Codefresh vs Terraform

Overview

Terraform

Stacks22.9K

Followers14.7K

Votes344

GitHub Stars47.0K

Forks10.1K

Codefresh

Stacks64

Followers111

Votes47

Codefresh vs Terraform: What are the differences?

Introduction: In the world of DevOps, tools like Codefresh and Terraform play a crucial role in automating infrastructure and CI/CD processes. Below are the key differences between Codefresh and Terraform.

Purpose and Focus: Codefresh primarily focuses on providing a comprehensive CI/CD platform with features like building, testing, and deploying Docker containers. On the other hand, Terraform is a tool for building, changing, and versioning infrastructure safely and efficiently, supporting various cloud platforms like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud.
Workflow: Codefresh is more focused on the application development workflow, automating the process from code commit to deployment. In contrast, Terraform is used for defining, deploying, and managing infrastructure as code, allowing users to describe their infrastructure in configuration files.
Integration: Codefresh offers seamless integration with Kubernetes, GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket, providing a streamlined experience for container-based workflows. Terraform, on the other hand, integrates with cloud providers' APIs to create and manage resources, offering a broader range of integrations with various cloud services.
State Management: In Codefresh, the state of the CI/CD pipelines and workflow executions is managed within the platform, allowing users to track the progress and status of their builds and deployments. Terraform, on the contrary, manages the state of the infrastructure resources to keep track of changes and dependencies, ensuring consistent deployments across environments.
Community and Support: Codefresh has a strong community presence that actively contributes to the platform's development, providing resources, plugins, and support forums for users. Terraform, being an open-source tool from HashiCorp, also has a vibrant community backing it with regular updates, documentation, and support channels for users.

In Summary, Codefresh is a CI/CD platform focused on Docker workflows, while Terraform is an infrastructure as code tool for managing cloud resources efficiently.

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CLI (Node.js)

Manual

Advice on Terraform, Codefresh

Sung Won

Nov 4, 2019

Decidedon

Google Cloud IoT Core

Terraform

Python

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

2.25M views2.25M

Comments

Timothy

SRE

Mar 20, 2020

Decided

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.

385k views385k

Comments

Daniel

May 4, 2020

Decided

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.

426k views426k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Terraform	Codefresh
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.	Automate and parallelize testing. Codefresh allows teams to spin up on-demand compositions to run unit and integration tests as part of the continuous integration process. Jenkins integration allows more complex pipelines.
Infrastructure as Code: Infrastructure is described using a high-level configuration syntax. This allows a blueprint of your datacenter to be versioned and treated as you would any other code. Additionally, infrastructure can be shared and re-used.;Execution Plans: Terraform has a "planning" step where it generates an execution plan. The execution plan shows what Terraform will do when you call apply. This lets you avoid any surprises when Terraform manipulates infrastructure.;Resource Graph: Terraform builds a graph of all your resources, and parallelizes the creation and modification of any non-dependent resources. Because of this, Terraform builds infrastructure as efficiently as possible, and operators get insight into dependencies in their infrastructure.;Change Automation: Complex changesets can be applied to your infrastructure with minimal human interaction. With the previously mentioned execution plan and resource graph, you know exactly what Terraform will change and in what order, avoiding many possible human errors	Instant Dev, test and feature preview environments: Enables all team members to run any image as a standalone or composition for feature preview, manual testing, bug reproduction and more. Collaborate on features before pushing them into staging and production.; Testing with every step: Configure your pipeline to run integration and unit tests with every step; Instantly test all code changes in the Codefresh build system before pushing to staging & production. Run integration, unit tests in parallel.; 360° view of Docker images: View commit info, test results and build logs for all images; Manage Docker image labels and status, comment and see new feature branches; search and filter based on any attribute.; Out-of-the-box Docker buildpack for all technologies: Seamlessly package your code in a Docker image. Quickly associate a Dockerfile with your repo by selecting the repository technology stack (Java, Node, PHP, etc.). Codefresh then adds a template for Dockerizing apps.; View and Access Running Container Logs: Access each container log directly from within the Codefresh platform. This lets you easily perform root-cause analysis on failed services and allows you to see logs in high debug model level.; Support for Docker Compose 1 & 2: Manage your Docker Compose file natively in one place, with support for both Docker Compose versions 1 and 2. Use a built-in wizard to write Docker Compose files quickly.; YAML file support: Customize and easily define your pipeline steps using a codefresh.yml file.
Statistics
GitHub Stars 47.0K	GitHub Stars -
GitHub Forks 10.1K	GitHub Forks -
Stacks 22.9K	Stacks 64
Followers 14.7K	Followers 111
Votes 344	Votes 47
Pros & Cons
Pros 121 Infrastructure as code 73 Declarative syntax 45 Planning 28 Simple 24 Parallelism Cons 1 Doesn't have full support to GKE	Pros 11 Fastest and easiest way to work with Docker 7 Great support/fast builds/awesome ui 6 Great onboarding 5 Freestyle build steps to support custom CI/CD scripting 4 Robust feature-preview/qa environments on-demand Cons 1 Expensive compared to alternatives 1 Questionable product quality and stability
Integrations
Heroku Amazon EC2 CloudFlare DNSimple Microsoft Azure Consul Equinix Metal DigitalOcean OpenStack Google Compute Engine	Quay.io Docker Compose Docker Swarm BinTray Docker Cloud Amazon EC2 GitHub Bitbucket HipChat BlazeMeter

