Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!

AWS Shell

33
65
+ 1
0
Terraform

17.8K
14K
+ 1
345
Add tool

AWS Shell vs Terraform: What are the differences?

Introduction:

In this article, we will be comparing AWS Shell and Terraform, two popular tools used in cloud infrastructure management. We will outline the key differences between these two tools in terms of their features and functionalities.

  1. Syntax and Language: One of the major differences between AWS Shell and Terraform is the syntax and language used. AWS Shell uses a command line interface based on Python, where users can directly interact with AWS services using AWS CLI commands. On the other hand, Terraform uses a separate declarative language called HashiCorp Configuration Language (HCL) to define and manage infrastructure resources.

  2. Infrastructure Provisioning: The approach to infrastructure provisioning also differs between AWS Shell and Terraform. AWS Shell primarily focuses on the command line interface for interacting with AWS services, allowing users to run AWS CLI commands to provision and manage resources. Terraform, on the other hand, follows an infrastructure-as-code approach, where users define their desired infrastructure state in a declarative language and Terraform handles the provisioning and management automatically.

  3. Support and Community: In terms of support and community, Terraform has a significant advantage. Terraform has a large and active community of users and contributors, which means there is extensive documentation, tutorials, and community support available. AWS Shell, being a more specialized tool, has a smaller community and fewer external resources available for support and help.

  4. Cloud Provider Compatibility: While both AWS Shell and Terraform can be used with multiple cloud providers, Terraform offers broader compatibility across different providers. Terraform supports multiple cloud platforms, including AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and more, allowing users to manage resources across different providers using a unified language and management tool. AWS Shell, on the other hand, is specific to AWS services and does not have the same level of multi-cloud compatibility.

  5. Resource Management: Another key difference lies in the way resource management is handled. AWS Shell allows direct interaction and management of AWS resources using AWS CLI commands, providing more granular control. On the other hand, Terraform provides a higher-level abstraction for managing resources, allowing users to define their desired infrastructure state without getting into the specifics of resource management.

  6. Scalability and Complexity: The scalability and complexity of the two tools also differ. AWS Shell is more suitable for managing smaller-scale infrastructures or individual resources, providing a straightforward and flexible command line interface. Terraform, on the other hand, is designed for managing larger-scale infrastructures and complex deployments, offering a robust and scalable approach to infrastructure management.

In summary, AWS Shell primarily focuses on providing a command line interface for managing AWS resources using AWS CLI commands, while Terraform takes an infrastructure-as-code approach using a separate declarative language called HCL to manage resources across multiple cloud platforms. Terraform offers broader cloud provider compatibility, has a larger support community, and provides a higher-level abstraction for resource management, making it more suitable for managing complex and scalable infrastructures.

Decisions about AWS Shell and Terraform

Because Pulumi uses real programming languages, you can actually write abstractions for your infrastructure code, which is incredibly empowering. You still 'describe' your desired state, but by having a programming language at your fingers, you can factor out patterns, and package it up for easier consumption.

See more
Sergey Ivanov
Overview

We use Terraform to manage AWS cloud environment for the project. It is pretty complex, largely static, security-focused, and constantly evolving.

Terraform provides descriptive (declarative) way of defining the target configuration, where it can work out the dependencies between configuration elements and apply differences without re-provisioning the entire cloud stack.

Advantages

Terraform is vendor-neutral in a way that it is using a common configuration language (HCL) with plugins (providers) for multiple cloud and service providers.

Terraform keeps track of the previous state of the deployment and applies incremental changes, resulting in faster deployment times.

Terraform allows us to share reusable modules between projects. We have built an impressive library of modules internally, which makes it very easy to assemble a new project from pre-fabricated building blocks.

Disadvantages

Software is imperfect, and Terraform is no exception. Occasionally we hit annoying bugs that we have to work around. The interaction with any underlying APIs is encapsulated inside 3rd party Terraform providers, and any bug fixes or new features require a provider release. Some providers have very poor coverage of the underlying APIs.

Terraform is not great for managing highly dynamic parts of cloud environments. That part is better delegated to other tools or scripts.

Terraform state may go out of sync with the target environment or with the source configuration, which often results in painful reconciliation.

