HashiCorp Terraform Reviews

We use HashiCorp Terraform for Infrastructure as Code (IaC).

The most valuable feature of HashiCorp Terraform is the custom modules. The custom modules are built for each piece, like network and security, based on how the customers are. Then, we can tie them together, centralize them easily, and build them.

HashiCorp Terraform state management could be improved to be used efficiently with multi-users. Even though there are logs, there are always issues I've seen with people manipulating the TerraForm state. We cannot work efficiently with the solution if the state is incorrect. Due to certain reasons, if I have to change some piece of some resource, I cannot change it. I have to destroy the whole thing and then build a new one.

I have been using HashiCorp Terraform for three years.

HashiCorp Terraform is a stable solution. I rate HashiCorp Terraform an eight or nine out of ten for stability.

Around 20 users are using HashiCorp Terraform in our organization.

I rate HashiCorp Terraform an eight or nine out of ten for scalability.

HashiCorp Terraform's initial setup is simple. Especially with TerraForm Cloud, you don't have to do anything since it's a SaaS platform. Also, TerraForm Enterprise is easy to install.

HashiCorp Terraform's deployment is very easy and doesn't take much time.

We have seen a return on investment with HashiCorp Terraform.

HashiCorp Terraform's pricing depends on the way people use it. Not everyone uses the solution the way HashiCorp recommends to use it. HashiCorp Terraform goes by workspaces, and workspaces are more expensive than nodes. The nodes are cheaper.

People implement the solution in different ways. So you can use the solution with less money and make it cheaper, but that's not the recommended way. If you use the solution according to the recommended way by HashiCorp, it is more expensive.

I am using the latest version of HashiCorp Terraform.

I recommend users build the framework and the modules correctly right from the beginning. Then, build the workspace as recommended by HashiCorp. According to HashiCorp's recommendation, one workspace should exist per application or environment. That's how people need to build it.

Then, modularize everything and make custom modules for the organizations. Especially things that stay out of the application, like security, network, and compute, should be in separate modules. Later, they can be brought into the application.

Overall, I rate HashiCorp Terraform an eight out of ten.

We use the solution for three things. Firstly, to automate the infrastructure, like enabling Logpush to Datadog. Secondly, for Cloudflare AWS and Insight AWS. Thirdly, we use Terraform to create infrastructure.

It is one of the best things because now we have everything automated with Terraform. We didn't have an outage for the last three years because everything is written in a code, and every change we have made is recorded. If we didn't have a tool like Terraform, it would be extremely complex to achieve this level of maturity with infrastructure.

The state file is the most valuable feature because it helps one know what exactly one has.

The solution is complex when we use it for a loop. This is a problem, not because of the language itself, but because of how the infrastructure generally works. It's different from Python.

I have been using the solution for three and a half years.

It is a stable solution. I rate it nine out of ten.

The solution is not very scalable. I rate it six out of ten.

The initial setup is complex.

We have seen ROI with the tool's use. 

I plan to use the solution more in the future. I recommend people to use it as it is the best tool in the market at the moment to create infrastructure anywhere.

I rate it ten out of ten.

I am using the solution on AWS to scale our operations using Infrastructure as Code.

Terraform is the most useful product for creating Infrastructure as Code. It has a lot of consistency, and we can control it in code. It provides a self-service infrastructure.

The solution helps us save a lot of costs. The product’s integrations help us a lot.

The product must improve DevOps features.

I have been using the solution for about two years.

I never had any stability issues. I rate the stability a ten out of ten.

It is easy to scale the product. I rate the scalability a ten out of ten.

We use other solutions for security in DevOps.

The solution is deployed on the cloud. It is easy to deploy the solution. The documentation helps us a lot.

The tool has a lot of value. It pays for itself. We save a lot of time using the automation.

The solution is fairly priced.

We're still learning how to use DevOps with our SOC. We need to improve our use cases. The tool is helpful for us to keep the same standards throughout the cloud. Currently, I'm only using AWS. I'm planning to use Azure in a few months. I would advise people to start using the solution. It is a cheap tool and saves us a lot of work. Overall, I rate the product a ten out of ten.

We use HashiCorp Terraform for Infrastructure as Code. It automates the deployment of infrastructure within the Azure platform. Terraform can manage almost all aspects of infrastructure provisioning. If there are tasks that Terraform cannot perform directly, you can use the Azure CLI or other tools and call them from within Terraform scripts.

