Configuration Management & Infrastructure as Code (IaC)

When working with Terraform, one common question that arises is whether to include the .terraform.lock.hcl file in the Git repository or leave it out by adding it to .gitignore. This decision impacts the version control practices and reproducibility of your infrastructure deployments. In this article, we’ll explore the contents of the .terraform.lock.hcl file, discuss why […] The article Should .terraform.lock.hcl file be added to .gitignore or committed to Git repo? appeared first on Build5Nines. View the full article

Terraform from HashiCorp is provided as a command-line tool that must first be installed locally before excution. It’s easy to install, as the full tool is contained within a single executable. This makes it easy to put terraform in any folder on your machine for use. Although, to make it executable from anywhere on your […] The article Terraform: Install Latest Version on macOS and Linux appeared first on Build5Nines. View the full article

Immutable Infrastructure as Code (IaC) has emerged as a game-changing approach to building robust, scalable, and highly resilient systems. In this blog, you will learn about the core principles of Immutable IaC, its benefits, challenges, and how organizations can harness its power to optimize their development and deployment processes... View the full article

To remain competitive today, organizations have to adopt software development methodologies that enable shorter time to market and reliability for their products. This requires the integration of automation into software development and infrastructure provisioning as well as management. One popular infrastructure management automation tool is Ansible. In this blog, we will discuss what Ansible is and then delve into the depths of Ansible to understand its significance, features, and role in the DevOps landscape... View the full article

HashiCorp Terraform, an open-source Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tool, enables easier infrastructure provisioning and management across all types of platforms. At the heart of Terraform’s effectiveness is its workflow that consists of three main stages: Write, Plan, and Apply. This provides a structured process that ensures a seamless creation, modification, and provisioning process for managing […] The article Terraform Workflow Process Explained appeared first on Build5Nines. View the full article

The popular HashiCorp Terraform, open-source, Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tool, empowers DevOps and SRE teams to manage and provision resources more efficiently. One of Terraform’s powerful features is the ability to import existing infrastructure into a Terraform project. This capability allows you to bring already-deployed resources under Terraform’s control, providing visibility, management, and automation. In […] The article Terraform: Import Existing Infrastructure appeared first on Build5Nines. View the full article

HashiCorp Terraform provides a couple functions for working with JSON. These are the jsonencode and jsondecode functions and they grant the ability to encode and decode JSON. This can be a powerfull tool for several scenarios where you may need to work with JSON data within a Terraform project. This article shows some simple examples […] The article Terraform: How to work with JSON (jsondecode, jsonencode, .tfvars.json) appeared first on Build5Nines. View the full article

Terraform, an open-source infrastructure as code (IAC) tool developed by HashiCorp, provides an effective means to define and provision infrastructure resources. You can automate the process of creating, editing, and deleting resources across cloud-based and on-premise environments using Terraform's powerful features. One of the critical implementations that makes it so effective is state management. In this blog, we will delve into the significance of Terraform state, its management, and practical examples to illustrate its importance... View the full article

Infrastructure as Code (IaC) has become a cornerstone of modern cloud management, and HashiCorp Terraform is a powerful tool for achieving this. Terraform allows you to create reusable components called modules, enabling you to build consistent and scalable infrastructure in Azure. In this article, we’ll guide you through the process of creating and using your […] The article Terraform: Create your First Module appeared first on Build5Nines. View the full article

Welcome back to the CNCF Tool Interviews Series. Today, we're taking an in-depth look at OpenTofu, a tool that's making significant strides in the Infrastructure as Code (IaC) domain within the open-source community. Let's get started... View the full article

In the ever-evolving landscape of IT infrastructure, the ability to create custom images efficiently and consistently is a game-changer. This is where HashiCorp Packer comes into play, a powerful tool that revolutionizes the image creation process across platforms such as AWS, Azure, and GCP, among others. This blog post, based on the Hashicorp Packer course offered by KodeKloud, serves as a comprehensive guide to mastering HashiCorp Packer... View the full article

Terraform has quickly become a go-to infrastructure as code (IaC) tool due to its powerful declarative syntax for provisioning and managing infrastructure efficiently. One key feature that distinguishes Terraform from its rivals is its module system. In this blog, we will explore the Terraform module in detail with some practical examples... View the full article

