Google Cloud Deployment Manager vs Habitat vs Terraform

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

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.

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.