Shape your (virtual) world with Terraform
January 16, 2017

Shape your (virtual) world with Terraform

Charles Anderson | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Terraform

We are currently using Terraform in some early development projects and looking at it as a possible replacement for Amazon Cloud Formation. So far, this is experimental and not production. We are provisioning virtual infrastructure in AWS - i.e., we are not using any of the cross-provider facilities. That said, avoiding vendor lock-in is an appealing benefit of Terraform.

Pros

  • I find the HashiCorp Configuration Language (HCL) superior to raw JSON used by Cloud Formation.
  • Being open-source is a plus not just for "philosophical" reasons, but it also provide rapid support when new products are announced from vendors like Amazon.
  • The fact that it's free and open-source means that it's easy to start evaluating Terraform (and most of the other tools from HashiCorp) without being pressured by sales people.

Cons

  • Until recently, there haven't been any books about Terraform. Although the online documentation for Terraform is pretty good, it's often nice to have a traditional book, especially when learning. Now, there are two books on the subject.
  • Terraform is rapidly evolving. Part of that is the nature of the space - vendors are always coming up with new offerings and API. But, some days I wish the targets would stop moving for a bit.
  • I can't say that we've had any ROI yet because we're not using Terraform in production. I look forward to building a (somewhat) self-documenting infrastructure and having multiple engineers working together on it.
  • AWS CloudFormation
CloudFormation is the lingua franca of AWS. You certainly can't go wrong using it, but I like the syntax and open-source nature of Terraform. That's mostly a personal preference. I have not tried any other non-Amazon tools for provisioning AWS. And, of course, the AWS tools don't work for non-Amazon clouds like Google or Azure.
Terraform is a great tool for building virtual infrastructures in clouds like Amazon and Google. If you are building a heterogenous infrastructure spanning multiple vendors, I don't know of any other single tool that can do that. Even in the case where you're just building AWS infrastructure, I prefer the HCL syntax of Terraform, and I dislike getting roped into using some of the Amazon tools.

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