February 2020 Summaries

The Sentinel tfrun import has been updated to provide improved policy authoring workflows, flexibility in applying policies across an entire organization, and reduced policy duplication. The new import now exposes attributes such as `created_at`, `message`, `speculative`, `is_destroy`, `variables`, `organization`, `workspace`, and `cost_estimate`. This expansion enables use cases like maintenance window enforcement, policy evaluation by organization name, and preventing outputs from disclosing sensitive values. The updated import allows customers to apply policies in different ways, evaluate rule expressions based on organization names, and protect sensitive information within Terraform output values. The new attributes are available to all Terraform Cloud and Terraform Enterprise customers to use within their Sentinel policies.

''A large Australian energy provider, AGL Energy, transitioned to the cloud around five years ago and became one of the largest consumers of Microsoft Azure in the southern hemisphere. To manage their growing cloud infrastructure, they established an in-house capability and created a Customer Experience Transformation program. However, this led to varying levels of maturity with regards to cloud technology among different teams. They then launched the AAA Program (Automate, Accelerate, AGL) to improve collaboration and adoption of cloud technologies at scale. The program utilized HashiCorp's Terraform and Sentinel tools to automate infrastructure provisioning, ensure consistency, and enforce compliance. With these tools, they achieved a centralized governance model, enabled collaboration among teams, and reduced the risk of technical debt. As they move forward, they plan to continue building on their foundational capabilities and exploring new tools such as Vault and Consul to further extend Terraform's capabilities.

The AzureRM Provider has released version 2.0.0, bringing significant improvements including the separation of Virtual Machine and Virtual Machine Scale Set resources, introduction of custom timeouts, and removal of deprecated resources and data sources. The new version offers more flexibility and control over resource configurations, while also simplifying the overall experience for users. The provider now includes additional resources such as azurerm_linux_virtual_machine, azurerm_windows_virtual_machine, and azurem_virtual_machine_scale_set_extension, allowing users to select specific types of Virtual Machines and Scale Sets. Custom timeouts can be set for resources, providing more control over resource deletion windows. In this release, deprecated resources, data sources, and fields have been removed, making way for a major release and new features. The AzureRM team invites users to try the new version, share feedback, and report bugs via GitHub Issues.

Today, HashiCorp is announcing that its Terraform Enterprise integration with ServiceNow Service Catalog supports the full infrastructure lifecycle from creation to deletion, allowing users to manage the lifecycle of their infrastructure through a self-service approach. This integration enables companies to provide automated cloud provisioning and workflow management to end-users, who can request and manage infrastructure using tools they are familiar with. The integration also includes policy enforcement and compliance features to ensure safe and secure use of Terraform Enterprise. With this update, users can submit delete requests for infrastructure when they are done, and Terraform will destroy and then delete the workspace. This allows companies to leverage a self-service, infrastructure as code approach to multi-cloud provisioning, compliance, and management.

The Consul Education team has created new guides to help developers secure their network communications and narrow access permissions. The guides cover the process of migrating legacy ACL tokens, securing agent communication using Transport Layer Security (TLS) encryption, and updating existing datacenters for production-ready TLS with zero downtime. These security measures are crucial for preparing Consul deployments for production use cases.

Consul KV is a key-value store that can be used to manage feature toggles in an application. Using Consul KV allows developers to conditionally deliver features to users and track, manage, and update toggles in a single location. The Consul client can be deployed on the same node as the workload to retrieve values from Consul KV at runtime without restarting the application. Feature toggles can be used for release toggles to hide releases, experimental toggles for A/B testing, and operational toggles for rolling back problematic changes. Consul watches can monitor modifications to toggle key prefixes, while access control lists (ACLs) can prevent unauthorized changes to flags and namespaces can further isolate access by teams. For production scale, consul-template can be used to write values from Consul KV to a file, allowing the application to reference cached values even if it cannot reach Consul.

Variables are a critical component when building an application or managing Terraform configurations, providing modularity, reusability, and security. Managing variables can be a chore in complex code, but Terraform Cloud offers a robust system for variable management, including direct configuration management and UI-based access. Terraform Cloud workspaces provide isolation, allowing the definition of two types of variables: Terraform variables and environment variables, which set values that can be consumed by configurations during runs. The UI allows users to define and control variables, with sensitive labels indicating write-only values and HCL labels denoting code-interpolated variables. The UI also provides a description field for variable definitions, making it easier for teammates to understand workspace configurations. Additionally, the Terraform Enterprise Provider offers a simpler way to manage large quantities of variables programmatically or at once. Users can learn more about using variables in Terraform Cloud by signing up for a free account, visiting documentation, or exploring the HashiCorp Learn platform.

Terraform Cloud has released a beta version of run triggers, a feature that allows users to automate runs across workspaces, enabling greater flexibility when defining and managing infrastructure as code. Run triggers are configured by setting a source workspace on another workspace, allowing users to automate runs across workspaces. This feature is useful for cross-team collaboration, security purposes, and aligning with application pipelines. The beta feature is currently not recommended for production use and requires manual intervention. Users can build their own run triggers using Terraform Cloud's documentation, which includes examples and guides on how to set up the feature.

HashiCorp has integrated interactive experiences powered by Katacoda into its Learn platform, allowing users to engage with product features through hands-on tutorials without leaving the site. This feature was developed before the debut of HashiCorp Learn and is now embedded in corresponding guides, providing a more engaging learning experience. Users can explore product features without local installation or setup, and over 5,000 Katacoda sessions have been engaged with in the last 30 days. The new feature is available for several guides, including Vault Agent Templates, Encryption as a Service, and AppRole Pull Authentication. HashiCorp continues to grow its Vault ecosystem with new integrations, and recent updates include improvements to core workflows and production-ready features.

Feb 03 2020HashiCorp Packer 1.5 introduces two major new features: support for basic HCL2 templates and the ability to share special information between builders and provisioners, such as host IP and port for the build instance, with the goal of simplifying template and operations efforts. The new feature is considered a beta release due to some parts still requiring polishing. Users can now use HCL2 templates in place of single JSON templates, but JSON support will not be deprecated anytime soon. The new feature also enables users to inject specialized data into provisioners, allowing for more customized solutions. However, variables and variable interpolation are currently not working with HCL2, and the team plans to support these features soon. Additionally, Packer 1.5 includes some backwards incompatibilities, such as changes to the `clean_ami_name` template engine and the `ansible-local galaxycommand` option, but users can still use current build files without major issues unless they are using deprecated plugins or options. The team is excited to bring these new features to users and invites feedback on bugs and potential improvements.

The Terraform Cloud Team has announced that new users can try all paid features for free for 30 days, starting today. Users who sign up for a new account will have access to the full free tier and the option to start a trial of the paid features, including the Team offering and the Governance offering. The trials are applied at the organization level and do not require entering credit card information. Users can start a paid subscription by entering their credit card information at any time during the trial. Paid features are billed monthly and can be cancelled at any time. To access the free trial, users need to log into their account, select an organization, click on settings, and then plan & billing. The trial period will send an email reminder two weeks before expiration and automatically downgrade to the free plan upon expiration. Any changes made during the trial will be reinstated when upgrading to a paid plan that includes the respective features.