4 ms·

Just a side thought, with all due respect: > The controversial worldviews such as multi-cloud that we founded this company on are now mainstream and broadly ac

by nuker 3y ago

Just a side thought, with all due respect: > The controversial worldviews such as multi-cloud that we founded this company on are now mainstream and broadly accepted. Emm .. no. It is not mainstream. Multi-cloud may be forced choice for some regulated fintech, but no sane project will double the infra codebase just to get from "lock-in". I see no other benefits. And double the codebase is quadruple the bugs. This is main Terraform's sales pitch, and it has to die. IMHO.

acdha 3y ago
So I kind of agree that most projects don’t need multi cloud but any enterprise will have a bunch of different things which can be managed by Terraform. There is real value in being able to use the same tool to manage AWS/GCP/Azure/etc., Cloudflare, GitLab, VMware, and even racks of Cisco kit in the basement. If you’re doing it that way, you avoid most of those multicloud drawbacks because you’re using the full native functionality, not building abstraction layers or racking up technical debt by sticking with the lowest common denominator.
- nuker 3y ago
  > There is real value in being able to use the same tool to manage AWS/GCP/Azure/etc., Cloudflare, GitLab, VMware My bad, I did not define meaning of multi-cloud. I meant using AWS and GCP at the same time, doing mostly the same things, for redundancy and no lock-in. Still I prefer native IaaC tools, it is simpler, faster and more reliable. I'm AWS guy, so Cloudformation for all things infra. It irks me when I see Terraform doing AWS infra. I jump in to rewrite it as first matter of business, lol
  - acdha 3y ago
    Heh, I have mostly worked on AWS but we stopped using CloudFormation because the experience was so much worse than Terraform with the lengthy deploys, no diffs, significant time delays supporting new AWS features, and deadlocks. They’ve added diffs but turning debugging into a half hour or longer break is still a problem.
    - nuker 3y ago
      Another point - you can jump on AWS support to help you with Cloudformation. They'll wash their hands when its Terraform :) And chasing where the var value actually came from in TF drove me mad few times!
      - acdha 3y ago
        They also did that for Cloud Formation in my experience. It’s better now that you can tell CF to forget about resources but I still get people asking for help dealing with a hung stack.
leriksen 3y ago
That's not what he means when he says multi-cloud. He means his product supports multiple clouds, through terraforms providers, for example. Doing the same infra, across multiple clouds, is a different thing, it's not a Hashi thing.
- nuker 3y ago
  > Doing the same infra, across multiple clouds, is a different thing, it's not a Hashi thing. Not sure about this. Here is what official site says: "Provisioning infrastructure across multiple clouds increases fault tolerance, allowing for more graceful recovery from cloud provider outages." https://www.terraform.io/use-cases/multi-cloud-deployment https://www.terraform.io/use-cases/multi-cloud-deployment
  - kkapelon 3y ago
    Terraform supports different clouds but with completely different syntax. The marketing on the website just informs you what you can use any cloud you want. The message is against other tools such as cloud formation (AWS only) or GCM (Google only), ARM (Azure only) and so on. To give you an analogy it would be like Firefox saying that they are "multi-OS" meaning that you can install Firefox if you have Windows and you can install Firefox if you have Linux. It doesn't mean that you must/should have Linux and Windows at the same time as a user.
    - jen20 3y ago
      Strictly incorrect. The syntax is the same for every cloud - either HCL2 or JSON. What you are calling syntax is actually the resource model. Every project which claims to bridge this resource model ends up implementing a lowest common denominator time sink which doesn’t stand up to basic scrutiny. Your analogy also does not demonstrate whatever it is you seem to think it does - Firefox is indeed multi-OS.
      - kkapelon 3y ago
        It is ok. Parent already said that that they mean something different with "multi-cloud" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38649796 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38649796
lijok 3y ago
Multi-cloud doesn’t mean you duplicate your infra deployment across multiple cloud platforms for redundancy. It means you integrate the best features of each cloud to run your stack. Cloudflare for cdn, GCP for load balancing, aws for compute, snowflake for big data, etc etc… It is absolutely mainstream.
- dikei 3y ago
  > Cloudflare for cdn, GCP for load balancing, aws for compute Isn't this cause you to pay twice the already expensive Egress fee ?

