Nowadays there are many different solutions for Infrastructure as Code. It is crucial for us to make the provisioning of our customers' infrastructure as efficient, reproducible and automated as possible. That's why we work with Terraform. What are the advantages in our opinion?
What is Infrastructure as Code?
Infrastructure as Code means, that by creating simple code, cloud infrastructures can be configured and automated processes (e.g. provisioning) can be implemented in the environments without having to select individual components in a console. The advantages lie in the fact that the configuration files created can be reused several times, which significantly reduces the time required, allows high standardization and higher quality.
Modularity & Standardization
Traceability of the set-up
Automation of processes
How does Terraform stand out from other solutions like CloudFormation?
Terraform comes with its own Domain Specific Language (DSL), which is very readable, automatically validated and formatted. The only disadvantage is that you have to take up another programming language - but it is relatively easy and quick to internalize. For comparison: CloudFormation (tool from AWS) templates are described in YAML. This language is well suited for simple configurations, but loses clarity with increasing complexity.
The AWS provider on Terraform is also open source, so new services are often available on Terraform faster than on AWS CloudFormation. This means that we are always up to date with our customer projects.
What does this mean for you as a customer?
Thanks to the modular, open structure and flexibility of the tool, we are even faster and more flexible in delivering new set-ups. In addition, we make sure that possible human errors are reduced to a minimum - this ensures that the systems are much more stable and your application is highly available.
Learn more about the cloud and what it means
for companies in our whitepaper "Companies in the Cloud".