Providers are something you use to configure access to the service you create resources for. For example, if you want to create AWS resources, you need to configure the AWS provider. This would specify credentials to access the APIs of many AWS services.
At the time of writing, Terraform has more than 40 providers. This impressive list includes not only major cloud providers such as AWS and Google Cloud, but also smaller services, such as Fastly, a Content Delivery Network (CDN) provider.
Not every provider requires explicit configuration. Some of them do not even deal with external services. Instead, they provide resources for local entities. For example, you could use a TLS provider to generate keys and certificates.
Nevertheless, most providers deal with one or another external API and require configuration. In this book, we will be using the AWS...
