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AWS CloudFormation vs. IBM Terraform vs. Redgate Flyway

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    AWS CloudFormation

    Score8.2 out of 10
    N/AAWS CloudFormation gives developers and systems administrators a way to create and manage a collection of related AWS resources, provisioning and updating them in a predictable fashion. Use AWS CloudFormation’s sample templates or create templates to describe the AWS resources, and any associated dependencies or runtime parameters, required to run an application. Users don’t need to figure out the order for provisioning AWS services or the subtleties of making those dependencies work.…

    $0

    IBM Terraform

    Score8.7 out of 10
    N/AIBM Terraform (formerly Hashicorp Terraform) is a cloud infrastructure automation tool used to create, change, and improve production infrastructure, and it allows infrastructure to be expressed as code. It is available Open Source, and via Cloud and Self-Hosted editions.

    $0

    Redgate Flyway

    Score9 out of 10
    N/ARedgate Flyway extends DevOps practices to databases to speed up software delivery while keeping business-critical data safe. From version control to continuous delivery, Redgate Flyway helps enterprises build on application delivery processes to automate database development and deployments.

    $0

    Pricing
    AWS CloudFormationIBM TerraformRedgate Flyway
    Editions & Modules
    Free Tier - 1,000 Handler Operations per Month per Account
    $0.00
    Handler Operation
    $0.0009
    per handler operation
    Open Source
    $0
    Team & Governance
    $20/user
    per user/per month
    Enterprise
    Contact sales team
    Community
    Free
    Enterprise
    Contact Sales
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    AWS CloudFormationIBM TerraformRedgate Flyway
    Free Trial
    YesNoYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    YesYesYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    YesNoYes
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup feeOptional
    Additional DetailsThere is no additional charge for using AWS CloudFormation with resource providers in the following namespaces: AWS::*, Alexa::*, and Custom::*. In this case you pay for AWS resources (such as Amazon EC2 instances, Elastic Load Balancing load balancers, etc.) created using AWS CloudFormation as if you created them manually. You only pay for what you use, as you use it; there are no minimum fees and no required upfront commitments. When you use resource providers with AWS CloudFormation outside the namespaces mentioned above, you incur charges per handler operation. Handler operations are create, update, delete, read, or list actions on a resource.——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    AWS CloudFormationIBM TerraformRedgate Flyway
    Considered Multiple Products
    Amazon AWS
    Chose AWS CloudFormation
    The only real comparison would be to Terraform, which is another IaC technology at the infra level. Terraform is cloud-agnostic, which means most popular cloud providers are supported. While AWS CloudFormation is AWS-only. Although, if you consider CDK, CDK for Terraform …
    Incentivized
    Chose AWS CloudFormation
    Since the product I'm involved is primarily hosted on AWS we use CloudFormation but in some other products where we have hybrid cloud deployments we prefer Terraform which is opensource.
    Incentivized
    Chose AWS CloudFormation
    As we have our whole infrastructure on AWS, that is why we selected AWS CloudFormation. AWS CloudFormation is better integrated with AWS services than other available products and also provides visibility and tracking on AWS. AWS CloudFormation is free while Terraform …
    Incentivized
    Chose AWS CloudFormation
    We didn't look into anything else as Cloudformation was "built-in" for AWS, it just kind of made sense to go with that. Terraform was something that we briefly looked into Terraform but decides to stick with Cloudformation because our task was relatively "simple". Apparently if …
    Incentivized
    IBM
    Chose IBM Terraform
    AWS CloudFormation is better if you just want to stick with AWS because it's integration with AWS is better, provides auto-rollback in case of failures, and has GUI to manage and view the stacks built. Terraform is better when we want to stay cloud-agnostic. Terraform is better …
    Incentivized
    Chose IBM Terraform
    HashiCorp Terraform has more possibilities
    Incentivized
    Chose IBM Terraform
    HashiCorp Terraform is much better than Cloud Formation. For one, the language is just easier to use, but more importantly, the provider ecosystem is much better in HashiCorp Terraform than in Cloud Formation.
    Incentivized
    Chose IBM Terraform
    HashiCorp Terraform has Cloud agnostic capability to use with different cloud vendors and the ease of creating the code with minimal effort.
    Incentivized
    Chose IBM Terraform
    CloudFormation is only for AWS so if you're trying to deploy to another cloud provider then Terraform is your product. Terraform has lots of public support so you can find answers to questions by Googling. CloudFormation is easy to view the resources/services that are …
    Incentivized
    Chose IBM Terraform
    Terraform was more preferred over Ansible as it is considerably more intutive.
    Incentivized
    Chose IBM Terraform
    SIngle tools for both tools, no need to remember two different syntaxes.
    Incentivized
    Redgate
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    100%
    Would buy again
    7 Answers
    95%
    Would buy again
    21 Answers
    100%
    Would buy again
    7 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    7 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    20 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    7 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    86%
    Happy with the feature set
    6 Answers
    95%
    Happy with the feature set
    21 Answers
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    7 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    86%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    6 Answers
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    14 Answers
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    6 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    7 Answers
