HashiCorp Terraform Reviews

A primary use case of Terraform is for deploying a VM on a cloud using Terraform script. If I then want to deploy a third-party toolset, a solution such as Aviatrix can create an overlay on top of each of the cloud providers and you can connect the clouds together. I'm a solutions architect and we are customers of HashiCorp. 

The solution has made a huge difference to us because the automation it provides has given us improved cost efficiency, security and saved many man-hours. It's created once and then that's pretty much it. When you next want to deploy something, you run it and it deploys. 

Terraform removes the manual process; you run it for a specific purpose, destroy it when you're done, and it removes all the associated components. The other good feature is that Terraform is idempotent; if something is already out there, it's not going to try to duplicate another installation of that environment.

One of the other major features of terraform is in its ability to act as a Disaster Recovery tool. Since terraform is an Infrastructure-As-A-Service tool, it can be used as part of the rest of the DR toolset to restore affected infrastructure to its original state without any variation. 

The Terraform manifests can be stored in a version control repository separate from the application code base and can be a single source of truth for an organization's infrastructure. The automation and the efficiency that Terraform brings to the SDLC lifecycle adds to the overall integrity of the infrastructure and provides a value added to the DevSecOps workflow.   

I've noticed that although Terraform is very good at deploying, it lacks in running script. For example, if you wanted to run multiple deployments such as a VM, and then install different softwares and create a full-blown infrastructure within that virtual machine, Terraform would probably lack certain features. I don't think it's very robust in running scripts or going from one sequence to another. You're likely to end up running a huge Terraform code base, where you'd probably get lost in terms of knowing where things are coming from and where they're going. 

I've been using this solution for two years. 

The solution is stable without too many bugs. If we're deploying on top of a current deployment, there can be some issues and that could be improved. If you need a fully idempotent solution, you deploy your infrastructure without touching any existing infrastructure. Unfortunately, Terraform fails when it finds an existing infrastructure and things become complicated. In terms of stability, this is probably one of the biggest deficiencies of Terraform. 

HashiCorp provides very good documentation so we haven't needed to contact technical support. They also have GitHub repository against each of those tutorials, so we can actually clone and tweak those according to our needs. There's also a large open-source community out there and a lot of blogs that complement the documentation. 

Deployment is just about downloading the plug-in. To run it requires each of the cloud environments on the CLI tool downloaded so that they both work together with all the credentials in place so that it can connect to each of the clouds. We are a small organization and still experimenting with Terraform so we only have one dedicated person helping out with the solution. That said, all of the team members are more or less skilled with Terraform.

We're definitely seeing cost savings from a man-hour point of view but I can't quantify it. 

We are using the free version of Terraform. Terraform Cloud has some kind of pricing and enterprise-level model which we haven't moved to yet. I think  Terraform has a pretty reasonable pricing structure. It allows the open-source community to use it as they please, so I'm pretty happy about it.

AWS has a code solution called CloudFormation which I think is a little slower than Terraform although I think CloudFormation is probably a bit more secure and foolproof.

This is a solid product and one of the leaders in this space. Terraform is used across the board as an Infrastructure-as-Code solution. 

There could be some improvements so I rate this solution eight out of 10. 

We use Terraform for many different use cases. The primary one is ensuring that the security policy is automatically applied to all of the resources within a cloud environment. Another one would be creating and dismantling all sorts of test labs, as well as creating a development environment. We found a way to automatically create a development environment only for the time we need. We develop the infrastructure and cloud-related tasks.

The most valuable feature of Terraform is the ability to use it as a coding language because it works in a way that's similar to other coding languages. They are able to create classes, loops, etc. If you're familiar with coding, you will not have issues with learning to use Terraform.

One thing where Terraform could use improvement would be the types of resources it supports. With cloud providers always adding new resource types, there are certain resources that Terraform does not support. It would be great if it could support those resources as well.

I have been using Terraform for three years.

I give it a ten out of ten for stability.

Terraform is very scalable. A ten out of ten. About four or five DevOps engineers use Terraform at my company. 

We plan to increase its usage. I come from the security world and Terraform is very useful in ensuring that off of the resources within a cloud environment are deployed in a unified way. If you build the Terraform script once and you ask to create a different type of resource, instead of going into the Azure or AWS console and creating the resource from scratch, they use your Terraform script and ensure that all of the secured measures you've deemed necessary are built into that deployment.

I would rate the easiness of the setup a nine out of ten. It takes a maximum of 15 minutes to deploy it, but you need to write the script you want to run first, which takes more time since writing it depends on what you want to do.
I deployed it myself, but Terraform has some great, open people who contributed to the project. Specifically, the cloud part of the project had a lot of valuable contributions and made the deployment easy.

I am currently using the free version of Terraform.

