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Terraform 0.12

hashicorp.com

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Re: Terraform 0.12

#61

Post by jjeaff »

argd678 wrote: post #8
kraig wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO they should have dumped HCL once they caught a whiff of what Pulumi is up to, much rather go with actual languages that when you learn them, you pick up some valued knowledge. You can also do a whole lot more with Typescript than you can with HCL 2.

Agreed, the data model of Terraform simply doesn’t match the problem domain. You need an algorithm to codify the pattern and then data to fill in the params. Terraform doesn’t allow you to create the patterns you need in a way that’s debugable and doesn’t allow for code reuse. For simple setups it’s not apparent there’s a problem but when they get more complex it’s nearly impossible to use. Additionally you have to r…

I used terraform with my AWS deployments because there were lots of examples and I pretty much was able to find a solution that matched my problem and copy paste.

Then, I needed to launch infra in GCP and I messed around with terraform unsuccessfully for a few days before writing about 10 lines of gcloud CLI commands into a makefile.

Now I just check a makefile into my project and just break things up into little shell scripts.

Solved so many problems and headaches.

Re: Terraform 0.12

#62

Post by avitzurel »

We are very heavy users of terraform. We have thousands of lines of HCL and our own providers etc...

Terraform 0.x before 0.12 was heavily limited due to the syntax, you just worked around so many limitations. We are actively ignoring those limitations and we started working without our own templates using jinja that just generate vanilla terraform. No counts and no if/else needed.

Maybe with .12 we can move some of these back to plain terraform.

Upgrade so far is not smooth though, there are a lot of pains with the type system vs the plain old “I’ll figure it out for you”.

ALL of this being said, I really appreciate Hashicorp’s work on this, we could not imagine our life without terraform.

Re: Terraform 0.12

#63

Post by aprdm »

zbentley wrote: post #59
maxaf wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Viewing Terraform solely through the lens of cloud automation and in comparison with CloudFormation is a shortsighted mistake. Terraform has providers for plenty of other services that don't qualify as "cloud things" and lack proper configuration of their own. In a very general sense, Terraform is a terrific resource management tool with state versioning & locking built in. For example, there's a terraform-kafka-prov…

Someday folks will rediscover the potential of Puppet for these use cases. Until then, I'm content to watch countless alternative implementations come and go.

Wonder why you got downvoted, as someone who has been using ansible for years to accomplish what was said and what you accomplish with puppet I wonder what I am missing out of terraform

Re: Terraform 0.12

#64

Post by aprdm »

n42 wrote: post #44
techntoke wrote: post #19

I moved away from Terraform a long time ago. Ansible was way more powerful, handled errors and issues with state changes. Terraform was super picky about how you had to operate, slow and HCL was a terrible markup language. I wasn't really a huge fan of Ansible either though and more recently have been doing things in regular shell/Bash scripts. Now with Kubernetes and service brokers, there is no need for Terraform.

Ansible can very easily, and often does, end up in situations where two runs of the same playbook both have drastically different results. roles/playbooks slowly become Bash scripts written in a YAML layer parsed as a Jinja2 template.. and the project turns into a mess of many layers of indirection. it attempts to and encourages declarative configuration, but is very hard to keep that way. it is difficult and require…

Maybe you never worked in a company with good ansible practices.

Re: Terraform 0.12

#65

Post by cs02rm0 »

jjeaff wrote: post #61
argd678 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, the data model of Terraform simply doesn’t match the problem domain. You need an algorithm to codify the pattern and then data to fill in the params. Terraform doesn’t allow you to create the patterns you need in a way that’s debugable and doesn’t allow for code reuse. For simple setups it’s not apparent there’s a problem but when they get more complex it’s nearly impossible to use. Additionally you have to r…

I used terraform with my AWS deployments because there were lots of examples and I pretty much was able to find a solution that matched my problem and copy paste. Then, I needed to launch infra in GCP and I messed around with terraform unsuccessfully for a few days before writing about 10 lines of gcloud CLI commands into a makefile. Now I just check a makefile into my project and just break things up into little she…

I'm so tempted to do abandon CloudFormation for a Makefile with AWS cli commands.

If there wasn't a chip on my shoulder telling me I had to use what the next person would expect else as a contractor I risk being seen as unprofessional I'd do it in a heartbeat.

I've never used Terraform but CloudFormation just seems to suck, the documentation is poor and relatively few people are sharing their stack files. I've lost count of the number of times I've hit an error only to find Google hasn't heard of it.

Re: Terraform 0.12

#66

Post by peterwwillis »

tptacek wrote: post #60
mirceal wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is short-sighted. Terraform and CloudFormation are not even in the same league. One of them works and actually can be used for Infrastructure as Code, the other one does not roll back in the face of failure - it effectively craps for reasons ranging from network failure, process crash, even normal operation. One is heavy kool-aid with bugs that go unresolved for years, the other behaves as advertised. Sorry, but…

I mean, this is harsh, but there's a running joke that the big feature terraform is missing is a -twice flag so that it'll re-run itself on failure, since that's what you end up having to do anyways. Also, the terraform language, HCL? It's, I guess there's no better way to put this: not good. Am I misunderstanding the complexity of what Terraform is trying to do? To me, it looks like a bunch of tiny API clients tied…

No, it's pretty straightforward, terraform is just intended to parse and execute random functions in a graph generated by a template language. It is absolutely a form of 'make': overcomplicated and generic to serve the needs of supporting random companies' infrastructure as versioned code, without having to write the implementation bits.

