Attack of the Terraform Mega Module!!! How to know your Terraform Module is too big (and what to do about it)!

Terraform is an extremely powerful tool. It can be a lot of fun and truly empowering but like any tool it can be misused — usually unintentionally — in ways that can lead to tremendous toil and calamity. One of those ways is the slow and gradual birthing of a Mega-Module. That is, a module so huge it can take hours to run Terraform Apply.

I know what you are expecting to hear from me, ‘Surely, a Terraform expert such as yourself has never committed such a horrendous offense! Surely the author of ‘Mastering Terraform’ would have the foresight to avoid such a quagmire!’ But you’d be wrong!

Nobody starts out as a master of anything (unless you’re Rey Palpatine I guess) but for most of us — mere mortals — we can only hope to achieve mastery through practice and well earned scars through the process.

One of the most euphoric experiences when using Terraform is to write the code for your entire solution and in one run of Terraform Apply have a fully working application. The idea of starting from absolutely nothing to achieving greatness is somehow ingrained in the human psyche. It’s the classic “rags to riches” story but Cloud Architect edition. The outcome is very alluring and while things are small and simple —…

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