    95%
    Implementation went as expected
    18 Answers
    86%
    Implementation went as expected
    6 Answers
    Best Alternatives
    AWS CloudFormationIBM TerraformRedgate Flyway
    Small Businesses
    HashiCorp Vagrant
    Score9 out of 10
    HashiCorp Vagrant
    Score9 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    Medium-sized Companies
    IBM Terraform
    Score8.7 out of 10
    HashiCorp Vagrant
    Score9 out of 10
    Toad Database Developer Tools
    Score9.2 out of 10
    Enterprises
    IBM Terraform
    Score8.7 out of 10
    AWS CloudFormation
    Score8.2 out of 10
    Toad Database Developer Tools
    Score9.2 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    AWS CloudFormationIBM TerraformRedgate Flyway
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.0
    (7 ratings)
    7.8
    (33 ratings)
    9.0
    (7 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Usability
    8.0
    (2 ratings)
    8.8
    (8 ratings)
    9.1
    (3 ratings)
    Performance
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.4
    (3 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (6 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.2
    (3 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    AWS CloudFormationIBM TerraformRedgate Flyway
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Amazon AWS
    I still give it an 8 because it's one of those tools that just quietly does the heavy lifting for you but it can really test your patience when it breaks esp with deep nested stacks. It's perfect for projects where we need clean consistent environments every time. It's less ideal for quick experimental setups like new EC2 configs or Lambda permission tweaks.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    Anything that needs to be repeated en masse. Terraform is great at taking a template and have it be repeated across your estate. You can dynamically change the assets they're generating depending on certain variables. Which means though templated assets will all be similar, they're allowed to have unique properties about them. For example flattening JSON into tabular data and ensuring the flattening code is unique to the file's schema.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Redgate
    Database Migrations on Java-based solutions. It has one of the best integrations with it as a database migration tool, you can do it with the community edition (no pricing involved) and it works flawlessly with Maven and Gradle. It's not an expensive tool in order to use the next level of features and is worth the money. I would recommend reaching that edition level as the object mapping feature gets really handy. I would not recommend it for any Microsoft-based solution (.Net) as is not compatible at all based on my experience, this is a tool only worth it with Java applications.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Amazon AWS
    • All resources can segregated based on stacks which provides greater visibility
    • A complete audit trail of what went wrong while deploying a particular resource
    • Automatically rollbacks if any service as part of CloudFormation results in an error
    • The UI tool is useful
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    • Terraform is cloud agnostic. Just select the suitable provider for the cloud and it will do the job.
    • Templating is possible to make the Terraform templates reusable.
    • Variables can be created to make the templates generic so that it can be reused for different environments or resources.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Redgate
    • Manage DB migration patch scripts
    • Apply DB migration patch scripts
    • Test DB migration patch scripts
    • Setup new DB instances, including on local env
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Amazon AWS
    • Error Description upon Failure Needs to be Improved.
    • Slow to create, delete or update.
    • Need to delete resources manually. It can ask before starting deletion whether to skip those resources or delete them.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    • The language itself is a bit unusual and this makes it hard for new users to get onboarded into the codebase. While it's improving with later releases, basic concepts like "map an array of options into a set of configurations" or "apply this logic if a variable is specified" are possible but unnecessarily cumbersome.
    • The 'Terraform Plan' operation could be substantially more sophisticated. There are many situations where a Terraform file could never work but successfully passes the 'plan' phase only to fail during the 'apply' phase.
    • Environment migrations could be smoother. Renaming/refactoring files is a challenge because of the need to use 'Terraform mv' commands, etc.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Redgate
    • Updating it causes problems, there have been unnecessary changes that wasted time
    • Requires knowledge & studying so it's used properly
    • Lots of options that might be difficult to understand for non technical people
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Amazon AWS
    No answers on this topic
    IBM
    Still the best provisioning tool out there and good support from the community as well in terms of shared knowledge
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Redgate
    No answers on this topic
    Usability
    Amazon AWS
    It's easy enough to get a shared template & apply it. You don't even have to download-then-upload or copy-and-paste, a publicly-accessible url works.
    Diving deeper, it has enough powerful capabilities to make the life of a platform / DevOps engineer bearable.
    However, you need equally deep knowledge to troubleshoot issues, when they inevitably pop up. This is the same for all IaC technologies, as they are additional abstraction layers on top of the native API provided by the cloud providers.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    The syntax itself is pretty straightforward. The documentation is well-maintained & easy to follow. Most cloud providers, even smaller ones, maintain official provider libraries, making discovery & learning a breeze. Some, like GCP, even provide high-level libraries on top of their own more primitive provider, making building complex infra much more manageable. The language itself is cloud-agnostic, so you can literally manage resources from multiple providers in a single Terraform repo.