It's a good idea and not a bad design, but the user experience is pretty bad and nearly all the operational aspect is an afterthought. It was not built to be sold as a product, hence it kind of sucks as a product, but it's fine as a free tool. The fact that it's the best free tool we have for this task speaks volumes about how most companies are deathly afraid to work as a community to build better solutions.

Re: Terraform 0.12

#67

Post by ReidZB »

tptacek wrote: post #60
mirceal wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is short-sighted. Terraform and CloudFormation are not even in the same league. One of them works and actually can be used for Infrastructure as Code, the other one does not roll back in the face of failure - it effectively craps for reasons ranging from network failure, process crash, even normal operation. One is heavy kool-aid with bugs that go unresolved for years, the other behaves as advertised. Sorry, but…

I mean, this is harsh, but there's a running joke that the big feature terraform is missing is a -twice flag so that it'll re-run itself on failure, since that's what you end up having to do anyways. Also, the terraform language, HCL? It's, I guess there's no better way to put this: not good. Am I misunderstanding the complexity of what Terraform is trying to do? To me, it looks like a bunch of tiny API clients tied…

Yeah, HCL's limitations have been an enormous thorn in my side for a long time. HCL2 (Terraform 0.12) is a big step forward, but even still I pine for a proper programming language, even if it has foot-guns.

I do think you're selling Terraform short, though. Sure, the core is the toposort-create-things. But it also stores the state of its created things and (crucially) has the ability to diff the actual state of resources against what it thinks they ought to be.

Being able to inspect existing resources and diff state is also what lets it import existing resources, so that they can be Terraform-managed going forward.

Terraform is also capable of determining if its planned changes can be performed in-place or if they require resources to be destroyed and re-created. That boils down to a boolean flag on a field, ultimately, but it's still something a dead-simple make clone probably wouldn't do well.

I've only really used Terraform seriously for AWS, so I'm not sure about the other providers, but the Terraform AWS Provider has an enormous amount of work behind it. Basically every resource API has schema validation written in the AWS provider, and depending on the resource there are often eventual-consistency issues handled by the provider. See for example [0].

In contrast, AWS CloudFormation: can't import existing resources; isn't always sure whether an update will require replacement or not; and, as of ~6 months ago, can detect configuration drift, but not correct it (!). Of course, CloudFormation wins in other areas...

[0]: https://github.com/terraform-providers/terraform-provider-aw...

Re: Terraform 0.12

#68

Post by [deleted] »

tptacek wrote: post #60
mirceal wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is short-sighted. Terraform and CloudFormation are not even in the same league. One of them works and actually can be used for Infrastructure as Code, the other one does not roll back in the face of failure - it effectively craps for reasons ranging from network failure, process crash, even normal operation. One is heavy kool-aid with bugs that go unresolved for years, the other behaves as advertised. Sorry, but…

I mean, this is harsh, but there's a running joke that the big feature terraform is missing is a -twice flag so that it'll re-run itself on failure, since that's what you end up having to do anyways. Also, the terraform language, HCL? It's, I guess there's no better way to put this: not good. Am I misunderstanding the complexity of what Terraform is trying to do? To me, it looks like a bunch of tiny API clients tied…

[deleted]

Re: Terraform 0.12

#69

Post by ofrzeta »

tptacek wrote: post #60
mirceal wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is short-sighted. Terraform and CloudFormation are not even in the same league. One of them works and actually can be used for Infrastructure as Code, the other one does not roll back in the face of failure - it effectively craps for reasons ranging from network failure, process crash, even normal operation. One is heavy kool-aid with bugs that go unresolved for years, the other behaves as advertised. Sorry, but…

I mean, this is harsh, but there's a running joke that the big feature terraform is missing is a -twice flag so that it'll re-run itself on failure, since that's what you end up having to do anyways. Also, the terraform language, HCL? It's, I guess there's no better way to put this: not good. Am I misunderstanding the complexity of what Terraform is trying to do? To me, it looks like a bunch of tiny API clients tied…

Well, judging from the release notes, with for-loops you are now one step closer to a real programming language. Looks like the beginning of the end of the "declarative" paradigma which keeps people running their heads against the wall like this https://blog.gruntwork.io/terraform-tips-tricks-loops-if-sta...

Re: Terraform 0.12

#70

Post by MrBuddyCasino »

tptacek wrote: post #60
mirceal wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is short-sighted. Terraform and CloudFormation are not even in the same league. One of them works and actually can be used for Infrastructure as Code, the other one does not roll back in the face of failure - it effectively craps for reasons ranging from network failure, process crash, even normal operation. One is heavy kool-aid with bugs that go unresolved for years, the other behaves as advertised. Sorry, but…

I mean, this is harsh, but there's a running joke that the big feature terraform is missing is a -twice flag so that it'll re-run itself on failure, since that's what you end up having to do anyways. Also, the terraform language, HCL? It's, I guess there's no better way to put this: not good. Am I misunderstanding the complexity of what Terraform is trying to do? To me, it looks like a bunch of tiny API clients tied…

Well said. Its basically ANT for the cloud, in that its an annoyingly limited DSL with just enough power to work, but in a verbose and frustrating way.

Speaking of real code (not YAML or HCL) as infrastructure, anyone have experience with Pulumi?

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