The Terraform infrastructure-as-code platform has been generating understandable enthusiasm in developer communities for its ability to simplify the processes of provisioning and maintaining IT infrastructure.
Regarding this software, Azion has observed two recurring situations: on the one hand, several of our customers desire to use Terraform to organize their infrastructures and applications running at the edge within their CI/CD pipeline. On the other hand, potential Azion customers who already use Terraform are also interested in managing the code they could run at the edge directly on this platform, if they decide to bring their applications to Azion.
For those reasons, we have created Azion Terraform Provider, a plugin that allows you to manage infrastructure and applications that are on Azion’s Edge Computing Platform directly from Terraform.
What Is Terraform and Why Use It?
Terraform is a software that enables the provisioning of IT infrastructure on-premises, in the cloud, at the edge and even in multi-cloud, synchronously if necessary, using a high-level configuration language called HCL (HashiCorp Configuration Language).
Currently, most large companies already use it due to its great capability to simplify and automate integration and continuous code updating, and it can manage the entire IT infrastructure of any company in an extremely agile way, regardless of its size.
Terraform is also an open platform. So, unlike most IaC (Infrastructure as Code) platforms, you can use it freely with any cloud or edge computing service provider. It’s a common practice in the developer community to integrate it with GitHub.
If we had to summarize what Terraform offers in one sentence, we could say that it consists of easy creation and structuring of the CI/CD pipeline.
Terraform Modules
Terraform organizes code in the form of modules, that is, containers that hold various resources you can create, update and reuse independently and together, allowing the creation of libraries. You can also download them to your workspace if you wish.
Another capability worth mentioning is that one module can activate others, called child modules. This allows you to create sets of modules with a more structured, concise, and agile configuration, also enabling the creation of automation chains. That means you can make a code execute a certain action, integrating with the software of your choice, in the most convenient locations, to obtain a certain result.
In addition, you can make the automations permanent or ephemeral (they delete themselves after a specific period of time).
By the way, Terraform provisions the structure immutably. In other words, with each update applied to an environment, the current version is replaced by a new one, and the infrastructure is provisioned again. Another advantage of this system is that you can also save previous versions, which means you can prevent problems associated with configuration drift.
How Does Azion Terraform Provider Work?
Azion Terraform Provider is a plugin that establishes communication between Terraform and a number of APIs associated with our edge computing platform solutions.
It translates the HCL code into API calls that will take you to Azion’s Edge Computing Platform, so that any code provided or updated in Terraform will automatically appear in our CLI (Command Line Interface) and Real-Time Manager.
To integrate the two platforms, having a user account on both, simply create a Terraform access token in Azion’s RTM (as described in our documentation). After that, you can access Terraform Registry, where you’ll find the Terraform Provider with all its resources: detailed configuration instructions, modules, policies, etc.
Today, Azion already supplies Terraform modules for several of its edge functionalities and applications, such as Intelligent DNS, caching solutions, digital certificates, origins, firewall, and Edge Functions.
But that’s not all. The growth of this space will be an ongoing process, and we won’t be the only ones cultivating it: it’s a collaborative project open to the entire developer community.
From now on, you are invited to publish in it the modules and SDKs that you create for Azion’s edge and that you believe can generate value for the community.
Are you up for the challenge?
Conclusion
Considering the need for companies to operate in an increasingly agile, efficient, creative, and hyperconnected way, the connection with Terraform is an excellent opportunity to bring us closer to this goal.
On the other hand, we believe that the significance of this collaboration is not limited to a business objective.
Through this solution, we are connecting a collective of pioneering creators, the kind of people who are building and will continue to build our future through technology. And at the edge, the possibilities for growth are no longer linear, but exponential.
As we like to say at Azion, the edge is just the beginning.
For more detailed information on the Azion Terraform Provider, feel free to talk to one of our experts.
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