    Read full review
    Redgate
    It's very easy to install and use. Even someone very new to the software will have no trouble, plus the team reach out to help you and continue to offer you support throughout. Really simple interface, clean design, all you could really ask for in a tool that needs to do a job dependably
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Performance
    Amazon AWS
    No answers on this topic
    IBM
    Terraform's performance is quite amazing when it comes to deployment of resources in AWS. Of course, the deployment times depend on various parameters like the number of resources to deploy and different regions to deploy. Terraform cannot control that. The only minor drawback probably shows up when a terraform job is terminated mid way. Then in many cases, time-consuming manual cleanup is required.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Redgate
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    Amazon AWS
    No answers on this topic
    IBM
    I have yet to have an opportunity to reach out directly to HashiCorp for support on Terraform. However, I have spent a great deal of time considering their documentation as I use the tool. This opinion is based solely on that. I find the Terraform documentation to have great breadth but lacking in depth in many areas. I appreciate that all of the tool's resources have an entry in the docs but often the examples are lacking. Often, the examples provided are very basic and prompt additional exploration. Also, the links in the documentation often link back to the same page where one might expect to be linked to a different source with additional information.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Redgate
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation Rating
    Amazon AWS
    No answers on this topic
    IBM
    Implementation is straight forward. Never had issues as the team is already very familiar with Terraform installation from previous projects and roles
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Redgate
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    Amazon AWS
    Cloning a virtual machine creates a virtual machine that is cloning a virtual machine creates a virtual machine that is a copy of the original. The new virtual machine is configured with the same virtual hardware, installed software, and other properties that were configured for the original virtual machine. For information about persistent memory and PMem storage, see the vSphere Cloning a virtual machine creates a virtual machine that is a copy of the original. The new virtual machine is configured with the same virtual hardware, installed software, and other properties that were configured for the original virtual machine. For information. Management guide.For information copy of the original. The new virtual Cloning virtual machine creates a virtual machine that is a copy of the original. The new virtual machine is configured with the same virtual hardware, installed software, and other properties that were configured for the original virtual machine. For information about persistent memory and PMem storage, see the vSphere Resource Management Guide. For information is configured with the same virtual hardware, installed software, and other properties that were configured for the original virtual machine. For information about persistent memory and PMem storage, see the vSphere Resource Management Guide. For information
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    Terraform is the solid leader in the space. It allows you to do more then just provisioning within a pre-existing servers. It is more extensible and has more providers available than it competitors. It is also open source and more adopted by the community then some of the other solutions that are available in the market place.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Redgate
    The problem with a cloud-based tool for migration services is the cloud dependency. You are restricted to use the tool along the Cloud provider. Flyway gives you the freedom to use it in any scenario as long as you are working with a compatible database engine. Even if you are working on-premise and you don't have plans to move to a cloud architecture. Or even for sandbox development scenarios where you are a developer playing around with some project ideas. And you don't have to pay anything as long as you need advanced features, and not less importantly, you are using an open-source tool.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    Amazon AWS
    • + We can standup a VPC in minutes
    • - It took a lot of inital time to set up
    • + With logging/rollback, made testing much easier.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    • we are able to deploy our infrastructure in a couple of ours in an automated and repeatable way, before this could take weeks if the work was done manually and was a lot of error prone.
    • having the state file, you can see a diff of what things have changed manually out side of Terraform which is a huge plus
    • if state file gets corrupted, it is very hard to debug or restore it without an impact or spending hours ..
    • writing big scale code can be very challenging and hard to be efficient so it's usable by the whole team
    Read full review
    Redgate
    • I definitely think it do have positive impact to our company's database management.
    • We have 4 database environments and thus it is easy when we push the database to various environments.
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    AWS CloudFormation Screenshots

    Screenshot of CloudFormation - How it works overviewScreenshot of CloudFormation - High level how it worksScreenshot of CloudFormation - Template exampleScreenshot of CloudFormation - Template inputs overview

    IBM Terraform Screenshots

    Screenshot of Terraform StateScreenshot of Terraform RunsScreenshot of Terraform VariablesScreenshot of Terraform WorkspacesScreenshot of Terraform Cost Estimation

    Redgate Flyway Screenshots

    Screenshot of Flyway Enterprise – auto-generation of migration scriptsScreenshot of Flyway Enterprise - reportingScreenshot of Flyway Enterprise - drift detection