Terraform Multiple Environments: How to Manage Efficiently in 2025

Like many other DevOps platforms, Terraform is another powerful tool that helps with code infrastructure. It allows developers to work with a wide range of tasks and doesn’t restrict them to do in a way that would be difficult to support or integrate. 

Using Terraform for multiple environments can be difficult and time-consuming. Environment means a workplace where developers can adjust code changes and updates without compromising the live environment. It is a place where they use various tools to work freely without impacting the end user. This includes different stages such as development, staging, and production environments. 

In order to be efficient, managing each environment separately can be complex. This article covers how to manage multiple environments with Terraform and satisfy the end user without interrupting their work. 

Importance of Managing Multiple Environments

Each environment in software development, which includes development, testing, staging, and production, is essential to deliver quality and reliable code as well as satisfy the customer. Each process has a unique purpose which minimizes human impacts and reduces possible mistakes.

Managing multiple environments with Terraform provides certain benefits, including:

• Reduces Bugs: By implementing multiple environments, the risks of mistakes or bugs are reduced in the live system.
• Consistency: Consistency is ensured by testing in production environments, which enables early identification of problems before deployment.
• Quality: Various environments enable in-depth testing at different phases, confirming that the software satisfies the quality requirements of the end user.
• Separate Tasks: From early development to the final user, each environment has a different function that enables tasks to be separated and efficiently managed.

Each procedure requires careful testing and smooth deployment to create applications that are reliable, scalable, and robust. This is when managing multiple environments takes place. 

Best Practices for Managing Terraform Multiple Environments

The best way to handle multiple environments with Terraform is to use configurations that will separate one from another. By specifying every resource in your configuration file, Terraform can make the required adjustments to reach the desired state after comparing it to the actual state. Some of the best practices to maintain a robust Terraform setup are:

Implement CI/CD Pipelines for Automation

Automated deployments ensure consistency of multiple environments. Setting up the CI/CD pipeline for Terraform configuration will help automate infrastructure deployments and ensure consistency between different environments. Terraform may be integrated with tools such as Microtica, enabling teams to perform security scans, follow protocols, and apply infrastructure changes.

Use terraform. tfvars

In Terraform, input variables for a configuration are defined in a tfvars file. This makes it simple to adjust deployments without changing the core of the configuration files. Terraform variables can be managed in a variety of ways. However, tfvars files are the most popular and best due to their easy use and efficiency.

Use Version Control

We can collaborate with other teams on infrastructure management and take advantage of all the benefits that version control systems (VSC) provide. Terraform Cloud can also connect directly to a VSC such as GitHub or GitLab, and enable automatic changes to the infrastructure when changes are committed to the VSC.

File Separation

Terraform uses a state file to track the current status of infrastructure. When working with multiple environments, separating state files is crucial to prevent unexpected changes. Without clear state separation, teams risk applying incorrect configurations to production or causing downtime. 

Benefits of Using Terraform Multiple Environments

What Terraform makes easier than manual infrastructure management is:

• Manage Infrastructure Across Multiple Cloud Platforms: To communicate with cloud platforms via APIs, Terraform uses so-called providers. The Terraform and HashiCorp community supports more than 1000 resource management providers on Amazon Web Services (AWS), Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Kubernetes, GitHub, and more. They define individual infrastructure units that can later be assembled into a configuration using the HCL language.
• The Configuration Language is Easy to Learn: Terraform’s configuration language is declarative, which means that we use it to describe the desired state of the infrastructure rather than giving step-by-step instructions like in procedural programming. The job of the providers is to automatically resolve dependencies between components and to create or destroy resources in the correct order.
• We Can Track Resource Changes: Terraform tracks our infrastructure in a state file. This file is used to determine the optimal changes to be made to the infrastructure so that it matches the configuration. Also, all changes that are made will not impact the end user in the live system.
• Easy to Use: Terraform offers workspace features that can help you easily create and manage environments using the same configuration. Like this, these environments are isolated so that will not interrupt one another. 

Teams can efficiently manage Terraform's multiple environments thanks to all these advantages that Terraform offers. Using proper segmentation, automated tools, and version control will ensure a scalable and secure workflow. 

Terraform vs. Terragrunt

Instead of manually configuring the infrastructure, users may build it with Terraform, a popular Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tool. On the other hand, Terragrunt is a wrapper tool designed especially to help with the effective deployment and maintenance of infrastructure. But what is the main difference and when to use them?

The main purpose of Terraform is to build infrastructure, while Terragrunt is a separate tool that can help simplify the process. Although Terraform and Terragrunt both use HCL for configuration, Terragrunt utilizes extra configuration files, known as.hcl files, which offer extra features. 

When designing Infrastructure as Code, Terragrunt, and Terraform both employ a declarative syntax. AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and other cloud providers are supported by both Terraform and Terragrunt, allowing infrastructure management across several cloud platforms with a single set of tools.

Terraform provides workspaces that minimize code redundancy. These workspaces are a suitable choice for local testing and development. However, they are both useful tools and provide similarities and differences according to your needs. 

Conclusion

Managing Terraform multiple environments can be challenging, but these practical tips can help you in all stages and produce quality and robust code. There are also many options available, that might work better for you depending on your organization. However, Terraform is an infrastructure as code (IaC) that helps you build custom cloud components and gives your team scalability, consistency, and efficiency.