See more

I personally am not a huge fan of vendor lock in for multiple reasons:

  • I've seen cost saving moves to the cloud end up costing a fortune and trapping companies due to over utilization of cloud specific features.
  • I've seen S3 failures nearly take down half the internet.
  • I've seen companies get stuck in the cloud because they aren't built cloud agnostic.

I choose to use terraform for my cloud provisioning for these reasons:

  • It's cloud agnostic so I can use it no matter where I am.
  • It isn't difficult to use and uses a relatively easy to read language.
  • It tests infrastructure before running it, and enables me to see and keep changes up to date.
  • It runs from the same CLI I do most of my CM work from.
See more

Context: I wanted to create an end to end IoT data pipeline simulation in Google Cloud IoT Core and other GCP services. I never touched Terraform meaningfully until working on this project, and it's one of the best explorations in my development career. The documentation and syntax is incredibly human-readable and friendly. I'm used to building infrastructure through the google apis via Python , but I'm so glad past Sung did not make that decision. I was tempted to use Google Cloud Deployment Manager, but the templates were a bit convoluted by first impression. I'm glad past Sung did not make this decision either.

Solution: Leveraging Google Cloud Build Google Cloud Run Google Cloud Bigtable Google BigQuery Google Cloud Storage Google Compute Engine along with some other fun tools, I can deploy over 40 GCP resources using Terraform!

Check Out My Architecture: CLICK ME

Check out the GitHub repo attached

See more
Get Advice from developers at your company using StackShare Enterprise. Sign up for StackShare Enterprise.
Learn More
Pros of AWS Shell
Pros of Terraform
    Be the first to leave a pro
    • 122
      Infrastructure as code
    • 73
      Declarative syntax
    • 45
      Planning
    • 28
      Simple
    • 24
      Parallelism
    • 8
      Well-documented
    • 8
      Cloud agnostic
    • 6
      It's like coding your infrastructure in simple English
    • 6
      Immutable infrastructure
    • 5
      Platform agnostic
    • 4
      Extendable
    • 4
      Automation
    • 4
      Automates infrastructure deployments
    • 4
      Portability
    • 2
      Lightweight
    • 2
      Scales to hundreds of hosts

    Sign up to add or upvote prosMake informed product decisions

    Cons of AWS Shell
    Cons of Terraform
      Be the first to leave a con
      • 1
        Doesn't have full support to GKE

      Sign up to add or upvote consMake informed product decisions

      What is AWS Shell?

      The AWS Command Line Interface is a unified tool to manage your AWS services.

      What is Terraform?

      With Terraform, you describe your complete infrastructure as code, even as it spans multiple service providers. Your servers may come from AWS, your DNS may come from CloudFlare, and your database may come from Heroku. Terraform will build all these resources across all these providers in parallel.

      Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!

      What companies use AWS Shell?
      What companies use Terraform?
      See which teams inside your own company are using AWS Shell or Terraform.
      Sign up for StackShare EnterpriseLearn More

      Sign up to get full access to all the companiesMake informed product decisions

      What tools integrate with AWS Shell?
      What tools integrate with Terraform?

      Sign up to get full access to all the tool integrationsMake informed product decisions

      Blog Posts

      GitHubGitPython+22
      17
      14199
      JavaScriptGitHubPython+42
      53
      21802
      What are some alternatives to AWS Shell and Terraform?
      AWS CLI
      It is a unified tool to manage your AWS services. With just one tool to download and configure, you can control multiple AWS services from the command line and automate them through scripts.
      AWS Amplify
      A JavaScript library for frontend and mobile developers building cloud-enabled applications. The library is a declarative interface across different categories of operations in order to make common tasks easier to add into your application. The default implementation works with Amazon Web Services (AWS) resources but is designed to be open and pluggable for usage with other cloud services that wish to provide an implementation or custom backends.
      LocalStack
      LocalStack provides an easy-to-use test/mocking framework for developing Cloud applications.
      Bash-My-AWS
      It is a simple but extremely powerful set of CLI commands for managing resources on Amazon Web Services. They harness the power of Amazon's AWSCLI, while abstracting away verbosity. The project implements some innovative patterns but (arguably) remains simple, beautiful and readable.
      troposphere
      The troposphere library allows for easier creation of the AWS CloudFormation JSON by writing Python code to describe the AWS resources. troposphere also includes some basic support for OpenStack resources via Heat.
      See all alternatives