Choosing the Right Infrastructure as Code (IaC) Tool – A Flow Chart
Which Infrastructure as Code (IaC) Tool Should Your Organization Use?
So your organization has decided to get started with Infrastructure as Code (IaC), but you have not yet decided on which tool to use. There are several leading options to consider:
- Terraform (Multi-cloud, Open-Source)
- Pulumi (Multi-cloud, Open-Source)
- AWS CloudFormation (AWS Only, Proprietary)
- Azure Resource Manager (ARM) Templates (Azure Only, Proprietary)
We built a flow chart to make the choice as easy as possible. Of course, you should do your own research that is unique to your organizations specific needs but the broader takeaways from the flowchart are likely as follows:
- Unless you are a ride-or-die AWS or Azure Organization, and have no desire to ever use another cloud provider or cloud service, and don’t see any benefit to a having a large open-source community around the tool you select, your organization should not consider CloudFormation or Azure ARM Templates.
- With the General Availability of the Terraform CDK, there is much less of an advantage to using Pulumi since it also comes with a significantly smaller community and far fewer supported providers.
- Even given the Pros and Cons of different IaC tools, the only choice you absolutely should not make is not using an IaC tool to control your cloud infrastructure.
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