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Terraform 1.0

github.com

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Re: Terraform 1.0

#41

Post by unethical_ban »

kevincox wrote: post #9

I hate Terraform with a passion but it is probably the best tool out there for managing cloud infrastructure so I use it at work with no plans to replace it. The biggest downsides are the awful half-baked language and the awkwardness of modules and passing values throughout your config. Also the staticness of providers are a serious pain, for example you can't create a kubernetes cluster then add a resource to it. Th…

Yep, the documentation is sometimes lacking, and the concept of moving variables in and out of modules is not intuitive, to say the least.

Re: Terraform 1.0

#42

Post by jansan »

Can someone explain in a few words what this is and who may be interested in this?

The name does not give any hints, also the discription tells me nothing:

"Terraform enables you to safely and predictably create, change, and improve infrastructure. It is an open source tool that codifies APIs into declarative configuration files that can be shared amongst team members, treated as code, edited, reviewed, and versioned."

Is this a tool for property developers?

Re: Terraform 1.0

#43

Post by mschuster91 »

kerng wrote: post #37

Serious question. What value does Terraform provide? Two years ago I looked into it and rather then having an abstraction from cloud providers it seemed to require to still target (and code against) each one specifically. So, I was quite disappointed as I thought the value proposition was to not have to know x cloud provider specific terminologies. Any insights much appreciated. Edit: I was a little worried asking su…

> Serious question. What value does Terraform provide?

Having your cloud environment documented and reproducible in a code repository instead of stuff manually clicked together in the AWS Console.

Re: Terraform 1.0

#44

Post by marcinzm »

kerng wrote: post #37

Serious question. What value does Terraform provide? Two years ago I looked into it and rather then having an abstraction from cloud providers it seemed to require to still target (and code against) each one specifically. So, I was quite disappointed as I thought the value proposition was to not have to know x cloud provider specific terminologies. Any insights much appreciated. Edit: I was a little worried asking su…

It's better than CloudFormation (or a bunch of home grown bash scripts) and you can also modify providers beyond just the cloud host (ie: datadog alerts, database users and permissions, etc, etc.).

Re: Terraform 1.0

#45

Post by traspler »

I see everyone raving about Terraform but I always found it awkward how the DSL works. It might be an improvement over stuff like CloudFormation but feels strange to move the complexity into the language.

Things like the CDK which operate on top of CF feel much more natural and more flexible to me.

Re: Terraform 1.0

#46

Post by matwood »

kerng wrote: post #37

Serious question. What value does Terraform provide? Two years ago I looked into it and rather then having an abstraction from cloud providers it seemed to require to still target (and code against) each one specifically. So, I was quite disappointed as I thought the value proposition was to not have to know x cloud provider specific terminologies. Any insights much appreciated. Edit: I was a little worried asking su…

tf specifically or what does codifying infrastructure provide?

Re: Terraform 1.0

#47

Post by syntaxstic »

kevincox wrote: post #9

I hate Terraform with a passion but it is probably the best tool out there for managing cloud infrastructure so I use it at work with no plans to replace it. The biggest downsides are the awful half-baked language and the awkwardness of modules and passing values throughout your config. Also the staticness of providers are a serious pain, for example you can't create a kubernetes cluster then add a resource to it. Th…

How does terraform compare to ansible?

Re: Terraform 1.0

#48

Post by Dobbs »

kerng wrote: post #37

Serious question. What value does Terraform provide? Two years ago I looked into it and rather then having an abstraction from cloud providers it seemed to require to still target (and code against) each one specifically. So, I was quite disappointed as I thought the value proposition was to not have to know x cloud provider specific terminologies. Any insights much appreciated. Edit: I was a little worried asking su…

It makes things repeatable, organized, and most importantly checked into source control.

It is actually useable unlike cloudformation which is for a nightmare of unreadable, barely editable yaml files and fifty commands to then upload and apply the files. Lets not even get into debugging or unsticking cloudformation when it breaks, something that usually requires writing a support ticket.

Additionally you can build your own modules. I can have a module that is `ServiceFoo`. Pass in a param that causes it to switch between different backends. Yea I have to write the AWS and GCP part seperately, but then anything that needs `ServiceFoo` can just call the module and have the things split across both sides.

You can then also do things like have your DNS in AWS, but have nodes in both GCP and AWS. Use the settings pulled from GCP to input into Route53, etc.

Re: Terraform 1.0

#49

Post by aszen »

kerng wrote: post #37

Serious question. What value does Terraform provide? Two years ago I looked into it and rather then having an abstraction from cloud providers it seemed to require to still target (and code against) each one specifically. So, I was quite disappointed as I thought the value proposition was to not have to know x cloud provider specific terminologies. Any insights much appreciated. Edit: I was a little worried asking su…

Creating and destroying infra resources with the click of a button. Better visibility into what's provisioned and their configuration. If you need to main many individual pieces of infrastructure then it's nice to have a central codified manner to achieve that

Re: Terraform 1.0

#50

Post by eyko »

granra wrote: post #25
kevincox wrote: post #9

I hate Terraform with a passion but it is probably the best tool out there for managing cloud infrastructure so I use it at work with no plans to replace it. The biggest downsides are the awful half-baked language and the awkwardness of modules and passing values throughout your config. Also the staticness of providers are a serious pain, for example you can't create a kubernetes cluster then add a resource to it. Th…

People mention pulumi but hashicorp are creating something similar with https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform-cdk . But all the existing terraform providers work with it afaik.

> This experimental repository contains software which is still being developed and in the alpha testing stage. It is not ready for production use.

Not sure how much you'll want to invest in being essentially an alpha tester. That being said, if you're currently using Terraform and can wait, it's worth keeping an eye on.

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