HFCP case studies
HFCP · Put your knowledge to work in context.
The HashiCorp Certified: Foundational Cloud Practitioner (HFCP) is an entry-level credential for people who work with cloud infrastructure and want to demonstrate working knowledge of HashiCorp's toolset. It suits cloud engineers, platform and DevOps practitioners, system administrators, and developers who are early in their cloud careers or moving into infrastructure automation. The exam spans seven areas: cloud computing fundamentals, Infrastructure as Code with Terraform, networking and security automation, secrets management with Vault, service networking and service mesh, HashiCorp Cloud Platform (HCP) operations, and automation, CI/CD, and collaboration. Expect conceptual multiple-choice and multiple-select questions that test whether you understand what each tool does, when to reach for it, and how the pieces fit together, rather than deep command syntax. The HFCP case studies are 5 cases and about 3,120 words.
1Provider Upgrade Turns a Routine Plan Into 212 Changes
A B2B SaaS company runs 38 HCP Terraform workspaces against AWS. Each environment has its own workspace, remote state, and a GitHub-driven VCS connection.
644 words, about 3 min2Dynamic Database Credentials Expire Behind a Connection Pool
A payments platform runs 140 services on EKS and uses Vault 1.15 with the database secrets engine for PostgreSQL. Each service gets a 1-hour dynamic credential through AppRole; the secret id is stored in a Kubernetes Secret and mounted as an environment variable.
649 words, about 3 min3Overlapping CIDRs Block a Shared-Services Network
A company has four AWS accounts connected by a Transit Gateway and a shared-services VPC. The production VPC uses 10.20.0.0/16 ; a staging VPC in another account also uses 10.20.0.0/16 .
625 words, about 3 min4Strict mTLS Reveals a Service Bypassing the Mesh
A company runs Consul 1.17 with service mesh across two EKS clusters and 12 EC2 virtual machines. There are 45 services, and mTLS is currently in permissive mode with a default intention of allow.
619 words, about 3 min5Static Cloud Keys and Auto-Apply Undermine an HCP Terraform Pipeline
A platform team runs 22 HCP Terraform workspaces for AWS infrastructure. GitHub Actions triggers runs through the HCP Terraform API.
583 words, about 3 min