What are some alternatives to Terraform, Codefresh?

Ansible

Ansible is an IT automation tool. It can configure systems, deploy software, and orchestrate more advanced IT tasks such as continuous deployments or zero downtime rolling updates. Ansible’s goals are foremost those of simplicity and maximum ease of use.

Kubernetes

Kubernetes is an open source orchestration system for Docker containers. It handles scheduling onto nodes in a compute cluster and actively manages workloads to ensure that their state matches the users declared intentions.

Rancher

Rancher is an open source container management platform that includes full distributions of Kubernetes, Apache Mesos and Docker Swarm, and makes it simple to operate container clusters on any cloud or infrastructure platform.

Docker Compose

With Compose, you define a multi-container application in a single file, then spin your application up in a single command which does everything that needs to be done to get it running.

Chef

Chef enables you to manage and scale cloud infrastructure with no downtime or interruptions. Freely move applications and configurations from one cloud to another. Chef is integrated with all major cloud providers including Amazon EC2, VMWare, IBM Smartcloud, Rackspace, OpenStack, Windows Azure, HP Cloud, Google Compute Engine, Joyent Cloud and others.

Docker Swarm

Swarm serves the standard Docker API, so any tool which already communicates with a Docker daemon can use Swarm to transparently scale to multiple hosts: Dokku, Compose, Krane, Deis, DockerUI, Shipyard, Drone, Jenkins... and, of course, the Docker client itself.

Tutum

Tutum lets developers easily manage and run lightweight, portable, self-sufficient containers from any application. AWS-like control, Heroku-like ease. The same container that a developer builds and tests on a laptop can run at scale in Tutum.

Capistrano

Capistrano is a remote server automation tool. It supports the scripting and execution of arbitrary tasks, and includes a set of sane-default deployment workflows.

Puppet Labs

Puppet is an automated administrative engine for your Linux, Unix, and Windows systems and performs administrative tasks (such as adding users, installing packages, and updating server configurations) based on a centralized specification.

Salt

Salt is a new approach to infrastructure management. Easy enough to get running in minutes, scalable enough to manage tens of thousands of servers, and fast enough to communicate with them in seconds. Salt delivers a dynamic communication bus for infrastructures that can be used for orchestration, remote execution, configuration management and much more.

Related Comparisons

Codefresh vs Terraform: What are the differences?

Purpose and Focus: Codefresh primarily focuses on providing a comprehensive CI/CD platform with features like building, testing, and deploying Docker containers. On the other hand, Terraform is a tool for building, changing, and versioning infrastructure safely and efficiently, supporting various cloud platforms like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud.
Workflow: Codefresh is more focused on the application development workflow, automating the process from code commit to deployment. In contrast, Terraform is used for defining, deploying, and managing infrastructure as code, allowing users to describe their infrastructure in configuration files.
Integration: Codefresh offers seamless integration with Kubernetes, GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket, providing a streamlined experience for container-based workflows. Terraform, on the other hand, integrates with cloud providers' APIs to create and manage resources, offering a broader range of integrations with various cloud services.
State Management: In Codefresh, the state of the CI/CD pipelines and workflow executions is managed within the platform, allowing users to track the progress and status of their builds and deployments. Terraform, on the contrary, manages the state of the infrastructure resources to keep track of changes and dependencies, ensuring consistent deployments across environments.
Community and Support: Codefresh has a strong community presence that actively contributes to the platform's development, providing resources, plugins, and support forums for users. Terraform, being an open-source tool from HashiCorp, also has a vibrant community backing it with regular updates, documentation, and support channels for users.

In Summary, Codefresh is a CI/CD platform focused on Docker workflows, while Terraform is an infrastructure as code tool for managing cloud resources efficiently.

Codefresh vs Terraform

Overview