by nuker 3y ago

acdha 3y ago

So I kind of agree that most projects don’t need multi cloud but any enterprise will have a bunch of different things which can be managed by Terraform. There is real value in being able to use the same tool to manage AWS/GCP/Azure/etc., Cloudflare, GitLab, VMware, and even racks of Cisco kit in the basement. If you’re doing it that way, you avoid most of those multicloud drawbacks because you’re using the full native functionality, not building abstraction layers or racking up technical debt by sticking with the lowest common denominator.

nuker 3y ago
> There is real value in being able to use the same tool to manage AWS/GCP/Azure/etc., Cloudflare, GitLab, VMware My bad, I did not define meaning of multi-cloud. I meant using AWS and GCP at the same time, doing mostly the same things, for redundancy and no lock-in. Still I prefer native IaaC tools, it is simpler, faster and more reliable. I'm AWS guy, so Cloudformation for all things infra. It irks me when I see Terraform doing AWS infra. I jump in to rewrite it as first matter of business, lol
- acdha 3y ago
  Heh, I have mostly worked on AWS but we stopped using CloudFormation because the experience was so much worse than Terraform with the lengthy deploys, no diffs, significant time delays supporting new AWS features, and deadlocks. They’ve added diffs but turning debugging into a half hour or longer break is still a problem.
  - nuker 3y ago
    Another point - you can jump on AWS support to help you with Cloudformation. They'll wash their hands when its Terraform :) And chasing where the var value actually came from in TF drove me mad few times!
    - acdha 3y ago
      They also did that for Cloud Formation in my experience. It’s better now that you can tell CF to forget about resources but I still get people asking for help dealing with a hung stack.

leriksen 3y ago

That's not what he means when he says multi-cloud. He means his product supports multiple clouds, through terraforms providers, for example. Doing the same infra, across multiple clouds, is a different thing, it's not a Hashi thing.

nuker 3y ago
> Doing the same infra, across multiple clouds, is a different thing, it's not a Hashi thing. Not sure about this. Here is what official site says: "Provisioning infrastructure across multiple clouds increases fault tolerance, allowing for more graceful recovery from cloud provider outages." https://www.terraform.io/use-cases/multi-cloud-deployment https://www.terraform.io/use-cases/multi-cloud-deployment
- kkapelon 3y ago
  Terraform supports different clouds but with completely different syntax. The marketing on the website just informs you what you can use any cloud you want. The message is against other tools such as cloud formation (AWS only) or GCM (Google only), ARM (Azure only) and so on. To give you an analogy it would be like Firefox saying that they are "multi-OS" meaning that you can install Firefox if you have Windows and you can install Firefox if you have Linux. It doesn't mean that you must/should have Linux and Windows at the same time as a user.
  - jen20 3y ago
    Strictly incorrect. The syntax is the same for every cloud - either HCL2 or JSON. What you are calling syntax is actually the resource model. Every project which claims to bridge this resource model ends up implementing a lowest common denominator time sink which doesn’t stand up to basic scrutiny. Your analogy also does not demonstrate whatever it is you seem to think it does - Firefox is indeed multi-OS.
    - kkapelon 3y ago
      It is ok. Parent already said that that they mean something different with "multi-cloud" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38649796 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38649796

lijok 3y ago

Multi-cloud doesn’t mean you duplicate your infra deployment across multiple cloud platforms for redundancy. It means you integrate the best features of each cloud to run your stack. Cloudflare for cdn, GCP for load balancing, aws for compute, snowflake for big data, etc etc… It is absolutely mainstream.

dikei 3y ago
> Cloudflare for cdn, GCP for load balancing, aws for compute Isn't this cause you to pay twice the already expensive Egress fee ?