Tech Learning Collective

Technology education for radical organizers and revolutionary communities.

  • May 1, 2022 1:30 PM (-0400) May 1, 2022 3:00 PM
  • Remote
  • Status: CONFIRMED

Tickets are no longer available for this event.

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Event description

Learn to manage your own Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) datacenter environment and make the most of cloud infrastructure providers (“IaaS platforms”) by automatically deploying underlying infrastructure, including network topology, firewall rulesets, DNS records, and other resources. This intermediate-level workshop introduces you to Terraform, a free, agentless, masterless, Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) digital operations provisioning tool used by many of the largest organizations in the world but simple enough to use on a team of one.

Workshop Description

In the beginning, there was the mainframe: a single, gigantic machine that held all the data and did all the work by itself, like a digital planet suspended in the vast emptiness of cyberspace. Then came networks, the personal computer, the Internet, Web 2.0, cloud computing, microservices, and containers—a whole cybergalaxy to explore. While the world today looks very different than it did in the days of the mainframe, every project still needs to start at the beginning: get at least one computer to hold all project data and do all project work. So how do modern projects go from a single computer to a whole galaxy so quickly?

For many (including Tech Learning Collective!), the answer is Terraform, a free, open source, and extensible tool that can provision and manage any number of infrastructural resources from source code repositories to cloud compute instances to DNS records and much, much more. Using Terraform, engineers describe the digital environment they’d like to have by writing it down in a simple, declarative configuration language called HCL. Then, when instructed, Terraform does the work of metaphorically, well, terraforming cyberspace to match the engineer’s description.

In this workshop, you’ll learn the basics of how to set up Terraform for your organization. We’ll also go over best practices for ensuring testing, staging, and production infrastructures stay isolated from one another, how to compose reusable modules, and how to share your Terraform configurations as well as project state with collaborators. At the end of this workshop, you’ll understand how to bring the cloud down to earth.

As this is a remote/online-only event, there is no physical class space, but attendance is still limited to 15 students, so purchase your ticket now to reserve your spot.

To participate in our webinars, you will need access to a modern Web browser such as an up-to-date copy of Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome. You will also need a reliable Internet connection. We recommend disabling Wi-Fi and plugging your computer in to a hard-wired Ethernet network cable for the duration of the webinar, if possible.

If you would like to share your video screen or appear on camera, you will need to have and activate your own camera, such as the one built-in to many modern laptops. Similarly, to speak with the rest of the webinar participants, you will need a microphone. If you do choose to activate your microphone, we ask that you please plug in headphones/ear buds or use a headset in order to help reduce audio feedback loops that can degrade the webinar experience for other participants.

Please refer to our workshops and webinars FAQ for additional tips and advice before you join the video conference.

As with all Tech Learning Collective events, racism, queerphobia, transphobia, sexism, “brogrammer,” “manarchist,” or any kind of similarly awful behavior will result in immediate removal from class without a refund. Please refer to our lightweight social rules for details on our strictly enforced no-tolerance policy against bigotry of any kind.

About Tech Learning Collective

Tech Learning Collective is an apprenticeship-based technology school that trains politically self-motivated individuals in the arts of hypermedia, Information Technology, and radical political practice. We offer unparalleled free, by-donation, and low-cost computer classes on topics ranging from fundamental computer literacy to the same offensive computer hacking techniques used by national intelligence agencies and military powers (cyber armies). For more information and to enroll, visit TechLearningCollective.com.

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