Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users
reviewer1184604 - PeerSpot reviewer
Software Engineering Manager at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Easy to use solution that has made infrastructure provision fast and secure for our business
Pros and Cons
  • "This solution is a fast and secure way to provision infrastructure."
  • "This solution could be improved by adding features such as CDM to accelerate the access of data by the users."

What is our primary use case?

We use this solution for infrastructure and support for a mobile application for a bank.

What needs improvement?

This solution could be improved by adding features such as CDM to accelerate the access of data by the users.

It would be useful to be able to test functionality when building infrastructure. Currently we use other tools to do this. 

For how long have I used the solution?

We have used this solution for one year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

This is a stable solution. 

Buyer's Guide
HashiCorp Terraform
January 2025
Learn what your peers think about HashiCorp Terraform. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: January 2025.
831,265 professionals have used our research since 2012.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

This is a scalable solution. 

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is straightforward. It took a few weeks to implement with the help of three engineers. 

What other advice do I have?

This solution is a fast and secure way to provision infrastructure. 

I would rate it a ten out of ten. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
PeerSpot user
Olajide Olusegun - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Team Lead at Atlas Security
MSP
Top 5Leaderboard
High availability, effective server provisioning tool for both on-premise and cloud environment, and quick setup
Pros and Cons
  • "HashiCorp Terraform is highly stable."
  • "I initially found the initial HashiCorp Terraform difficult to comprehend. It's complex and not straightforward, requiring proper training to grasp it. Even someone with a background in networking or cybersecurity would need guidance from someone knowledgeable."

What is our primary use case?

We use HashiCorp Terraform orchestration tool for infra provisioning (mostly servers), both in the cloud and on-premise environments. This allows for VM provisioning, networking, and storage management, especially in a cloud environment where we have many servers that can't be provisioned one by one.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature is the ease of infrastructure provisioning in a very large environment in the shortest time.

What needs improvement?

I initially found the initial HashiCorp Terraform difficult to comprehend. It's not straightforward especially in complex cloud environments, requiring proper training to grasp it. Even someone with a background in networking or cybersecurity would need guidance from someone knowledgeable.

Inclusion of revert function or rollback action for any invalid or wrong changes to resources.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using HashiCorp Terraform for approximately one year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

HashiCorp Terraform is highly stable.

How are customer service and support?

I did not use the technical support from the vendor.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Neutral

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup of HashiCorp Terraform is easy to do. The implementation took a few hours to complete for a small cloud environment.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Terraform Enterprise plan is quite expensive!

What other advice do I have?

HashiCorp Terraform is the best platform for creating and managing resources on cloud platforms and other services through their application programming interfaces (APIs) in a cloud environment.

I rate HashiCorp Terraform an eight out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
HashiCorp Terraform
January 2025
Learn what your peers think about HashiCorp Terraform. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: January 2025.
831,265 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Senior Azure DevOps Engineer at SoftServe Ltd.
Vendor
Super robust solution with the ability to create loops; great UI and integrates well
Pros and Cons
  • "Modules can be reused extremely easily."
  • "Community tech support could be a little better."

What is our primary use case?

We use this solution to manage our resources in a fully automatic way. I'm a senior Azure DevOps engineer and we are users of Terraform. 

What is most valuable?

I like the Centrix feature which gives us the ability to create loops. I also like that modules can be reused extremely easily. This is a super robust solution and I would recommend it to anyone. It has a great user interface and integrates well.

What needs improvement?

It would be helpful for us if the open source tech support was a little better. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using this solution for four years. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution is highly scalable.

How are customer service and support?

We use the free open-source version of Terraform so it can take time to resolve problems. The issues are generally minor, so it's not a big deal. 

How would you rate customer service and support?

Neutral

How was the initial setup?

The deployment can take anywhere from 10 minutes to two hours. 

What other advice do I have?

I rate this solution ten out of ten. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
reviewer1980198 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Build And Release Engineer at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Simple to install, and understands the order in which specific infrastructure must be implemented
Pros and Cons
  • "The concept of infrastructure as code is quite intriguing. We have an infrastructure in our code and a state file where we can verify whether something is changed when it was changed, and who changed it. When we use Terraform, these kinds of things fascinate us."
  • "I would want to see more programmatic capabilities implemented, such as if, else, and simple to manage things in terms of how I can use some programming functions to assist us to achieve more. I would like to have programming language-relevant features, to have programming language be the primary way."

What is our primary use case?

We use HashiCorp Terraform to set up AWS infrastructure, and sometimes Cloudflare.

It is not exactly a tool for configuration, it is for setting up the development of the infrastructure.

What is most valuable?

The concept of infrastructure as code is quite intriguing.

We have an infrastructure in our code and a state file where we can verify whether something is changed when it was changed, and who changed it. When we use Terraform, these kinds of things fascinate us.

What needs improvement?

I often wonder why they don't create a UI. That is something I always consider. I realize CLI is useful, but I prefer to do things in this manner. Why are we opting for CLI? I want to make things easy. I understand that most don't agree with me, but that is what I would prefer.

