimmed the official exam guide.
  • Week 2: Took detailed notes and practiced with hands-on labs in my GitHub repo.
  • Week 3: Did 2–3 full-length practice exams from Udemy, reviewed mistakes, and revised.
  • Day Before Exam: Relaxed, reviewed notes, and ensured I was confident with terraform plan, apply, destroy, backends, state, workspaces, and modules.

Final Tips

  • Read the official documentation often — it’s what the exam is based on.
  • Learn to debug errors and read terraform plan outputs — very test-relevant.
  • Hands-on practice is key. Build something real, even if it’s simple.
  • Understand core concepts like providers, resources, data sources, and state deeply.

Conclusion

Passing the Terraform Associate wasn’t just about getting a badge — it gave me a solid foundation in infrastructure as code and pushed me to think more modularly and declaratively. I highly recommend this certification if you’re on a DevOps, cloud, or platform engineering journey.

Let me know if you’re preparing too — happy to share more tips or resources!

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