Terraform is a powerful infrastructure as code (IaC) tool, but even experienced users sometimes encounter challenges with what seems like basic operations. One such operation is simple string concatenation, which can be perplexing if you’re not familiar with the specific syntax and functions available in Terraform. In this article, we’ll address a common issue that […] The article How to Perform Simple String Concatenation in Terraform appeared first on Build5Nines. View the full article

When working with HashiCorp Terraform, it’s important to understand how to interact with external systems and data. Terraform provides a mechanism to query and use information from external sources through data sources using a data block. In this article, we’ll explore what data sources are, provide a use case to illustrate their importance, and clarify […] The article Terraform: How are Data Sources used? appeared first on Build5Nines. View the full article

Terraform is a powerful infrastructure-as-code tool that allows you to define and provision infrastructure resources. In some scenarios, you might need to transform a list of strings into a map of objects for your Terraform configurations. This article will guide you through the problem and its solution using Terraform’s for loop and local variables… View the full article

HashiCorp Terraform is a versatile infrastructure-as-code tool that empowers users to define and provision infrastructure resources with ease using a declarative configuration language. While Terraform provides solutions for converting strings to lists, there are occasions where you’ll need to do the opposite: convert a list into a string. This can be particularly beneficial when configuring […] The article Terraform: Convert String to List (join function) appeared first on Build5Nines. View the full article

In the realm of infrastructure as code (IaC), Terraform reigns supreme as a versatile tool for provisioning and managing cloud resources. Its ability to codify infrastructure configurations allows for automation and scalability. One of the key elements that can elevate your Terraform skills to the next level is mastering conditional statements and the Null Coalesce […] The article Terraform If/Else statements with Conditional and Null Coalesce Examples appeared first on Build5Nines. View the full article

HashiCorp Terraform is a powerful infrastructure-as-code tool that allows you to define and provision infrastructure resources using a declarative configuration language. When working with Terraform, you may encounter situations where you need to convert a string into a list. This can be especially useful when dealing with configurations or data retrieved from external sources. In […] The article Terraform: Convert String to List (tolist, split functions) appeared first on Build5Nines. View the full article

In the ever-evolving landscape of Infrastructure as Code (IaC), Terraform stands tall as one of the leading tools for provisioning and managing cloud resources. Terraform’s flexibility and robustness are often attributed to its wide array of features and functions, and among them, Terraform Locals emerge as a valuable gem. In this comprehensive guide, we will […] The article Terraform Locals: How, When and Why to use locals appeared first on Build5Nines. View the full article

Terraform is widely known for its ability to efficiently create, manage and update infrastructure resources across cloud providers and on-premises environments. It provides the ability to create resources that depend on each other, and the depends_on meta-argument is a helpful feature for implementing such relationships in a systematic way. This blog covers what Terraform depends_on is, its syntax, the best use cases, and the best practices to follow... View the full article

Infrastructure as Code (IaC) has emerged as a critical tenet in cloud computing, making efficient resource management possible across cloud environments. Terraform and AWS CloudFormation are two leading tools in IaC that facilitate the provisioning and management of infrastructure resources. While both offer similar functionalities, their fundamental differences make each suitable for different use cases. In this blog post, we will learn about the key differences between Terraform and CloudFormation. But first, let's understand what Terraform and CloudFormation are... View the full article

Homepage WHY ANSIBLE? Working in IT, you're likely doing the same tasks over and over. What if you could solve problems once and then automate your solutions going forward? Ansible is here to help. COMPLEXITY KILLS PRODUCTIVITY Every business is a digital business. Technology is your innovation engine, and delivering your applications faster helps you win. Historically, that required a lot of manual effort and complicated coordination. But today, there is Ansible - the simple, yet powerful IT automation engine that thousands of companies are using to drive complexity out of their environments and accelerate DevOps initiatives. ANSIBLE LOVES THE REPETITI…

HashiCorp Terraform is a great tool for deploying and managing Microsoft Azure resource. This includes management of Azure Storage Accounts and Blob Containers. Azure Storage is one of the primary, foundational PaaS (Platform as a Service) services in Microsoft Azure for storing files and other blobs (binary large objects) of data. This article will show […] The article Terraform: Deploy Azure Storage Account and Blob Container appeared first on Build5Nines. View the full article

