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How To Choose an IaC Tool
Govardhana M K
October 28, 2024
TechOps Examples
Hey — It's Govardhana MK 👋
Along with a use case deep dive, we identify the top news, tools, videos, and articles in the TechOps industry.
IN TODAY'S EDITION
🧠 Use Case
How To Choose an IaC Tool
🚀 Top News
Permiso State of Identity Security Report 2024.
Highlights:
74% of organizations rate their cloud security maturity as “above average” to “advanced.”
45% of organizations reported an identity security breach.
📽️ Videos
What is DNS? (and how it makes the Internet work)
Understanding Terraform Resource Naming Convention
📚️ Resources
How to use Vault namespaces
15 Kubernetes Security Best Practices in 2024
Securely Scale CI/CD with Self-Hosted GitHub Runners on AWS
TOGETHER WITH WRITER
Writer RAG tool: build production-ready RAG apps in minutes
RAG in just a few lines of code? We’ve launched a predefined RAG tool on our developer platform, making it easy to bring your data into a Knowledge Graph and interact with it with AI. With a single API call, writer LLMs will intelligently call the RAG tool to chat with your data.
Integrated into Writer’s full-stack platform, it eliminates the need for complex vendor RAG setups, making it quick to build scalable, highly accurate AI workflows just by passing a graph ID of your data as a parameter to your RAG tool.
🛠️ TOOL OF THE DAY
anyquery - Query anything (JSON, Salesforce, GitHub, Airtable, etc.) with SQL and visualize your data with any MySQL-compatible BI tool.
🧠 USE CASE
How To Choose an IaC Tool
You'll find plenty of comparisons online listing what each tool can do, but in real projects, those details often fall short.
Workflows, team skills, and specific goals are what really determine if a tool saves time or just adds overhead.
For instance, both Terraform and Pulumi support multi-cloud, but Terraform’s module ecosystem and provider flexibility make it ideal for complex setups.
Pulumi, however, shines for teams who code and want a developer-first experience.
I created this decision tree for an easier grasp.
Key Things to Know About the IaC Options
Let’s talk practicalities – what you really get from each tool and when you might reach for one over another.
AWS CDK: CDK is ideal if you're deep into AWS and want to define infrastructure in a familiar programming language. It’s productive for app-focused teams embedded in AWS but isn’t the most scalable choice for multi-cloud.
Beware of AWS SDK dependency bloat as your codebase grows.
AWS CloudFormation: Reliable and tightly integrated with AWS, CloudFormation is a stable option if you’re sticking to AWS-native tooling. It’s less flexible, so it might feel limiting for complex or multi-cloud needs.
Execution is slow due to server-side processing, which can make large deployments drag.
Azure Bicep: For Azure-heavy teams, Bicep makes defining infrastructure simpler and more readable than ARM templates, with fewer dependencies. It’s not flashy, but it’s effective if Azure is your main cloud.
If you’re planning to go multi-cloud, Bicep won’t be much help.
ARM Templates: A solid choice for defining infrastructure in Azure with comprehensive capabilities for complex deployments. It’s powerful but often seen as cumbersome due to its verbose syntax.
Verbose and complex syntax can make templates harder to manage and read, especially for larger deployments.
Google Deployment Manager: Designed for GCP, it integrates well with Google Cloud services, making it a reliable option for GCP-centric infrastructure.
Terraform: The versatile workhorse that supports multi-cloud and hybrid setups. Terraform’s extensive provider ecosystem is valuable for managing diverse stacks, though it requires some setup and familiarity with its syntax and state management.
State management can be challenging and requires careful handling, especially for team projects.
Crossplane: A great fit if you’re Kubernetes-first, as it integrates IaC into Kubernetes workflows. It’s powerful for teams all-in on K8s but could add complexity if Kubernetes isn’t central to your infrastructure.
Managing CRDs has a learning curve, so it’s best for teams already familiar with Kubernetes.
Pulumi: Pulumi lets you write IaC in TypeScript, Python, and other languages, which is appealing for dev-heavy teams wanting infrastructure definitions that feel like code. It’s flexible but needs disciplined code management to avoid complexity.
Flexible, but can lead to complex code structures; good code practices are essential to keep things manageable.
Remember,
The “best” tool isn’t universal – it’s the one that fits comfortably with your workflows, doesn’t get in the way of scaling, and meets your strategy without adding complexity.
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