Summary
This demonstration walks through Terraform Cloud's ephemeral workspaces feature, designed to address the common problem of forgotten cloud resources that accumulate costs and security risks. The video shows how to configure automatic resource destruction using two methods: scheduled one-time deletion at a specific date and time, or inactivity-based destruction that triggers after a defined period without workspace changes. The presenter demonstrates setting up a seven-day inactivity threshold for a development workspace, configuring email notifications to alert users 12 and 24 hours before destruction, and shows the complete lifecycle from configuration through automatic cleanup. The feature eliminates manual cleanup tasks while helping organizations optimize cloud spending and improve developer productivity by ensuring temporary environments for development, testing, demos, and training don't persist beyond their useful life.
