Terraform is a powerful Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) management tool that has gained prominence because of its nifty features. Its multi-cloud support, declarative syntax, modularity, reusability, and other features have allowed organizations to manage their infrastructures efficiently. Using Terraform is not the peak of effective IaC management, though. It can be made better with collaboration.
Collaborative IaC management is possible with a product related to Terraform: Terraform Cloud. A hosted service from HashiCorp, Terraform Cloud serves as a platform for collaboration among teams that use Terraform. It allows teams to manage resource provisioning and infrastructure management, as well as ensure compliance over multiple cloud environments, services, and data centers.
Here’s a look at the notable features that make Terraform Cloud a must-use for organizations. These features make it possible for collaboration to thrive and for infrastructures to be efficient, secure, and resilient.
Efficient management with workspaces and projects
One of the strongest Terraform Cloud features is its categorization of infrastructure resources into workspaces and projects. This makes it easy to organize and manage infrastructure configurations because it sets a clear structure that allows organizations to maintain a neat and scalable way for IaC management under a controlled environment and with ample room for collaboration.
Workspaces are logical groups of Terraform configurations and related resources. They enable the organization and isolation of different environments like those intended for staging, development, and production. They can also be used to group multiple projects under a single organization. Workspaces have their own variables, which makes it possible to set custom configurations and parameters for different environments. Also, each of them has an associated version control repository to facilitate easy monitoring, especially for trigger runs.
Projects, on the other hand, are a collection of workspaces. They set a higher-level organizational unit for grouping related workspaces, which is useful in streamlining the management of various configurations and environments. Projects also come with access control and policy sets. Access controls ensure the security and integrity of workspaces, especially when it comes to data access and modifications. Projects are a convenient way of handling complex infrastructures, wherein multiple teams or apps have unique requirements for their respective configurations.
The level of organization afforded by workspaces and projects is a boon for efficiency. It creates a well-defined system for managing various infrastructure resources. At the same time, it ensures security through access control and policy sets that enable the definition and enforcement of policies in various workspaces within the same project.
Consolidated access control with Single Sign-On
Terraform Cloud’s Single Sign-On (SSO) feature enables users to access Terraform Cloud through their enterprise identity provider credentials. This provides the convenience of using well-known and credible enterprise authentication systems like the Azure Active Directory, Okta, and Google Workspace for access. This makes it unnecessary to have separate credentials for Terraform Cloud.
SSO provides better security mainly by reducing an organization’s attack surfaces. Instead of having multiple logins for different accounts or services, access is consolidated and secured in a unified manner. Some may argue that this goes against the principle of not putting all eggs in one basket, but this is not the case. With SSO, organizations can focus their efforts on securing a specific login event and streamlining access security. In contrast, having multiple login events can lead to confusion and vulnerabilities that may be left unchecked because of the lack of time and resources to go over all logins.
SSO in Terraform Cloud comes with centralized user access control and permissions management, which make it flexible to enforce security policies. This results in more consistent security policy implementation throughout different projects, especially with multiple teams collaborating.
Better operational control with self-hosted agents
Self-hosted agents are computing resources that are maintained by an organization to run automated tasks or build processes. They play a crucial role in continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD).
In Terraform Cloud, self-hosted agents enable the running of Terraform operations within an organization’s infrastructure. This affords greater control over the operations and enhanced security. For example, an organization decides to automate infrastructure that resides on VMware on-premises. In this case, going over firewall configurations to open inbound connections for Terraform Cloud to provision infrastructure in vSphere is not necessary because there are self-hosted agents that can run in vSphere.
The self-hosted agents pass through port 443, requiring the opening of outbound connections. Doing the provisioning this way is more secure compared to opening ports for inbound connections. As such, this method is more likely to have clearance from the cybersecurity team.
Secure collaboration with the Terraform private registry
Terraform Cloud has a private registry that enables the convenient sharing of Terraform providers and modules. This sharing function is similar to Terraform’s public registry, which is useful in versioning as it provides a searchable list of available modules and providers. It is only different in scope, though, because it is about the internal sharing of modules and providers within the organization. It streamlines infrastructure management processes and fosters collaboration without creating vulnerabilities for the infrastructure code.
This private sharing function makes use of the organization’s Version Control System (VCS) for the handling of the release of new versions and other management tasks. It also takes advantage of VCS integrations to undertake other tasks. To secure the resources being shared, the private sharing function is designed to only make providers and modules accessible to members of the organization where they were added. As such, sensitive infrastructure code is not exposed to potential threat actors.
Drift detection
It is not unusual for infrastructure configuration and management to encounter configuration drift, the presence of changes in infrastructure configuration that are not reflected in or managed by the infrastructure management tool used. This happens when organizations implement manual interventions, conduct updates and patches, perform ad hoc configurations, and implement configurations for heterogeneous environments. Generally a product of human error, it is common among organizations that do not automate.
To address configuration drift, Terraform Cloud provides a drift detection function, which enables the detection and management of changes that are unaccounted for in infrastructure deployments. Terraform Cloud regularly scans and runs a comparison of the desired and actual states of deployed resources. Deviations between the desired and actual states are then recorded and reported. Whenever drifts are detected, Terraform Cloud sends notifications and detailed reports to facilitate the resolution of the anomalies.
The takeaway
Terraform Cloud enables collaboration, which is an important factor in achieving efficient and resilient infrastructure. However, it is not limited to allowing the sharing of resources to promote collaborative infrastructure management.
It also provides security features as well as a drift detection function–features that are extremely important in a rapidly changing IT landscape. Terraform is already an excellent IaC tool, but it can provide more advantages when used with Terraform Cloud.
