Multi Cloud Automation Using Terraform Through CoreStack

Terraform Overview

Terraform is ‘infrastructure as code’ multi cloud automation software by HashiCorp. It allows users to define infrastructure components in a high-level scripting language (.tf similar to JSON or YAML), which in turn can be executed to build the infrastructure on the desired cloud platform.

CoreStack Overview

CoreStack is a Governance Platform powered by ‘Cloud as Code' approach. CoreStack Governs Cloud Operations, Compliance, Consumption and Cost through Cloud as Code approach by converging various declarative model which includes Cloudformation, Azure Resource Manager, Terraform, Heat, etc.

Automating Cloud Provisioning using Terraform

The greatest advantage of cloud is its ability to manage the infrastructure components at a granular level. With granularity, flexibility increases, while at the same time the complexity of provisioning large multi-tier workloads increases. Provisioning large multi-tier workload is time-consuming and is not repeatable. Terraform helps in solving this problem.

Terraform is an opensource tool for provisioning multi cloud cloud environments which includes IaaS, PaaS, FaaS etc. through declarative definitions.

Terraform enables predictable and consistent provisioning of Cloud environments:

• The same configuration can be used for development, test, and production, ensuring consistency and a known working configuration
• Environments can be provisioned on demand, reducing costs for test and development environments which can be spun up as needed.
• It reduces the potential for human error while deploying infrastructure

Terraform Architecture

Cloud Governance using CoreStack and Terraform

Advantages of using Terraform through CoreStack

CoreStack enables predictable and consistent lifecycle operations along with the governance of multi cloud environments:

• Repository of Terraform templates along with its metadata for provisioning various workloads with role-based access control through the user interface
• Centralized management of Cloud accounts with scope definitions
• Centralized view of all terraform executions across the team. The state files are managed centrally
• Discovers all provisioned resources along with its characteristics
• Automates the Lifecycle operations of provisioned environments including monitoring, backup, Security, tagging etc, as per cloud operations governance rules
• Execute configuration management scripts post provisioning