Terraform has extensive integrations across various platforms. It includes modules that enhance functionality and support for secure practices, such as Terraform Sentinel, which offers code analysis capabilities. Security logging and backend security are crucial, particularly regarding protecting sensitive information stored in the backend. Ensuring private endpoint usage is pivotal to safeguarding against potential vulnerabilities.

Terraform's strength lies in its modularity and the ability to use variables. You can organize your code within local and remote repositories, making it highly modular. This modularity allows you to call specific components as needed. Additionally, Terraform can toggle certain functionalities on or off through feature flags, a unique and powerful feature.

Terraform should monitor the backend storage more closely. You can handle it within Azure, but HashiCorp should release a dedicated tool to protect those secrets and ensure they're fully encrypted but this functionality is on its way for Terraform. They do have functionality that encrypts secrets and rotates which is great just like what Microsoft have and should be used in the wider community to safeguard public cloud systems

I have been using HashiCorp Terraform for five years.

The product is quite stable. You may not notice the updates, but you do see frequent changes in revisions because they've stabilized the platform. They've also introduced significant new versions and providers that work hand in hand with it. I don't encounter many errors that I can't fix straightforwardly. As an engineer, you receive error messages if you misconfigure things, and it informs you about that.

I rate the solution’s stability an eight out of ten.

The solution can scale to any size. It is suitable for SMEs.

I rate the solution’s scalability an eight out of ten.

Arm templates where difficult to managed initially and took a while to manage in nested calls and nested templates

The integration is straightforward. Simply download the binary, test it accordingly, and authenticate via Azure CLI. I've used the standard binary because it's free and widely adopted for technical infrastructure as code.

The initial setup is very straightforward. I set up a Python environment, brought in Terraform, and utilized it with YAML. Everything has to be securely done. You have to set up some pieces on the backend. It's straightforward to deploy: get the binary, set it up on the build agent, and configure the settings the way you need.

Inhouse Initially but I have learnt form other teams and vendors as all teams structure their code differently with best practices

We are using the free version of the solution.

Arm Templates and PowerShell Azure initially Pulumi (early days)

I've been working with HashiCorp Terraform recently and have deployed environments with it.OpenAI has released GPT Terraform, which Microsoft is heavily investing in. Generic modules are available for deployment. Azure AI Portal and AI Studio are useful tools for creating models. It's straightforward to perform service training and update models for input-output data.

HashiCorp Terraform has made handling modules and variables more secure. They've integrated key vaults to ensure secrets and backend storage are protected. Accessing the backend storage could potentially leak sensitive information if not properly encrypted.

I'm using GitHub Actions and Azure DevOps. Additionally, I'm exploring an older system within the team that will be set up to support.

If the setup is built on old infrastructure, the backend of Terraform works and stores. Vagrant works differently where it doesn't need to check with the infrastructure to see what's there or updated. You get an API call for deployment.

Overall, I rate the solution as eight out of ten.

We use it to deploy resources on AWS.

It's very easy to automate functions on the cloud with HashiCorp Terraform. The commands are easy as well.

The syntax is a bit difficult, and it would great if it could be easier.

I've been using HashiCorp Terraform for four and a half years.

HashiCorp Terraform is a stable solution. We have 15 people who use it in our organization.

The initial setup is straightforward and easy.

There are free and paid versions of the solution. We use the free version.

I would recommend HashiCorp Terraform and rate it at eight out of ten. I like that there is a free version of the product, but the coding could be easier.

The office was working out of their office and they had around nine clients. The workspace would be in AWS and doing a VPC manually would have been a really hard job. The time estimated for doing nine virtual private clouds would have taken more than a month or two. Using Terraform, they were able to finish it in two weeks. The speed at which we could create the infrastructure was much faster than physically doing it. Also, having an audit and log for all the infrastructure was managed a lot easier using Terraform rather than doing it manually.

One of the most valuable features is that it offers the ability to create a VPC, Virtual Private Cloud and VPN connectivity to the VPC can be automated without having to do it manually. 

I still struggle a bit when configuring VPNs when we have multiple rules. If we have five or six virtual private clouds and we have to give rights between those multiple VPCs, we can have big problems.  I think it was a learning curve and then we improved it. 

I have not come across anything that really stopped us from not doing anything for our requirement as of now.

I liked it because since it's scriptable, the way you create the infrastructure is the same way you can delete the infrastructure also. If you created 10 to 20 different services and objects in AWS using a Terraform script, it's much easier for a person to get the whole infrastructure down. You can do a backup and then you don't really need AWS services because either the client does not exist anymore, or there is some gap before the client comes back, you don't have to manually go and delete all the resources. One script would actually remove everything from AWS. 