My advice to new users would be to understand that Terraform works like a coding language, so you need to understand how it loops over objects in the same way that coding language loops over. objects You should turn Terraform terms into classic coding terms. 

Overall, I rate it a ten out of ten.

The solution is a success code. We use open-source software.

The first thing I like about the solution is that it keeps a version of your infrastructure. And you always have, for example, the bill of materials with what it produces in terms of YAML files that you can manipulate and understand exactly what infrastructure you deploy, what is active, and what is not. We use it with the Amazon database, where the solution does not deploy the second time if somebody triggers a build or deployment. Apart from those features, the fact that you have your infrastructure on code is tremendous.

It would be nice if they could put our infrastructure on graphics or at least provide a map of our infrastructure, especially with links, to see what it looks like graphically. That way, we could understand the relationship between all the machines. That helps with redundancy purposes, where, for example, if we need to create redundancies to create high availability for some services, we could look at the map directly.

I've worked with the solution for three or four years.

The solution works very well every time. It calls APIs from Amazon, so it's always up to date. I rate the solution's stability a nine out of ten because we never had a problem.

I rate the solution's scalability an eight out of ten. It's pretty scalable on the Amazon cloud. We have around three or four users on the solution.

HashiCorp's technical support is very good. They know what they're talking about.

The initial setup is really simple. We just created YAML files with what we needed, and somebody deployed machines and load balancers. It's just a binary we needed to place anywhere.

We deployed the solution on Amazon's cloud. For the AKS cluster, we just launched Terraform, which region and which kinds of machines we wanted to install.

Terraform's philosophy is different, but Ansible is a similar product. It's not the same, though you can also deploy virtual machines, for example. However, I would not use Ansible because it does not have the same features as Terraform when it comes to history. Terraform pulls the API first to understand what you have from your schema and compare it with your existing infrastructure.

Ansible would not do that. It would just execute the code and deploy without knowing what it does.

We don't use Terraform in a very fancy way. The solution did not have a difficult use case, nor did we go into a specific feature of Terraform that we tested very thoroughly. We used it in a basic way, simply trying not to run the same script twice or by two people simultaneously.

I rate HashiCorp Terraform a nine out of ten and recommend it to everyone.

We use this solution to make our migration plan and utilize the images of Azure, GCP, and EC2 instances for our infrastructure. We have basic applications that the bank requires, so we use Terraform to expedite the initial infrastructure preparation. We also created a couple of common modules that we can use in production, development, and test environments.

The environment is very good. That's awesome.

At present, they only support around 300 applications and services from different clouds. They should aim to support more than a thousand to stay ahead of their competitors.

The product can integrate and utilize more services from different competitors. Currently, their commands are quite similar to Kubernetes, which we use in our CI/CD pipeline. Also, they should consider incorporating Windows command line, like PowerShell. 

Moreover, they should involve more technologies instead of just being providers for managing infrastructure; they could become active players in the field.

I have been using this solution for one and a half years. 

The solution is pretty stable. I would rate the stability a nine out of ten.

I would rate the scalability an eight out of ten.

The initial setup is easy. You just need to provide the description and the value for that particular setup. You don't have to learn or by heart remember all those commands. It's really easy. For example, if I want to create a DNS entry, I can use the data as well as resource parameters for the same.

So, that sort of flexibility allows me to use it differently, depending on my needs. When I use it as data, I can redirect my DNS to somewhere else because I'm using GCP as my service provider for my on-premise website. So, I route the incoming requests via GCP using load balancers. I use data as a resource for this. When I'm using Azure DNS, I utilize a resource command for the same in the data.

We have deployed it both on cloud and on-premises. 

The solution is comparatively cheaper than the others.

If you want to stay on top, you should be involved not only in maintaining your current infrastructure but also in adapting to changes. For example, if HashiCorp incorporates certain Linux commands, it will attract more people from the infrastructure field, especially those with a Linux background.

Overall, I would rate the solution a ten out of ten.

My company uses HashiCorp Terraform for cloud infrastructure provisioning. HashiCorp Terraform is the only IaC tool we use in our company.

The most valuable features of the solution are its simplicity of HCL language, its compatibility with multiple cloud providers, and its modules like the open source modules available, especially considering the fact that I work mainly on AWS. I believe that HashiCorp Terraform is one of the best products available in the market for my company's use cases. HashiCorp Terraform is also a feasible solution in terms of its availability of cloud resources.

I know a UI tool is available in the licensed version of HashiCorp Terraform. From a user's perspective, it would be great if a UI tool is made available in the open source version as well, but I don't think it may be introduced because of the high costs for it announced by HashiCorp in its licensed version.

HashiCorp Terraform can improve backward compatibility. From users' perspective, migration from one version to another is okay. The migration from an older version to a newer version is a big challenge in HashiCorp Terraform. We tried to fix the migration issues multiple times at our end and saw that some will not be compatible sometimes while, at times, certain aspects will be compatible with the new version.

