This document discusses the 4 stages of adopting Terraform at an organization from a small startup to a large enterprise. Stage 1 is manual usage with single environments. Stage 2 introduces semi-automated usage with Terraform configuration. Stage 3 focuses on organizational adoption with workspaces, modules, and version control. Stage 4 discusses integration with version control systems, team permissions, and automated "Run Terraform for me" workflows using Terraform Enterprise.

1. Scaling Terraform
From Startup to Enterprise

2. OUR
Ideato and Extrategy have now
become Flowing: an inclusive
community of people who share a
passion for innovation and a need to
keep things moving. We have come
together to form a new entity and to
partner with those who share our
values, so we can continue to grow
day by day.
PEOPLE

3. WE DEVELOP DIGITAL
PROJECT TOGETHER
WITH YOU.

4. Scaling Terraform
● Intro
● What is Terraform
● 4 Stages of Adoption
● Stage Next

5. Scaling Terraform
● Intro
● What is Terraform
● 4 Stages of Adoption
● Stage Next

7. From Infrastructure Services to multiple Cloud
Not IaaS services Cloud providerVirtualization and IaaS
Cloudflare
UltraDNS
Fastly
BitBucket
Datadog
(and more…)
Amazon
Google Cloud
Microsoft Azure
DigitalOcean
Alibaba Cloud
(and more…)
OpenStack
OpenNebula
VMware vCloud
Softlayer
Cloudstack
(and more…)

8. Pro Cons
● Multiple Provider
● Low learning curve
● Declarative HCL language, not
procedural code
● Dry runs
● Infrastructure versioning
● Terraform Registry
● No rolling upgrades*
● HCL Limitations (logic, loops)*
● Not “Drift detection”*

9. Scaling Terraform
● Intro
● What is Terraform
● 4 Stages of Adoption
○ Stage 1 Manual
○ Stage 2 Semi Automated
○ Stage 3
○ Stage 4
● Stage Next

10. 4 Stage of Adoption

11. Stage 1

12. Scaling Terraform - Stage 1 Manual
● Web Consoles / Manual CLI
● Single environment(s)
● Mutable Infrastructure (Pets server)

13. Scaling Terraform - Stage 1 Manual
● Web Consoles / Manual CLI
● Single environment(s)
● Mutable Infrastructure (Pets server)
● “Infrastructure as Code”

14. Scaling Terraform - Stage 1 Manual
● Web Consoles / Manual CLI
● Single environment(s)
● Mutable Infrastructure (Pets server)
● “Infrastructure as Code” ops.txt

15. ● ….

16. ● Not using any
Terraform is the
first step to using a
lot of Terraform

17. Scaling Terraform - Stage 1 Manual
Technical Operational
Reproducibility Auditing
Change Management Consistency
Architecture Knowledge Sharing

18. Scaling Terraform - Stage 1 Manual
Technical Operational
Reproducibility Auditing
Change Management Consistency
Architecture Knowledge Sharing

19. Scaling Terraform - Stage 1 Manual
● Intro
● What is Terraform
● 4 Stages of Adoption
○ Stage 1 Manual
○ Stage 2 Semi automated
○ Stage 3
○ Stage 4
● Stage Next

20. Stage 2 - Semi automated

21. Scaling Terraform - Stage 2 Semi automated
● Adopting Infrastructure As Code (also Dockerfiles)
● Machine images (also playbooks and others / Packer)
● Web Consoles
● Introduce Terraform!
○ Configuration!
○ Automation!
○ Iteration!

22. Modeling Infrastructure with Configuration

23. ● Plan, Apply, Iterate

25. Scaling Terraform - Stage 2 Semi automated
Technical Operational
Reproducibility Auditing
Change Management Consistency
Architecture Knowledge Sharing

26. Scaling Terraform - Stage 2 Semi automated
Technical Operational
Reproducibility Auditing
Change Management Consistency
Architecture Knowledge Sharing
State management Operations

27. Let’s “import” our
infrastructure

28. Scaling Terraform - Stage 2 Semi automated

29. Scaling Terraform - Stage 2 Semi automated
$ cat ec2_instance.tf
resource "aws_instance" "prod_ec2" {
# ...instance configuration...
}
$ terraform import aws_instance.prod_ec2 i-abcd1234

30. Scaling Terraform - Stage 2 Semi automated

31. Scaling Terraform
● Intro
● What is Terraform
● 4 Stages of Adoption
○ Stage 1 Manual
○ Stage 2 Semi automated
○ Stage 3
○ Stage 4
● Stage Next

32. Stage 3

33. ● Workspaces
● Packaged Components
● Modules
● Inputs and Outputs
● Config Mgmt Hooks

34. Scaling Terraform - Stage 3
● Organizational adoption
● Multiple Environments
● Collaboration
● Version Control

35. Scaling Terraform - Stage 3
● Organizational adoption
● Multiple Environments (Workspaces)

36. Scaling Terraform - Stage 3
● Organizational adoption
● Multiple Environments (Workspaces)
$ terraform workspace new staging
You're now on a new, empty workspace. Workspaces isolate
their state, so if you run "terraform plan" Terraform
will not see any existing state for this configuration.

37. Scaling Terraform - Stage 3
● Organizational adoption
● Multiple Environments (Workspaces) - separate state files
●
resource "aws_instance" "example" {
count = "${terraform.workspace == "prod" ? 5 : 1}"
# … other params
}

38. Scaling Terraform - Stage 3
● Organizational adoption
● Multiple Environments (Workspaces) - separate state files
resource "aws_vpc" "mycompany_vpc" {
name = "VPC ${terraform.workspace == "default" ?
“Prod” : “Staging”}"
# … other params
}

39. ● Workspaces
● Packaged Components

40. Scaling Terraform - Stage 3

41. ● Workspaces
● Packaged Components
● Modules

42. Scaling Terraform - Stage 3

43. Scaling Terraform - Stage 3

44. $ tree base-mod/
├── README.md
├── main.tf
└── variables.tf
└── outputs.tf

47. ● Version control (PR)
● Remote state

49. Scaling Terraform - Stage 3
Technical Operational
Reproducibility Auditing
Change Management Consistency
Architecture Knowledge Sharing
State management Operations

50. Scaling Terraform - Stage 3
Technical Operational
Reproducibility Auditing
Change Management Consistency
Architecture Knowledge Sharing
State management Operations

51. Scaling Terraform - Stage 3
● Intro
● What is Terraform
● 4 Stages of Adoption
○ Stage 1 Manual
○ Stage 2 Semi automated
○ Stage 3
○ Stage 4
● Stage Next

52. Stage 4

53. ● VCS Integration
● Team permissions
● “Run Terraform for me”

54. Developer
“I need to create new VMs
for my new env; but i don’t
know yet how many”

55. Operations
“Ok, it’s not a problem!”

56. Scaling Terraform - Stage 4
Operations
Create new Reservation
(Scheduled Reserved or Convertible)
Create new IAM and assign permission for this RI
Restrict IAM Policy for using RI and EC2 family

57. Scaling Terraform - Stage 4
Developers
Configure AWS CLI with IAM user
Create Terraform module for EC2 resources

58. Terraform Enterprise

59. Terraform Enterprise

60. “Run Terraform for me”

61. Scaling Terraform - Stage 4

63. Scaling Terraform - Stage 4

64. Grazie!
Paolo Tonin
Cloud & DevOps
paolo.tonin@flowing.it