January 2024 Summaries

HashiCorp has partnered with Microsoft to create Terraform modules that follow Microsoft's Azure Well-Architected Framework and best practices, enabling the deployment, security, and enablement of AI-based applications on Azure using HashiCorp Terraform and Vault. The partnership aims to accelerate AI adoption on Azure by providing a streamlined process for building, securing, and enabling OpenAI applications. To achieve this, HashiCorp has developed a three-step process that leverages Terraform's infrastructure as code (IaC) capabilities and Vault's secrets management features. This process enables the deployment of public key infrastructure (PKI) and robust secrets management to safeguard sensitive information and ensure cryptographic resilience in data transactions. Additionally, HashiCorp Terraform provides automation and orchestration capabilities to extend beyond efficiency to become critical components in fortifying against security vulnerabilities. The partnership also highlights the importance of platform teams adopting IaC to enhance efficiency, control cloud costs, and reduce infrastructure risk. By using Terraform's IaC principles and Vault's secrets management features, organizations can create a secure and efficient AI environment that orchestrates the seamless integration of artificial intelligence and operations.

The new ServiceNow Service Catalog for Terraform version 2.4 introduces custom workspace naming and tagging, allowing teams to be compliant with organizational naming conventions while preserving a link to the ServiceNow ticket number. This feature provides flexibility in adding descriptive names that are prepended to the RITM ticket number upon ordering a particular Catalog Item. The addition of tags also enables contextual awareness and helps admins organize, find, and filter workspaces more effectively, reducing repetitive manual tasks. With these updates, the ServiceNow Terraform Catalog becomes even more useful for organizations with many ServiceNow-provisioned workspaces, streamlining processes and promoting broader adoption.

HCP Vault Radar is a SaaS-based secret discovery product that helps organizations proactively remediate unmanaged or leaked secrets by detecting and categorizing exposed data according to risk levels. It supports role and attribute-based access controls, integrates with Vault for enhanced risk rating, and provides a user-friendly interface for prioritization. The limited beta release also includes features like scanning Terraform Cloud and Terraform Enterprise, as well as integrating with Vault to scan supported data sources for leaked secrets currently in use. HCP Vault Radar is designed to facilitate automated scanning and ongoing detection of unmanaged secrets in various code repositories and other data sources, enabling organizations to take a proactive approach to remediation before a data breach occurs.

The Terraform Cloud Operator for Kubernetes has been updated with new features that enhance workspace management and self-service capabilities. Users can now specify a project when creating a workspace, allowing them to independently manage workspaces and execute runs within their assigned project. This feature is part of the general availability of version 2.2 of the operator, which also includes improvements to project creation and team access management. Additionally, HashiCorp Terraform has released new features, including mocking capabilities for the test framework and a config-driven state removal workflow. These updates aim to improve the efficiency and consistency of infrastructure management, while providing more flexibility and control for users.

HashiCorp Terraform 1.7 introduces mocking capabilities for the Terraform test framework, allowing developers to model more advanced situations and test without actual infrastructure or credentials. This feature adds flexibility to module testing through mock providers and overrides. Additionally, Terraform 1.7 includes enhancements for config-driven state removal workflow, including a new removed block that addresses challenges associated with manual state manipulation. The release also improves the import functionality using `for_each` loops, making it easier to expand imports across multiple instances.

HashiCorp is offering a scholarship program to support members of its community from all backgrounds in attending HashiConf 2024, a cloud computing conference to be held in Boston, Massachusetts. The scholarship aims to foster an inclusive community and provide financial sponsorship to applicants who may lack the means to attend due to geographical or financial constraints. Applications will be evaluated based on three criteria and winners will be selected by a diverse group of HashiCorp employees. The deadline to apply is March 10, 2024, and interested individuals can reach out to [email protected] for more information.

CDK for Terraform 0.20 introduces improved iterators that enable developers to handle complex scenarios related to dynamic resource creation, supporting dynamic list iterations on the block and resource level. This new support allows developers to access resources created by iterators, chain iterators using `TerraformIterator.fromResources()` or `TerraformIterator.fromDataSources()`, and iterate over resource attributes containing values known only after apply. The update also introduces HCL output for CDKTF synth, enabling easier debugging and templating capabilities. Additionally, error messages are improved to provide more context and propose solutions, while Target CLI eases the burden of managing multiple clusters by using context profiles.

HashiCorp Nomad supports JWT authentication methods, which allow users to authenticate into Nomad using tokens that can be verified via public keys. This post explains how JWT authentication works and how to set it up in Nomad using a custom GitHub Action. The setup involves creating roles with access to specific policies, defining an auth method for GitHub, and binding rules to map key-value pairs found in the JWT to new names. With this setup, users can deploy files from a directory to Nomad using a short-lived token that is automatically managed by Nomad's identity-based rules and auto-expiring tokens. This enables efficient workflows for tools like GitHub Actions and simplifies management of Nomad tokens for external applications. The introduction of JWT authentication methods in Nomad provides the necessary building blocks to make setting up machine-to-machine auth simple, especially as organizations move towards zero trust security.

HashiCorp Cloud Platform (HCP) Consul Central can be integrated with Backstage, a popular open platform for building developer portals, to enhance infrastructure management capabilities. To do this, users need to install the HCP Consul frontend and backend plugins (`plugin-hcp-consul` and `plugin-hcp-consul-backend`) and configure Consul in their app-config.yaml file. The plugins provide user interfaces within Backstage for managing Consul configurations and display service instances in the Backstage component. After installation, users can leverage the benefits of HCP Consul integration with Backstage to explore new features, manage configurations, and enhance infrastructure orchestration capabilities.

Target CLI is a tool designed to simplify the process of managing multiple clusters and environments for HashiCorp tools such as Vault, Nomad, Consul, Boundary, and Terraform by using context profiles to easily switch between different clusters and configurations. It eliminates the need for setting and remembering multiple environment variables for each cluster, saving time and reducing errors. The tool supports managing Terraform configurations, allowing the same code to be used across multiple environments. Target CLI can be installed on Mac and Linux platforms, with plans to add Windows support in the near future.

PKI provides a flexible and scalable identity-first security solution that aligns with zero trust and secures a wide variety of enterprise use cases. PKI uses digital certificates and associated cryptographic keys to establish identities for resources on networks and authenticate them for secure access, creating a trusted network environment and protecting data in transit. The technology is used to securely enable modern infrastructure and applications, including HTTPS secure web browser connections, SSH keys, and code signing, which protects executable files from tampering. PKI also helps organizations reduce the risk of unauthorized access by leveraging private certificate authorities, increasing efficiency, and reducing time to market. Furthermore, PKI plays a critical role in HashiCorp Vault's zero trust security architecture, automating and unifying certificate management with a single control plane.

The new feature aggregates status checks from multiple workspaces linked to a single repository, providing an overview of proposed changes and highlighting the most impactful updates that require attention before code deployment. This enhances the verification process by offering a concise view of summarized changes, reducing the likelihood of missing unexpected modifications. The feature supports Terraform Cloud's official VCS integrations and can be enabled in the organization settings. It also improves the developer experience with on-demand policy evaluation and generative AI powered writing capabilities.