We are excited to announce that we have completed our coverage as part of the Terraform ‘infrastructure as code’ driver. As such, CloudSigma is now an official provider on their platform. If you’re not already familiar with Terraform, this blog post will outline the top reasons why you should use it.
About Terraform
Terraform is a powerful open-source configuration management tool created by Hashicorp that enables you to safely and efficiently build, deploy, change and version large-scale infrastructure components across cloud and local data centres. The tool uses reliable automation and repeatable code, allowing you to create, update or remove components of your architecture as needed, all with one command.
Terraform has quickly gained popularity not only because of it’s simple syntax and easy modularity. Most importantly, the tool enables developers to manage both IaaS or PaaS service providers like CloudSigma as well as custom in-house solutions seamlessly in one multi-cloud setup. It takes a few commands to set up simple or complex architectures in the CloudSigma or other verified providers accounts.
Infrastructure as Code
One important reason developers consider Terraform is to manage their Infrastructure as Code (IaC). IaC is a development and operations methodology that allows server deployments and software configuration to be represented as code. For this purpose, the tool uses a simple, human readable language called HCL (HashiCorp Configuration Language). This methodology greatly reduces the chance for human error and makes complex systems easier to manage.
Why Terraform
There are similar IoC tools available on the market, such as Ansible, Chef or Puppet. However, Terraform is revolutionizing the DevOps world by focusing on the automation of the infrastructure itself. If you’re not using this tool already, here are the top reasons you should consider it as one of your DevOps tools:
1. Platform-neutral and cloud-independent
Terraform is purpose-built to be completely platform and cloud agnostic. Hence, it supports multiple cloud platforms as part of its registry, while other IaC tools usually focus on a single cloud provider. Since, according to a recent Gartner study, 81% of public cloud users currently work with two or more providers, managing a multi-cloud environment is a top scenario to consider when it comes to public cloud usage.
2. Easy and transparent configuration changes
The tool makes configuration changes of the infrastructure easy and transparent to manage. It helps developers validate and preview changes before they are applied to the infrastructure in a reliable and safe manner. This transparency feature mitigates the risk and provides an easier understanding of how any change will influence the environment.
3. Focused on automation
Unlike many other tools, Terraform is developed specifically to automate infrastructure management. Terraform’s configuration files allow you to skip the manual processes and let you define, provision and configure resources in your cloud and/or physical servers in a reliable and predictable manner. You can re-use preset templates to create identical environments, both for testing and for production. This tool’s powerful automation reduces potential risk of human error. It also lowers business expenses and brings coding to a more efficient level.
4. Strong support and speedy development
Being an open-source product, Terraform has a strong active community that can help with plugins, extensions, guides or professional support on how to best make use of the IaC capability of Terraform across clouds. As a result, new features are added on a very regular basis and improved versions are released at a rapid pace.
To learn more about the provider and its documentation, you can visit Terraform.io. You can also find the source code for our plugin on Terraform Provider CloudSigma. Separately, we’ve created a quick guide on how to deploy your virtual infrastructure at CloudSigma using Terraform, which can help you get started quickly.
SDK Go Driver Updated
In addition to the CloudSigma Terraform provider being now officially offered, we would also like to announce that we have updated our driver for the Go programming language. It is available here and it provides Go packages for managing and using your CloudSigma deployments.
- A Cloud for Holography and Cross Reality (CHARITY) - June 18, 2021
- CloudSigma is now a verified Terraform provider - April 30, 2021
- Better performance at lower prices – our U.S. cloud locations - November 21, 2018
- CloudSigma and Apptus Platform partner to offer IT consultancy to APAC clients - October 15, 2018
- Increased pricing for Microsoft licensing - July 16, 2018