Important Features of Terraform Cloud

Terraform Cloud

Terraform Cloud is a hosted service from HashiCorp that simplifies the process of collaboration when using Terraform. Rather than running Terraform locally, Terraform Cloud runs in a consistent, reliable, and collaborative hosted environment. It does more than simply run Terraform remotely;, Terraform Cloud includes additional features to enable shared state, secret data, access controls, a private registry, and more.

Features of Terraform Cloud

Here’s a quick list of the features included in Terraform Cloud for your reference:

• Workspaces: Workspaces are linked to a VCS and include values, persistent state, and historical logs.

• Version control system (VCS) integration: Integration with several popular VCS solutions allows automatic runs of Terraform, planning runs based on pull requests, and publishing modules to a private registry.

• Private module registry: This is used to share modules across an organization privately and securely.

• Remote operations: Terraform Cloud uses managed disposable virtual machines to run Terraform commands remotely and provide advanced features like Sentinel policy enforcement and cost estimation.

• Organizations: Access control is managed through users, groups, and organizations.

• Sentinel: This is a language and framework for policy to enable fine-grained, logic-based policy decisions.

• Cost estimation: Terraform Cloud can estimate the cost of resources being provisioned by a configuration.

• API: A subset of Terraform Cloud’s features are available through their API.

• ServiceNow: An integration with ServiceNow is available for Terraform Cloud customers.

Key takeaways

Terraform Cloud is a hosted service that expands and enhances the Terraform OSS offerings. Some important additions are workspaces, VCS integration, private module registry, and Sentinel.