How to differentiate between the two: Terraform vs CloudFormation? CloudFormation is an AWS service created especially for establishing AWS resources, whereas Terraform is an open-source Infrastructure as a Code tool that can deploy resources to many cloud providers.
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Two well-known names spring to mind when people are asked which tools are best for automating infrastructure provisioning: AWS CloudFormation vs Terraform. This article goes into great detail about the differences between Terraform and CloudFormation.
HashiCorp’s Infrastructure as Code tool is called Terraform. Terraform enables programmatic infrastructure definition through the use of a syntax known as the HashiCorp Configuration Language (HCL). One of Terraform’s most noteworthy features is that it is “cloud agnostic,” allowing resources to be deployed to numerous cloud providers.
Even though the phrase “cloud-agnostic” is frequently used when referring to Terraform, utilizing Terraform does not automatically make you “multi-cloud” or any more cloud-agnostic than using AWS CloudFormation. This is due to the fact that resources cannot be deployed from one cloud provider (like AWS) to another (like Azure) using the same code. Rather, you’ll find yourself writing code uniquely for every cloud provider.
There are other advantages to consider in addition to Terraform’s “multi-provider” support, like its capacity to create resources dynamically using its for_each or count features and its dynamic block functionality, which allows you to configure a resource’s properties dynamically. Furthermore, Terraform has built-in functions that you can call and utilize in your code; these come in rather handy for routine chores.
Amazon CloudFormation is an excellent solution that allows the operations and development teams to automate AWS infrastructure provisioning effortlessly. With the help of this managed AWS service, you can plan and set up both AWS and outside resources for your cloud setup. The configuration is handled by Cloudformation using templates in JSON format. The user can achieve infrastructure scalability and reusability with the help of these templates. YAML format is another option for cloudformation templates.
Why do we need tools like Terraform vs CloudFormation? Nearly every configuration pertaining to a system can be handled by these CM tools. What happens if a user needs to keep a layer of abstraction between the services and the bare-metal components underneath? In such cases, the two powerful tools, CloudFormation and Terraform, come into the picture.
Terraform is a multi-cloud platform, whereas CloudFormation is exclusive to AWS. This is the main distinction between the two. While CloudFormation is an AWS-specific solution that offers a standard approach to creating and managing AWS resources, Terraform offers a common language to describe and provision cloud architecture.
In conclusion, the use of infrastructure tools depends on your requirements. The overall feeling of Terraform vs CloudFormation is that CloudFormation is more professional and dependable than Terraform, despite its imperfections, and it is strongly suggested for any project that isn’t exclusively multi-cloud. Convert CloudFormation to Terraform for improved management and flexibility due to Terraform’s broader support for multi-cloud environments, its declarative syntax, and its robust ecosystem of community-maintained modules.
Read more: Cloud Transformation Vs. Cloud Migration: What’s the Difference?
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