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Terraform (software)
Open-source software for defining and provisioning a datacenter infrastructure using configuration files

Terraform is an infrastructure-as-code software tool created by HashiCorp. Users define and provide data center infrastructure using a declarative configuration language known as HashiCorp Configuration Language (HCL), or optionally JSON.

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Characteristics

Terraform manages external resources (such as public cloud infrastructure, private cloud infrastructure, network appliances, software as a service, and platform as a service) with "providers". HashiCorp maintains an extensive list of official providers, and can also integrate with community-developed providers.2 Users can interact with Terraform providers by declaring resources3 or by calling data sources.4 Rather than using imperative commands to provision resources, Terraform uses declarative configuration to describe the desired final state. Once a user invokes Terraform on a given resource, Terraform will perform CRUD actions on the user's behalf to accomplish the desired state.5 The infrastructure as code can be written as modules, promoting reusability and maintainability.6

Terraform supports a number of cloud infrastructure providers such as Amazon Web Services, Cloudflare,7 Microsoft Azure, IBM Cloud, Serverspace, Selectel8 Google Cloud Platform,9 DigitalOcean,10 Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, Yandex.Cloud,11 VMware vSphere, and OpenStack.1213141516

History

HashiCorp launched the Terraform Module Registry in 2017.17 In 2019, the paid version Terraform Enterprise was introduced.18

Terraform was previously free software available under version 2.0 of the Mozilla Public License (MPL). On August 10, 2023, HashiCorp announced that all products produced by the company would be relicensed under the Business Source License (BUSL), with HashiCorp prohibiting commercial use of the community edition by those who offer "competitive services".19

OpenTofu was created as a fork resulting from the HashiCorp changing the Terraform license to a BSL.20

References

  1. "Syntax - Configuration Language". Terraform. https://developer.hashicorp.com/terraform/language/syntax/configuration ↩

  2. "Providers". Terraform. https://www.terraform.io/docs/providers/index.html ↩

  3. "Resources". Terraform. https://www.terraform.io/docs/configuration/resources.html ↩

  4. "Data Sources". Terraform. https://www.terraform.io/docs/configuration/data-sources.html ↩

  5. "Configuration". Terraform. https://www.terraform.io/docs/configuration/index.html ↩

  6. "Modules". Terraform. https://www.terraform.io/docs/modules/index.html ↩

  7. "Cloudflare Provider". Terraform. Retrieved 23 November 2022. https://registry.terraform.io/providers/cloudflare/cloudflare/latest/docs ↩

  8. "Selectel Provider". Terraform. 12 April 2023. https://registry.terraform.io/providers/selectel/selectel/latest ↩

  9. "Google Cloud Platform Provider for Terraform". Terraform. Retrieved 5 February 2017. https://www.terraform.io/docs/providers/google/index.html ↩

  10. Starr-Bochicchio, Andrew (22 October 2018). "Introducing the DigitalOcean Terraform Provider". DigitalOcean Blog. Retrieved 17 December 2020. https://blog.digitalocean.com/introducing-the-digitalocean-terraform-provider/ ↩

  11. "Yandex Cloud Provider". 31 May 2021. https://terraform-eap.website.yandexcloud.net/docs/providers/yandex/index.html ↩

  12. "Terraform vs. Chef, Puppet, etc. - Terraform by HashiCorp". Terraform. Retrieved 14 March 2018. https://www.terraform.io/intro/vs/chef-puppet.html ↩

  13. Bryant, Daniel (26 March 2017). "HashiCorp Terraform 0.9. Released with State Locking, State Environments, and Destroy Provisioners". InfoQ. Retrieved 23 May 2017. https://www.infoq.com/news/2017/03/terraform-0.9 ↩

  14. Yevgeniy., Brikman (2017). Terraform Writing Infrastructure as Configuration. O'Reilly Media. ISBN 9781491977057. OCLC 978667796. 9781491977057 ↩

  15. Somwanshi, Sneha (1 March 2015). "Choosing the Right Tool to Provision AWS Infrastructure". ThoughtWorks Blog. https://www.thoughtworks.com/insights/blog/choosing-right-tool-provision-aws-infrastructure ↩

  16. Turnbull, James (2016). The Terraform Book. James Turnbull. ISBN 9780988820258. 9780988820258 ↩

  17. Atkins, Martin (16 November 2017). "HashiCorp Terraform 0.11". HashiCorp Blog. Retrieved 17 December 2020. https://www.hashicorp.com/blog/hashicorp-terraform-0-11?_ga=2.155237499.1577772221.1522078246-1987543793.1522078246 ↩

  18. HashiCorp. "HashiCorp Terraform - Provision & Manage any Infrastructure". HashiCorp: Infrastructure enables innovation. Retrieved 15 April 2020. https://www.hashicorp.com/products/terraform ↩

  19. "HashiCorp Adopts Business Source License for All Products". InfoQ. Retrieved 20 October 2023. https://www.infoq.com/news/2023/08/hashicorp-adopts-bsl/ ↩

  20. "The OpenTofu Manifesto". OpenTofu. Retrieved 8 February 2025. https://opentofu.org/manifesto/ ↩