Verifying Terraform

Verification is a necessary step in the Terraform setup process.

  1. Open a new Command Prompt with administrative privileges.

  2. Navigate to the directory containing the Terraform executable by setting the path.

  3. Run the command terraform init as displayed in the image below.

  1. Run the command terraform apply.

The examples below display the command prompt with outputs for possible variables:

Output: Get Secret

Use Case: Retrieve a stored secret (such as a password or API key) using Terraform.

Output: Create Secret

Use Case: Create a new secret from Terraform, for example, generating and storing a new credential, and capture the resulting secret ID for reference or future use.

Output for Update Secret

Use Case: Update an existing secret from Terraform.

Output: Get Secret with Ephemeral Resource

Use Case: Retrieve a secret only during the terraform apply process using an ephemeral resource.

When using ephemeral resources in Terraform to retrieve secrets (such as passwords or API keys), the resource is used transiently during the execution of terraform apply. It is instantiated only for the duration of the apply operation to fetch the secret, and its data is not stored in the Terraform state file (.tfstate). As a result, no credentials are saved to disk or version control, enhancing security. Even though the secret is successfully retrieved and used during execution, no output is displayed and nothing is retained after apply, which is the intended behavior of ephemeral resources.

Output for Disable Secret

The terraform destroy command internally calls the Delete resource function (dataSourceSecretDelete), which disables the secret in the Secret Server.