I have been using HashiCorp Terraform for four years. I use HashiCorp Terraform v0.12 or v0.13. I use the open-source version of the tool for my company's internal usage.

Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

My organization has around 30 to 40 users of the solution.

The simplicity or complexity of the initial setup depends on the number of accounts involved in the setup phase on the cloud, along with the resources to be managed. Based on my experience, one won't find HashiCorp Terraform's setup difficult if the configuration and management are in place.

The solution is deployed on the public cloud. I know people who use the solution on private and hybrid clouds.

For those users with their infrastructure on the cloud, I would say that Terraform is a tool they can use immediately, even though other tools like Ansible are in the market. At some point, one may feel that Ansible lacks efficiency in a cloud infrastructure, which is a difficulty one may face when using Terraform in a bigger infrastructure. I would say that the combination of Ansible and Terraform is the best.

When following complex methods, Ansible is the best option. If you do too much configuration on the standalone file, then if not today, then tomorrow you might be stranded in a situation where you might not be able to edit or modify the configuration, especially when some improvements related to certain features have to be included in the product or your product's existing portal. It will be very tough to deal with, especially when it will be a single file with thousands of clients, making it a tough job to search. So you need to make sure that code reusability is properly using in your terraform code base.

I rate HashiCorp Terraform a nine out of ten.

We use the solution for provisioning.

The most valuable feature is the solution does not need installation.

The solution is missing a lot of properties for specific resources.

I have been using the solution for almost three years.

The solution is very stable.

We just need to download the installer from HashiCorp. We don't need to install the solution; we just need to place the file on our system, point it to the enrollment variables, and then we can run Terraform. There are three or four commands that must be executed before we can start using the solution.

The solution is open-source.

I give the solution eight out of ten.

The solution is the most popular for provision in the cloud, not only in Azure.

The most valuable features of Terraform are leveraging public modules for EKS, KMS, and ECR. This allows us to set up infrastructure efficiently by utilizing pre-built configurations. We can manage EKS either through the EKS Manager group or directly with specific variables. This flexibility is crucial as it doesn't require building privileges.

Some areas where Terraform could improve would be challenges in managing sensitive information, especially when dealing with secret files or credentials. There have been issues related to storage and maintenance of these files, particularly when using AWS. Simplifying the process of handling secrets and improving the overall management of sensitive data could enhance Terraform's usability. One suggestion for Terraform improvement could be enhanced remote functionality. It would be beneficial if, for example, I could remotely check the status and perform tasks directly on AWS without needing a full analysis of all tasks locally.

I have been working with Terraform for two years.

I would rate the stability of Terraform as a seven out of ten. While generally stable, there is room for improvement to minimize challenges and provide a smoother experience for users.

Terraform is highly scalable. I would rate the scalability as a nine out of ten. Ten people use it at our company.

The initial setup was very simple and quick. It takes about two minutes to install everything.

When comparing Terraform with other infrastructure automation tools, I often consider AWS CloudFormation. However, I prefer Terraform for its versatility and ease of use. The abundance of modules, well-documented features, and direct integration with AWS makes it my go-to choice. Its flexibility, clear documentation, and ability to handle diverse use cases, from managing directories on GitHub to updating Linux machines, contribute to its efficiency and simplicity.

Overall, I would rate Terraform as an eight out of ten.

We use Terraform to create infrastructure. We get the name of the resource provider, and the Terraform script is returned in HashiCorp Configuration Language (HCL). 

We can find readily available code from the HashiCorp community to create a virtual machine or Kubernetes service cluster. We take that code, provide the resource provider name, and run the script using Terraform commands to create the infrastructure

We currently use Terraform in our Azure pipelines in the cloud. Our team has 10 developers, and we will increase our usage as the team grows. 

We frequently need to create and replicate infrastructure from various environments like dev and QA. The QA resources need to be identical to those in the dev environment. With a Terraform script, we can replicate the same 50 in the dev environment to the testing environment. This is tedious to do manually, and Terraform speeds up the process. 

Infrastructure replication is Terraform's most valuable feature. 

Terraform should also support YAML language, which is more user-friendly than HCL. They should also add a GUI, so you don't need to memorize all the commands. A GUI would enable us to do everything with a click of a button. 

I have been using Terraform for the last three years.

I rate Terraform seven out of 10 for stability.

I rate Terraform eight out of 10 for scalability.`

I rate HashiCorp seven out of 10 for technical support.

Neutral

I rate Terraform eight out of 10 for ease of setup. 

Terraform is an open-source solution.

I rate HashiCorp Terraform seven out of 10. It's interesting to see how the infrastructure is created rather than creating it manually.