mazzle VS terraform

I've been experimenting with alternative pipeline syntaxes.

One example is using Graphviz graph files as an execution plan for software deployments. You can see a graph here:

https://github.com/samsquire/mazzle/blob/master/docs/archite...

I wrote code with networkx to parse this graph dot file and then follow the plan topologically, spinning up packer, terraform, bash scripts, compilation and so on. It also executes graph nodes in parallel where it can.

I talk about it here https://devops-pipeline.com/

My problem with bash pipelines is passing data along and referring to previous steps' data. You kind of need to enrich the data that goes along the pipeline.

I use Graphviz dot syntax to configure entire cloud computing environments in the order they must be built. This is pipelines as code and infrastructure as code

It's very powerful! Not every organisation can bring up an entire environment with one command.

Here is a executable diagram of a build worker cloud nodes, Kubernetes, consul, vault, Debian package server, Java app, SSH bastion, Prometheus, grafana, DNS and security groups.

https://github.com/samsquire/mazzle/blob/master/docs/archite...

The tool also parallelises the build based on the graph so packer builds can run in parallel.

https://devops-pipeline.com/

It also has a GUI but it's not ready for other people to use.

I use a tool I wrote to layer my infrastructure with layers called components and I configure it with a Graphviz file.

My tool, called mazzle (previously devops-pipeline) would run parts of the graph that can run in parallel in parallel. It can also run parts of the build on SSH workers. You bring up the workers at the beginning of the build.

Here's an example of a graph generated from graphviz file: https://github.com/samsquire/mazzle/blob/master/docs/archite...

This graph brings up a hashicorp vault server, Java application, bastion proxy etc.

here's the graphviz file: https://github.com/samsquire/mazzle-starter/blob/master/arch...

It describes the ordering of the infrastructure, the invocation of Ansible, packer, shell scripts to set up vault etc.

The idea is to be able to bring up a new environment by changing one parameter. There's a React GUI too.

https://devops-pipeline.com

I am not only a big fan of hashicorp terraform. I'm also one of the early adopters of it. So this is my main go-to Infrastructure as a Code tool. However all the resources I use are supported by other IaaC solutions such as AWS CloudFormation and AWS CDK. You definitely got to use one to avoid loosing the track of resources you create.

State Encryption was one of those long requested features[0] (I had it on my ideas list for years[1]) that Hashicorp didn't have much incentive to build. I don't think it has to with distancing opentofu as such, but the opentofu team prioritizing the right things that customers actually need.

[0]: https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform/issues/9556

[1]: https://github.com/captn3m0/ideas#-mars-terraform-remote-htt...

https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform/issues/34402

I’m not a lawyer and have no idea who is right or wrong but I understand why Hashicorp is scrutinizing this.

Just to give an example of the power of Go for CLI builds, you may have already used or at least heard of Docker, Kubernetes, Prometheus, Terraform, but what do they all have in common? They all have a large part of their usability via CLI and are developed in Go 🐿.

Each app’s front end is built with Qwik and uses Tailwind for styling. The server-side is powered by Qwik City (Qwik’s official meta-framework) and runs on Node.js hosted on a shared Linode VPS. The apps also use PM2 for process management and Caddy as a reverse proxy and SSL provisioner. The data is stored in a PostgreSQL database that also runs on a shared Linode VPS. The apps interact with the database using Drizzle, an Object-Relational Mapper (ORM) for JavaScript. The entire infrastructure for both apps is managed with Terraform using the Terraform Linode provider, which was new to me, but made provisioning and destroying infrastructure really fast and easy (once I learned how it all worked).

For example, integrating Terraform for infrastructure as code (IaC) into the IDP can streamline updates and rollbacks.

In this project, you will understand and get hands on experience around the entire concept around CI/CD from applications perspective. To fully gain real expertise around this idea, it is best to see it in action across different programming languages and from the platform perspective too. From the application perspective, we will be focusing on PHP here; there are more projects ahead that are based on Java, Node.js, .Net and Python. By the time you start working on Terraform, Docker and Kubernetes projects, you will get to see the platform perspective of CI/CD in action.

Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is an important part of any true hosting operation in the public cloud. Each of these platforms has their own IaC solution, e.g. AWS CloudFormation. But they also support popular open-source IaC tools like Pulumi or Terraform. A category of tools that also needs to be discussed is API gateways and other app-specific load balancers. There are applications for internal consumption, which can be called microservices if you have a lot of them. And often microservices use advanced networking options such as a service mesh instead of just the native private network offered by a VPC.