Terraform VS AWS CloudFormation

Compare Terraform VS AWS CloudFormation and see what are their differences

IsDown.app

Monitor all your cloud services with our status page aggregator. IT teams choose IsDown to monitor all their vendors and get alerts whenever an outage occurs. Integration with Datadog, PagerDuty, Slack, Microsoft Teams, and a lot more. featured

Contents:

» Base Details
» Videos
» Reviews
» Alternatives

Terraform

Tool for building, changing, and versioning infrastructure safely and efficiently.

AWS CloudFormation

AWS CloudFormation gives developers and systems administrators an easy way to create and manage a...

Landing page //
2023-09-24

Landing page //
2023-03-22

Terraform

Website: terraform.io
$ Details

Edit details

AWS CloudFormation

Website: aws.amazon.com
$ Details

Edit details

Terraform features and specs

Infrastructure as Code
Terraform allows you to define your infrastructure in configuration files that can be versioned and stored in a version control system. This makes it easy to track changes, roll back if necessary, and collaborate with team members.
Multi-Cloud Support
Terraform supports various cloud providers such as AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and others. This allows you to manage your entire infrastructure using a single tool, regardless of the underlying provider.
Immutability
Terraform promotes immutable infrastructure, meaning once a component is created, it is not modified in place but replaced if changes are needed. This leads to more predictable and stable deployments.
State Management
Terraform maintains the state of your infrastructure, which helps in tracking resource changes over time and making incremental updates. This is crucial for applying changes in a controlled manner.
Community and Ecosystem
Terraform has a large and active community, along with a rich ecosystem of providers and modules. This makes it easier to find support, share solutions, and leverage pre-built components.

Possible disadvantages of Terraform

Complex State Management
While state management is a significant feature, managing state files can become complex and risky. Issues like state file corruption or sharing between team members can lead to challenges.
Learning Curve
Terraform has a steep learning curve for beginners, especially those who are not familiar with infrastructure as code concepts or the HashiCorp Configuration Language (HCL).
Partial Updates
Terraform's plan and apply operations are not atomic, meaning that partial updates can sometimes leave your infrastructure in an inconsistent state if an error occurs during execution.
Dependency Management
Managing dependencies between resources can be challenging in Terraform. Misconfigured dependencies can lead to issues during resource creation, deletion, or updates.
Cost Management
While Terraform is excellent for provisioning resources, it does not have built-in cost management or optimization features. Users need to rely on third-party tools to manage and optimize costs.

AWS CloudFormation features and specs

Infrastructure as Code
CloudFormation allows you to define your infrastructure using code or templates, promoting version control, reviewability, and collaborative planning.
Automated Provisioning
It automates the provisioning and updating of infrastructure, reducing the manual intervention required and minimizing human errors.
Consistency and Repeatability
Ensures consistent configurations by deploying the same template multiple times across different environments, eliminating configuration drift.
Integration with Other AWS Services
Tightly integrated with other AWS services, allowing for comprehensive infrastructure management, security policies, monitoring and logging.
Scalability and Flexibility
Facilitates easy scaling and modifying of resources according to the application requirements without significant downtime.

Possible disadvantages of AWS CloudFormation

Complexity
Large templates can become complex and difficult to manage, making troubleshooting and updating challenging.
Learning Curve
Requires time and effort to learn and master, especially for newcomers to AWS or Infrastructure as Code (IaC) concepts.
Limited Cross-Platform Support
Primarily tailored for AWS services, with limited support for managing infrastructure on other cloud platforms.
State Management
Managing the state of your infrastructure can be complex, as creating or updating resources is highly dependent on the current state of your stack.
Debugging Issues
Error messages and stack traces can sometimes be cryptic, making it difficult to pinpoint the exact cause of deployment failures.

Terraform videos

+ Add

Wampler Terraform | Reverb Tone Report Demo

AWS CloudFormation videos

+ Add

What is AWS Cloudformation? Pros and Cons?

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Terraform and AWS CloudFormation)

Terraform

AWS CloudFormation

DevOps Tools

58 58%

DevOps Tools

42% 42

Developer Tools

100 100%

Developer Tools

0% 0

Continuous Integration

0 0%

Continuous Integration

100% 100

Continuous Integration And Delivery

100 100%

Continuous Integration And Delivery

0% 0

User comments

Share your experience with using Terraform and AWS CloudFormation. For example, how are they different and which one is better?

Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Terraform and AWS CloudFormation

Terraform Reviews

Do not use AWS CloudFormation

Terraform, on the other hand, will occupy your shell until the directly-involved AWS service coughs up an error. No additional tooling is required. Terraform will just relay the error message from the affected service indicating what you’ve done wrong.

Source: gswallow.medium.com

Top 5 Ansible Alternatives in 2022: Server Automation Solutions by Alexander Fashakin on the 19th Aug 2021 facebook Linked In Twitter

Although Terraform and Ansible are both server automation tools, there are still a few significant differences between the two. For example, Terraform is declarative while Ansible allows for both procedural configurations and declarative configurations. Also, Ansible works best as a configuration management tool while Terraform leans towards cloud orchestration.

Source: www.servertribe.com

35+ Of The Best CI/CD Tools: Organized By Category

Terraform is compatible with a wide range of Cloud providers, including Azure, VMWare, and AWS. If you’re subscribed to multiple cloud providers, Terraform is a great way to ensure that they have consistent configurations.

