Terraform has become one of the most reliable tools for provisioning and managing cloud infrastructure—yet its internal workflows and state management often remain something of a “black box.”

This session will walk through the complete Terraform workflow on Azure—from initialization to deployment—explaining both the “how” and the “why” behind each step. Using a practical example that provisions an Azure Resource Group and a Storage Account, we will demonstrate how Terraform’s declarative model, execution plans, and state files ensure consistency between code and the cloud.

We will also cover best practices for structuring infrastructure with modules, variable files, and workspaces to support environment-specific deployments. Participants will learn how to import existing Azure resources, manage shared state securely in Azure Blob Storage, and design scalable infrastructure setups.

Finally, we will compare Terraform’s modular approach with Azure Bicep, highlighting where the two tools align and how they can complement each other in real-world projects.

Through hands-on demos in Visual Studio Code, this session is tailored for engineers and architects who want to understand Terraform’s workflow and state model, and learn how to design maintainable Azure environments that integrate seamlessly into modern DevOps pipelines.

Torsten Strauß

Torsten Strauß (MVP, MCT, MCSE) is the CEO of inside-sqlserver and Principal Microsoft SQL Consultant at Sarpedon Quality Lab.
He specializes in Azure DevOps, as well as in the performance optimization and development of SQL environments.

Torsten has delivered more than 320 sessions at national and international conferences and user groups.
Since 2018, he has been recognized annually as a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) in the Data Platform category — and since 2025, additionally in Developer Technologies.
For three consecutive years, he has also been ranked among the Top Speakers on Sessionize.