As a DevOps Engineer or Site Reliability Engineer (SRE), managing cloud infrastructure deployments is a critical aspect of your daily activities. It is vital to use tools that automate the provisioning and configuration of cloud infrastructure to achieve efficient and scalable infrastructure management. One of the best tools for this is HashiCorp Terraform, and as […] The article Why HashiCorp Terraform is Essential for SREs and DevOps Engineers appeared first on Build5Nines. View the full article

HashiCorp Terraform has become one of the most popular infrastructure as code (IaC) tools. Terraform allows you to define and manage your infrastructure deployments across one or multiple cloud providers through code. This makes it easier to manage, version, and maintain infrastructure deployments. Writing Terraform code can be challenging, especially if you are not familiar […] The article Terraform Best Practices for Writing Clean, Readable, and Maintainable Code appeared first on Build5Nines. View the full article

HashiCorp Terraform is great for deploying any Microsoft Azure resource, and the same applies to deploying serverless compute with Azure Function Apps in the Microsoft Azure cloud. Azure Function Apps are a very heavily used compute service in Microsoft Azure, and one that is in high demand for deployment automation by DevOps Engineers and Site […] The article Terraform: Deploy Azure Function App with Consumption Plan appeared first on Build5Nines. View the full article

One of the things that HashiCorp Terraform requires to work is the ability to save and store the Terraform State Management (.tfstate) file. By default, the state management file is stored locally where the Terraform CLI is run. While this does provide the necessary functionality to use Terraform for infrastructure deployments, at a minimum, it’s […] The article Terraform: Store Backend State in Azure Storage Account appeared first on Build5Nines. View the full article

Various tasks working with strings in HashiCorp Terraform is the most common type of code written when writing Infrastructure as Code (IaC) templates. String interpolation specifically is something that is almost impossible to write Terraform code without. The built-in Terraform functions for working with strings and string interpolation features are an extremely valuable and useful […] The article Terraform: String Functions and Interpolation Explained appeared first on Build5Nines. View the full article

Defining IP Address spaces using CIDR notation for network and subnets is a common task for network engineers, DevOps Engineers, and Site Reliability Engineers (SRE) when configuring infrastructure deployments using HashiCorp Terraform. CIDR notation is used uniquely to declare the IP Address space for an entire network, as well as to divide the full IP […] The article Terraform: Using CIDR Notation to Define IP Address Ranges and Subnet Address Spaces appeared first on Build5Nines. View the full article

for_each in HashiCorp Terraform can be used to create more advanced Terraform configurations that are able to deploy multiple instances of a resource or module with similar or slightly different configurations. In this article, we will explore how to use the for_each loop in Terraform with basic code examples. The examples are targeting resource types […] The article Terraform: Use for_each to deploy multiple resources appeared first on Build5Nines. View the full article

HashiCorp Terraform is a popular tool for managing infrastructure as code (IaC). By defining your IaC using Terraform, you can use version control with your infrastructure configuration and also automate infrastructure deployment in a consistent and repeatable way. Azure DevOps Pipelines can be used to setup YAML pipelines to instrument the Terraform infrastructure deployments using […] The article Deploy Terraform using Azure DevOps YAML Pipelines appeared first on Build5Nines. View the full article

HashiCorp Terraform infrastructure deployments can always be run manual, but using GitHub Actions to implement Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) can be used to streamline and automate the Terraform infrastructure as code (IaC) deployment workflow. Developers will use GitHub Actions to automate the code build and deployment for an applications code, and the same […] The article Terraform: GitHub Actions Automated Deployment appeared first on Build5Nines. View the full article

HashiCorp Terraform is a powerful Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tool for managing resources both in the cloud and on-premises. The first command that you run when working with a Terraform Project is the terraform init command (aka Terraform project initialization command). The Terraform Init command is a critical part of the Terraform workflow, and must […] The article Terraform Init Command Overview appeared first on Build5Nines. View the full article

HashiCorp Terraform is an open-source infrastructure as code (IaC) tool that enables organizations to manage, version, and automate the provisioning of their infrastructure. The purpose of Terraform is to provide a common language to describe and provision infrastructure resources in a safe, predictable, and reusable manner. Terraform Configuration Syntax is the language used to describe […] The article Terraform Configuration: Overview of HCL Syntax appeared first on Build5Nines. View the full article

There are times when the best resource to use for learning code or even putting some techniques into practice is a simple, prewritten code sample. This is true when it comes to Terraform Infrastructure as Code (IaC) automation the same as with any other programming language. The Terraform Quickstart Templates open source project (OSS) from […] The article Terraform Quickstart Templates OSS Project from Build5Nines appeared first on Build5Nines. View the full article

Terraform has an inline If/Else conditional expression that enables you to set parameters and variables programmatically based on the condition being evaluated. The syntax of this “If/Then” or “If/Else” expression is similar to other programming languages where you have a condition to evaluate, then the result to return if either True or False are the […] The article Terraform: If/Else Conditional Resource and Module Deployment appeared first on Build5Nines. View the full article

HashiCorp, the company behind Terraform, Consul, and Vault, has a community recognition award they call “HashiCorp Ambassador.” This award is given to individuals who have committed to the spirit of open source and actively share their knowledge in HashiCorp products to the IT community through content creation and local events that advocate for and adhere […] The article What is the HashiCorp Ambassador Award? appeared first on Build5Nines. View the full article

Homepage Downloads GitHub About HashiCorp Packer is easy to use and automates the creation of any type of machine image. It embraces modern configuration management by encouraging you to use automated scripts to install and configure the software within your Packer-made images. Packer brings machine images into the modern age, unlocking untapped potential and opening new opportunities. Works Out of The Box Out of the box Packer comes with support to build images for Amazon EC2, CloudStack, DigitalOcean, Docker, Google Compute Engine, Microsoft Azure, QEMU, VirtualBox, VMware, and more. Support for more platforms is on the way, and anyone can add new pl…

Hashicorp releases drops of Terraform a regular basis, and September was no exception providing three updates. On September 30th, 0.13.4 was released and there is a change that has some important implications for those that rely on third-party provisioners that ship within the binary. In the upgrade notes there is the following statement: The built-in […] The article Terraform updates to version 0.13.4 appeared first on Build5Nines. View the full article

A new low-level Go binding for the Terraform protocol for integrations to be built on top of; https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform-plugin-go

Homepage About AWS CloudFormation provides a common language for you to describe and provision all the infrastructure resources in your cloud environment. CloudFormation allows you to use a simple text file to model and provision, in an automated and secure manner, all the resources needed for your applications across all regions and accounts. This file serves as the single source of truth for your cloud environment. AWS CloudFormation is available at no additional charge, and you pay only for the AWS resources needed to run your applications. Benefits MODEL IT ALL AWS CloudFormation allows you to model your entire infrastructure in a text file. This templ…

Homepage GitHub Documentation Downloads What is Terraform? Terraform is a tool for building, changing, and versioning infrastructure safely and efficiently. Terraform can manage existing and popular service providers as well as custom in-house solutions. Configuration files describe to Terraform the components needed to run a single application or your entire datacenter. Terraform generates an execution plan describing what it will do to reach the desired state, and then executes it to build the described infrastructure. As the configuration changes, Terraform is able to determine what changed and create incremental execution plans which can be applied. …

The popularity of HashiCorp Terraform has really taken off in the last couple of years. Terraform has become an extremely popular tool for writing declarative Infrastructure as Code (IaC) used to deploy and manage cloud infrastructure across one or even multiple clouds (think “Polynimbus“). With this growing popularity, HashCorp is recognizing the need for enterprises […] The article HashiCorp Certified: Terraform Associate DevOps Certification appeared first on Build5Nines. View the full article

During the online HashiConf Europe conference today, HashiCorp debuted the general availability of a 1.0 release of HashiCorp Terraform along with updates to HashiCorp Terraform Cloud service. Meghan Liese, senior director of product marketing for HashiCorp, said in both cases HashiCorp is moving to enable organizations to better secure and govern IT infrastructure-as-code provisioned using […] View the full article

While there are several ways to host container workloads in Azure, Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) provides the easiest way to deploy Kubernetes for teams needing a full orchestration solution. AKS seems to gain new features every week. Depending on your needs deploying a repeatable, consistent AKS configuration can be challenging. Infrastructure-as-Code tools like Terraform bring […] The article Terraform: Create an AKS Cluster appeared first on Build5Nines. View the full article

The Terraform Azure (azurerm) Provider can be used to configure infrastructure in Microsoft Azure. The v2.30.20 release of the azurerm Terraform Provider is now available. This is an incremental release of the v2.0 azurerm Terraform provider, and provides a few new features and improvements! Here’s an example Terraform provider reference that specifies to use the […] The article Terraform AzureRM Provider v2.30.0 Released appeared first on Build5Nines. View the full article