Cost-wise, going through the script and then removing everything that you have created through the script is much better than manually doing it. That was helpful for the client as well.

We use it to manage infrastructure. For day-to-day work, the main developers were not using Terraform, so it was only three of us who used it. We were working on Terraform, created those scripts, and then gave it to the client for whom I was doing the work. Since it's now scriptable, they are able to manage and do all these small changes. They don't come back to me. Since they don't come back to me, it seems like it is working fine.

Terraform keeps updating its scriptable platform, the engine through which they communicate. So if there is any change in AWS, they keep updating it. Even from the deployment side, they have to be aware of the features, which Terraform still supports and the features, which Terraform doesn't support and then work around accordingly.

The initial setup, like doing the AWS credentials, putting it in place, and getting the API keys are the parts that took time. Otherwise, it is a lot faster and the learning curve is also much easier since it's a YAML-based scripting language. Even a non-programmer in a normal office can understand what is happening in the flow.

The deployment took around 15 days. In around 20 days we were ready with the Terraform scripts and then made small changes. Every time they need a new infrastructure that requires a small change, it would take a day or two. We created the initial Terraform script and gave it to a client so that it could later be managed by the client itself to create and run. Fifteen days was good enough for us to create and test the Terraform infrastructure and then give it to the client.

We started the deployment by seeing how we would divide the infrastructure. One is the list of infrastructure, which we would need irrespective of the clients for the VPC, VPN gateway, and active directory services. Those are all mandatory items that we would need for all the VPCs. And there are some items that are client-specific. We divided it into multiple parts. One is generic, which you will need for all the clients that are a base level. Then you keep playing the client's specific scripts on top of the base script.

It's open-source.

Rather than doing a monolithic Terraform for the whole infrastructure, it would be good for the script to be reusable. Use the base level script that every infrastructure would need. Generating a local IP network and then creating two instances or creating some databases and other basic scripts that all the infrastructure would need should be a base level script. Then add on your base level script with the add-on scripts on top of the base script to create infrastructure that is specific to clients. You can reuse the script, the same base group for many other purposes as well.

Before using Terraform, for auditing, creating machines, etc, we would either rely on AWS infrastructure itself or documents that had infrastructure-related data. Using Terraform, a lot of this data was captured automatically since it's a YAML script. It could be easily exported as a document or Excel file as well. Documentation and infrastructure was much easier to maintain than doing it otherwise.

I would rate Terraform an eight 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.

We deliver the platform as a service to businesses. For example, one request for a particular subscription could be in the business domain or non-business domain, whatever it may be, based on the demand, we deliver the customized subscription to them. For each service, we have different constraints. What needs to be delivered in the VNet of Azure, and what needs to be done externally.

The ARM template is very easy to work with, which is a big help to us. At the end of the day, there are a lot of tools that we explore like FollowMe and other solutions, which come in handy.

I personally say it's already simplified. I don't see many areas for improvement because Terraform employs a lot of skilled engineers that put their time and energy into providing a fantastic enterprise-level tool like this. There is not much more to simplify. There are already quite notable features in Terraform and we've already been provided with updates and other features. In short, there are many things which are already in place, so I don't think that we need anything more from Terraform.

I have been using this solution for over six months.

Personally, I haven't really experienced any significant instability issues with Terraform. Once or twice I've noticed log issues, but apart from that, I haven't really experienced any problems. Keep in mind, this is the first platform that we are building using Terraform, so we have yet to come across the version with the initial data. In the future, I may face heat and pressure when I'm doing that, but I am not really sure because I have not done the hands-on work of it.

Technical support is offered by HashiCorp, but we can't call HashiCorp for technical support because we don't currently use the enterprise version. Our products are community-driven and the community support is great.

Considering we started from scratch, the initial setup was pretty straightforward. We didn't have any challenges. We started our platform build from scratch using Terraform.

For maintenance-related issues, we use GitHub to find the solution to any problems we encounter; we simply log an issue and follow-up with them.

Provided your environment requires Terraform and/or you have skilled engineers who can perform the required maintenance, I would definitely recommend this solution. Terraform is not justified for use just anywhere; you need to have an experienced team to limit any issues. You need to have a certain level of training to consume the services in their DevOps Toolbox and then use them properly. I definitely support and recommend Terraform, but what you get out of it depends on the business environment as well as the team members' knowledge in Terraform.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of seven; strictly because I was uncomfortable using the ARM template earlier. After another six months, I am sure I will give it a rating of 10, but at this point in time in my experience, I say seven, but not because of the tool itself.