Terraform is primarily known and used as an "infrastructure as code" (IaC) tool, and it excels in that specific domain. Its role and usage can be broken down into several key areas:
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Infrastructure Provisioning: Terraform's main strength is provisioning infrastructure. This means using code to create, modify, and destroy the physical (e.g., servers, networks) or virtual (e.g., VMs) resources that your applications need to run. It can do this across cloud providers (like AWS, Google Cloud, Azure) or on-premises (via VMware, OpenStack).
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Platform Agnostic: One of Terraform's major benefits is that it allows you to manage infrastructure across different cloud providers, using the same language and similar concepts. This prevents vendor lock-in and promotes reusable practices.