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Stacker vs Terraform: What are the differences?

Introduction:

When evaluating Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools, Stacker and Terraform are two popular options that offer similar functionalities but with some distinct differences. Understanding these variations can help in choosing the right tool for a specific project.

  1. Configuration Language: Stacker uses Python as its configuration language, allowing developers to leverage existing Python functionality and libraries. On the other hand, Terraform uses its own language called HashiCorp Configuration Language (HCL), specifically designed for infrastructure configuration.

  2. State Management: Terraform maintains stateful information about the infrastructure being managed, storing it in a state file which can be stored locally or remotely. Stacker, on the other hand, does not have built-in state management capabilities and relies on external services like AWS CloudFormation for handling state.

  3. Ecosystem Integration: Terraform has a robust ecosystem with a wide range of plugins and modules available in the Terraform Registry, enabling easy integration with various cloud providers and services. Stacker, being built on top of AWS CloudFormation, integrates seamlessly with AWS services but may lack the same level of versatility when working with other cloud providers.

  4. Execution Model: Terraform follows a declarative approach where users define the desired end state, and Terraform takes care of reaching and maintaining that state. Stacker, however, uses a more imperative approach where users define a series of actions to be executed sequentially, allowing for more fine-grained control over the deployment process.

Summary:

In summary, the key differences between Stacker and Terraform lie in their configuration language, state management capabilities, ecosystem integration, and execution models, ultimately influencing the decision-making process when selecting an IaC tool for a project.

Decisions about Stacker 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.

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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.

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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.
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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

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Pros of Stacker
Pros of Terraform
    Be the first to leave a pro
    • 121
      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 Stacker
    Cons of Terraform
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      • 1
        Doesn't have full support to GKE

      Sign up to add or upvote consMake informed product decisions

      - No public GitHub repository available -

      What is Stacker?

      Stacker is the Easiest way to Publish & Reply on Social Media.

      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 Stacker?
      What companies use Terraform?
        No companies found
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        What tools integrate with Stacker?
        What tools integrate with Terraform?
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          What are some alternatives to Stacker and Terraform?
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