Source: www.cloudzero.com

Why we use Terraform and not Chef, Puppet, Ansible, SaltStack, or CloudFormation

Example: Terraform and Ansible. You use Terraform to deploy all the underlying infrastructure, including the network topology (i.e., VPCs, subnets, route tables), data stores (e.g., MySQL, Redis), load balancers, and servers. You then use Ansible to deploy your apps on top of those servers.This is an easy approach to start with, as there is no extra infrastructure to run...

Source: blog.gruntwork.io

Ansible overtakes Chef and Puppet as the top cloud configuration management tool

Breaking these results down year-over-year, use of Ansible grew from 36% in 2018 to 41% in 2019--surpassing Chef, which grew from 36% to 37%, as well as Puppet, which grew from 34% to 37%. Rounding out the list is Terraform, which experienced a jump from 20% to 31%, and Salt, which increased in usage from 13% to 18%.

Source: www.techrepublic.com

AWS CloudFormation Reviews

5 Best DevSecOps Tools in 2023

There are multiple providers for Infrastructure as Code such as AWS CloudFormation, RedHat Ansible, HashiCorp Terraform, Puppet, Chef, and others. It is advised to research each to determine what is best for any given situation since each has pros and cons. Some of these also are not completely free while others are. There are also some that are specific to a particular...

Source: devopsauthority.tech

Do not use AWS CloudFormation

CloudFormation being a layer of indirection makes it difficult to work with in multi-region/multi-account scenarios. With CloudFormation you have to create Stack Sets and IAM policies that allow the CloudFormation service to impersonate other roles. The prerequisite steps you have to take to use CloudFormation across multiple accounts also must be taken just to have...

Source: gswallow.medium.com

Why we use Terraform and not Chef, Puppet, Ansible, SaltStack, or CloudFormation

Of course, there are downsides to declarative languages too. Without access to a full programming language, your expressive power is limited. For example, some types of infrastructure changes, such as a rolling, zero-downtime deployment, are hard to express in purely declarative terms. Similarly, without the ability to do “logic” (e.g. if-statements, loops), creating...

Source: blog.gruntwork.io

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, AWS CloudFormation should be more popular than Terraform. It has been mentiond 123 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Terraform mentions (32)

Scaffolding Serverless Web Application on AWS
Terraform is an infrastructure as code tool that lets you build, change, and version infrastructure safely and efficiently. Terraform code is in the terraform directory. - Source: dev.to / 10 months ago
Integrating Terraform with CI/CD Pipelines
In recent years, there has been a significant shift towards automation of infrastructure deployment processes. One popular tool that has emerged as a key player in this space is Terraform, an open-source infrastructure as code (IaC) software tool developed by HashiCorp. This article will explore how Terraform can be integrated into continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) pipelines using GitHub Actions as an... - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
Deploying Your Outdoor Activities Map with Terraform
Terraform is an open-source infrastructure-as-code software tool created by HashiCorp. It allows you to define and manage your infrastructure as code, making it easy to provision and manage resources across multiple cloud providers. With Terraform, you can ensure consistent and repeatable deployments, making it an ideal choice for automating your cloud infrastructure. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
Trigger CI using Terraform Cloud
Continuous Integration(CI) pipelines needs a target infrastructure to which the CI artifacts are deployed. The deployments are handled by CI or we can leverage Continuous Deployment pipelines. Modern day architecture uses automation tools like terraform, ansible to provision the target infrastructure, this type of provisioning is called IaaC. - Source: dev.to / about 2 years ago
Using Let's Encrypt with the Puppet Enterprise console
Had an itch I've been meaning to scratch for a while. I build my Puppet environment using Terraform, which makes it nice and easy to tear things down and rebuild them. That is great, but it does leave me with an issue when it comes to the console SSL certificates. - Source: dev.to / about 2 years ago

AWS CloudFormation mentions (123)

What is an AWS CloudFormation Template?
CloudFormation is an IaC AWS-native service that helps you model and configure your resources declaratively. Using CloudFormation, you can manage and operate your AWS infrastructure efficiently, so you can spend less time managing infrastructure. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
Master Secure File Uploads to AWS S3 in Node.js with Express and Multer
Basic knowledge of AWS and CloudFormation. - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
AWS Serverless Security: Preventing HTTP Flood DDoS Attack
AWS WAF Security Automations use AWS CloudFormation to quickly configure AWS WAF rules that help block these common types of attacks:. - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
Provisioning A Three-Tier Application on AWS using Infrastructure-As-Code (IaC)
IaC stands for Infrastructure as code and for a while I struggled to understand this concept, and when it seemed like I was starting to get it, I started confusing it with some other thing. IaC allows you to build, change, and manage your infrastructure in a safe, consistent, and repeatable way by defining resource configurations that you can version, reuse, and share. Infrastructure as code is basically... - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
How to Migrate AWS Resources from one AWS Account to Another
1.1 Using AWS CloudFormation If you already use AWS CloudFormation, you can simply bring your existing templates over to the new AWS account. AWS CloudFormation helps you manage and set up your resources easily. You create templates that allow you to quickly and reliably set up services or applications called “stacks.”. - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago