As infrastructure becomes more complex, the variety and quality of tools available to manage it has been growing. In 2024, we have an unprecedented selection of high-quality tools to enhance our Terraform workflows. These tools help you efficiently handle complex deployments while minimising cost and risk. In this blog, we will explore a few of these tools, what they do, and how they can fit into your workflow.
1. Overmind
Overmind is focused on minimising the blast radius and ensuring rapid deployment verification when making application changes. It is quickly becoming an essential tool for any serious Terraform user where avoiding downtime is critical. Developed by a small, passionate team, it allows for a safer, focused approach to infrastructure modifications.
Overmind integrates seamlessly with Terraform, enabling simulation and visualisation of changes before implementation. You can interact with Overmind in several ways:
- CLI: Run `
overmind terraform plan`from your project's root to see the impact and risks of local Terraform changes. This command inspects your setup, runs `terraform plan`, and generates a report on affected items and deployment risks, without uploading credentials or sensitive data. - GitHub Action: Automatically scan PR's for infrastructure risks by integrating Overmind GitHub actions. It identifies and highlights risks as soon as a PR is created.
- Custom Integration: Overmind can read Terraform/OpenTofu plans on each pull request, showing the potential impact ('blast radius') and providing a machine-generated risk list.
2. Checkov
When it comes to security and compliance in Terraform configurations, in 2024, Checkov is your go-to tool. This static code analysis tool scans your Terraform configurations (and other IaC formats) to detect misconfigurations, security vulnerabilities, and compliance issues.
- Versatile Support: It supports a wide range of technologies, including Terraform, CloudFormation, Kubernetes, and Docker.
- Comprehensive Analysis: Utilises graph-based scanning to uncover potential issues within your infrastructure.
- SCA Capabilities: Checkov also offers software composition analysis, identifying vulnerabilities in open-source packages and images.
By integrating Checkov into your CI/CD pipeline, you can ensure that your Terraform configurations are secure and compliant before they are deployed.
3. Infracost
With cloud spending continuing to be a main issue for organisations, understanding the financial implications of your infrastructure changes is vital. Infracost provides cost estimates for resources managed by Terraform, giving you insight into the financial impact of your changes before you apply them.
- Cost-Awareness: Easily view cost breakdowns within your development environments, including terminals, Visual Studio Code, or pull requests.
- CI/CD Integration: Infracost Cloud builds on the open-source version, offering features like dashboards, centralised cost policies, and Jira integration.
By integrating Infracost into your workflow, you can make more informed decisions and keep your cloud spending under control.
4. Digger
Digger is an open-source IaC management platform that has streamlined our Terraform orchestration within our CI/CD system. What sets Digger apart is its "bring your own compute" philosophy, allowing us to reuse our existing CI's async jobs infrastructure.
We've found the pro version particularly useful, offering:
- Comprehensive dashboards
- Drift detection
- RBAC via OPA policies
These features have given team leads and managers better visibility and control over IaC processes.
5. Terragrunt
For those managing complex Terraform configurations, Terragrunt is a game-changer. Developed by Gruntwork, Terragrunt acts as a thin wrapper for Terraform, adding features that streamline and optimise your Terraform workflows.
- DRY Principle: Helps keep your configurations DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself) by managing repeated code across multiple Terraform modules.
- Remote State Management and Dependencies: Simplifies the handling of remote states and complex dependencies.
Terragrunt makes managing large-scale, multi-module infrastructure deployments more efficient, allowing you to focus on the big picture without getting bogged down in repetitive tasks.
These five tools capture the best of what’s available to get the most out of your Terraform workflows in 2024. From Overmind's blast radius limitation and security to Checkov's compliance checks, Infracost's cost estimation, and Digger and Terragrunt's management optimisations, each tool offers unique benefits.
Incorporating these tools into your Terraform setups not only improves the efficiency and security of your deployments but also empowers your team to handle more complex infrastructure requirements with ease.
Happy Terraforming in 2024!
Feel free to share your thoughts or any additional tools you find indispensable in your Terraform journey. Let's keep the conversation going!
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