I don't think that they will agree on this. I am looking for a drag-and-drop or anything that can just generate modules behind the scenes and allow people to quickly accomplish things. 

I am aware that it does not serve the purpose of Terraform, and that too, is an issue. 

We have a purpose for infrastructure as code, and when the code is gone, you are working on UI. Terraform is not a programming language, most things are straightforward; we cannot do. Terraform lacks these features.

I would say the programming language, perhaps using more of a programming language rather than this declarative language, is something I'd want to explore in the future.

I would want to see more programmatic capabilities implemented, such as if, else, and simple to manage things in terms of how I can use some programming functions to assist us to achieve more.

I would like to have programming language-relevant features, to have programming language be the primary way.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using HashiCorp Terraform for three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I don't think HashiCorp Terraform is particularly stable. I would rate it a three and a half out of five. However, we are always working on it and making improvements. They had a lot of problems in the past, but today most things are done correctly.

While there are new versions coming in, there are always issues that arise.

It is not about stability, but about version upgrades. They have newer versions and occasionally backward compatibility. It happened a long time ago but is not an issue anymore. I had a bad experience at the beginning, which is why I remember it.

Someone who is just starting, in my opinion, will encounter difficulties. That is why I believe the language should be changed to a programmed language that everyone can comprehend.

The previous version had several difficulties with the state file, including some backward compatibility and parameter changes, but they are now more stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I have not encountered any issues with HashiCorp Terraform's scalability.

We are using Terraform to build up infrastructure in order to document our infrastructure more declaratively. That is what Terraform excels at. I never had any problems with scalability, either in terms of improvement or anything else. 

There are some glitches with Terraform servers. When we are initializing, we occasionally encounter an issue; in three years, this has happened to me twice.

We have 20 people in our organization who use this solution, if we add developers we have approximately 60 people.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

From inside the cloud services, I am working on EKS Kubernetes, ECS Elastic Containerized Services, and Elasticsearch, which is now known as OpenSearch. I am working on EKS, Kubernetes, ECS, Elastic Containerized Services, as well as Elastic Search, which is now known as Open Search, and Redis ElastiCache, which is a component of MSK Kafka.

These are the tools I am using. Jenkins is used for the CI process, as well as GitHub Action is used for the CI process. 

As previously mentioned for alerts, we use Opsgenie and Grafana for the dashboards and premises. 

Many third-party services, such as NGINX, are used in Kubernetes. We use Cube Metrics for these kinds of activities, such as metrics scraping.

I have worked with Ansible as well, however, if you asked me to compare the two, I would say Terraform is superior to Ansible. I am not going to get into specifics. 

Terraform, is self-explanatory. It knows how to run, if we want to build some infrastructure, it understands where to start, how to start, what the dependencies are, and so on. 

We must occasionally inform Terraform of some dependencies, which is fine. Terraform, on the other hand, already understands the sequence in which it must execute certain infrastructure to build up. Those are the advantages over Ansible.

The disadvantage of Terraform is that, once again, we must use functions to build up variables or something similar, but Terraform's dry notion is not very good.

When I say dry, I mean that you should not repeat the bad code. Other references are being used to handle this. That is something I would want to suggest.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is simple. It is not a difficult process to set up.

I would rate the initial setup a four out of five. it is easy.

When a new version is released, it is backward compatible. And I would say that is good in terms of Terraform maintainability. Normally, we don't have to make many changes, and backward compatibility is beneficial.

In terms of maintenance, it does not require a lot of attention.

What other advice do I have?

It's good, I would rate HashiCorp Terraform an eight out of ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Co Founder and Technical Architect at Think NYX Technologies LLP
Reseller
Supports many different platforms and has helped us to standardize our infrastructure setup
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable feature is the support for different platforms like cloud, datacenters, VCS, databases, various storage types, and Kubernetes."
  • "They have added a feature that helps us to import existing resources to our workspace, but if they can help us to create the code for the import, as well, then it would be a great addition."

What is our primary use case?

We are using Terraform to manage our multi-cloud requirement for different demos and test environments. It helps us set up the entire environment in a few mins with the exact configuration in AWSAzure, or GCP, along with other setups like a database, Kubernetes, etc.

How has it helped my organization?

Terraform helped us to standardized our infrastructure setup and to reduce errors occurring due to manual execution. It has made our environment more efficient.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature is the support for different platforms like cloud, datacenters, VCS, databases, various storage types, and Kubernetes.

What needs improvement?

They have added a feature that helps us to import existing resources to our workspace, but if they can help us to create the code for the import, as well, then it would be a great addition.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using HashiCorp Terraform for more than two years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We should always check the changes or impact of new release which is common for all tools so for me its good in terms of stability.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability is good.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We have used platform CLIs and other customized scripting solutions that need lots of maintenance and care.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is quite easy and straightforward.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The setup for Terraform is quite easy and currently, we are using their community version along with Jenkins.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We have evaluated other options like CloudFormation and Cloud Deployment Manager, but those were platform-dependent tools, so not suited for our multi-cloud model.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Hybrid Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free HashiCorp Terraform Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: January 2025
Product Categories
Configuration Management
Buyer's Guide
Download our free HashiCorp Terraform Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.