Largely because of its open-source origins, Terraform’s infrastructure-as-code (IaC) platform supports a diverse ecosystem of plugins and third-party tools designed to enhance its various functionalities.
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The best Terraform tools boost the effectiveness of HashiCorp’s flagship product in managing cloud infrastructure. They also enhance Terraform’s efficiency in different aspects, particularly in terms of usability, resource optimization, custom applications, error management, security, and compliance.
Listed below are seven of the best software tools that DevOps teams can use with Terraform to improve IaC management and cloud provisioning.
Terraform CLI
As its name suggests, Terraform CLI provides a command-line interface for defining, managing, and automating infrastructure resources with Terraform. It may sound counterintuitive that a command-line interface results in greater efficiency since user-friendliness is often associated with codeless tools. Terraform CLI delivers better usability because of the precision and control it affords users, allowing them to work with exact commands and perform granular actions such as infrastructure planning, applying, and destroying.
Also, Terraform CLI is compatible with command scripting and integration into CI/CD pipelines. DevOps teams can use scripts to automate the deployment and management of infrastructure, which is the whale point of IaC. Scripting and CI/CD integration enable straightforward repeatability, as code can be iterated and enhanced with dynamic variables for a variety of use cases.
Additionally, Terraform CLI tends to have an easier learning curve since the interface is consistent across different environments. Users only need to master the commands instead of getting used to new graphical interfaces. The command-line interface also has the advantage of direct feedback, with inputs always immediately showing command outputs.
Terraform Plugin SDK
Terraform Plugin SDK is a developmental toolkit created by HashiCorp to enable the creation of custom Terraform providers and provisioners, which expand Terraform’s capabilities to address specific requirements. The toolkit also supports integration with custom APIs to enable the development of providers that allow Terraform to handle infrastructure services with proprietary or bespoke APIs.
Another advantage associated with Terraform Plugin SDK is improved resource management. The ability to create custom providers optimizes resource operations by ensuring that Terraform interacts with external services in the most efficient ways possible.
It also ascertains that Terraform’s state files correctly reflect the current state of every resource in the infrastructure being managed.
TFlint
A code analysis tool, TFlint is used to spot code errors and detect deviations from best practices and Terraform code style conventions. It performs syntax validation, style enforcement, and provider-specific resource validation.
This tool comes with built-in support for various cloud providers, allowing it to validate resource configurations based on a provider’s API specifications. Additionally, it offers custom rule support, which is useful for teams working with unique infrastructure requirements. It allows the creation of custom rules to enforce nonstandard policies and the evaluation of specific configurations not covered by default rules.
TFlint boosts efficiency by supporting the early detection and resolution of issues during the development process. It enforces consistency, which cuts the time spent on fixing deviations from coding standards and best practices. It improves the productivity of development teams as it reduces the need for manual code reviews.
Consul Template
Another tool from HashiCorp, Consul Template is designed to integrate with HashiCorp Consul to automate the generation of configuration files and other artifacts according to the data contained in Consul. It can also manage and render config files in a way that reflects changes in environment variables, service discovery information, and other related data.
Consul Template automates the generation of dynamic load balancer configurations, environment-specific configurations, and the settings for service mesh integration. Also, while it is not directly involved in the management of secrets, it can be used together with HashiCorp Vault to render secrets into configuration files securely and without the need to have these secrets hardcoded.
This boosts Terraform efficiency as it automates the creation of configuration files and ensures accuracy and consistency across different environments. It can be adapted to various use cases, from key-value substitution to more complex scenarios that require service-aware configurations. Also, it helps reduce downtime caused by updating configuration changes.
Terrascan
An open-source static code analysis tool, Terrascan examines IaC templates to find security weaknesses, compliance issues, and violations of coding standards and best practices. It has similarities to TFlint, but it is different when it comes to its focus on security and compliance.
Terrascan is more suited for security auditing and pre-deployment checks, as opposed to TFlint’s emphasis on code linting and pre-validation checks. Terrascan also supports custom policies to enable security policy enforcement in settings with unique requirements. Additionally, it has a plugin-based architecture, which allows it to support custom IaC formats and more cloud providers.
Terrascan improves Terraform efficiency by making it easier to detect vulnerabilities, reduce the risk of compliance issues, and streamline development workflow security through automated checks and rapid feedback loops. Also, it enhances code quality by facilitating the enforcement of compliance policies and best practices to ensure robust and well-maintained infrastructure.
Terragrunt
A popular open-source Terraform tool, Terragrunt enhances the management of Terraform configurations. It is particularly useful in dealing with complex environments and addressing the challenges that come with state management, infrastructure scaling, and the reusability of modules.
Terragrunt is known for demonstrating the “Don’t Repeat Yourself” or DRY principle, which aims to reduce redundancies or fully eliminate them by enabling users to define common configurations that are stored in a centralized location and made available for different deployments. It also supports automated remote state management and state locking.
Moreover, Terragrunt streamlines module management by allowing users to set centralized module parameters to simplify the application of settings. It also makes it easy to modify module settings through flexible overrides, which are important when managing variations in infrastructure configurations.
Module Registry
Module Registry is a platform created to make it easier to discover, share, and reuse Terraform modules. It is like the app store for Terraform modules, but it has public and private registries. The public registry is an open resource for all teams while the private version is a registry that can be created by organizations for their exclusive use, helping with the standardization and reusability of their modules and infrastructure components.
Ensuring module quality, Module Registry provides mechanisms to verify the modules made available to developers. It adds “Verified” tags for modules that have been vetted by HashiCorp. It also allows developers to put community ratings and feedback to modules, making it easier to find modules that are reliable, useful, and easy to use.
Notably, Module Registry integrates with Terraform CLI to simplify the process of finding and incorporating modules into Terraform configurations. This integration also enables the automatic downloading of modules referenced in Terraform CLI.
Open Policy Agent
Lastly, Open Policy Agent (OPA) is a general-purpose policy engine created to enable contextually-aware policy enforcement across different systems and services. It provides a centralized, flexible, and adaptable way to enforce policies in various scenarios.
With OPA, policies are defined in code format, which ensures consistency and easy versioning, review, and testing.
OPA enhances Terraform security and compliance policy enforcement as well as pre-deployment validation. It also integrates with CI/CD pipelines to automate policy checks and continuously monitor compliance. Moreover, it enhances collaboration as it boosts code transparency and documentation.
In Summary
Terraform is an excellent tool for IaC management and provisioning, but the experience of using this popular solution can be made more efficient with the help of tools mentioned above. They enhance the handling of different IaC tasks through automation, centralized management of configurations and resources, the extension of Terraform’s capabilities, systematic policy enforcement, and easier access to modules.
With more than 20 years of progressive experience as Program Manager and Project Manager had led complex IT projects/programs in a wide variety of industries in America, Latin America & Italia.
Mario Bisson Andini is an advanced Program Manager who is the founder of Bisson Training.
