The blog post by Dan Sheldon and Mike Bookham outlines the process of managing CockroachDB Dedicated using Terraform, a popular infrastructure-as-code tool, to prevent configuration drift and ensure optimal performance for applications at scale. The authors explain how to integrate CockroachDB with other software stack elements and deploy the complete infrastructure using pipeline tools. New features of the CockroachDB Terraform provider include retrieving database connection strings and certificates, using customer-managed encryption keys (CMEK), configuring maintenance windows, and integrating with Datadog for metrics visualization. The blog provides a detailed step-by-step guide for deploying a CockroachDB cluster on Cockroach Cloud, emphasizing the importance of managing infrastructure changes through Terraform rather than directly in the UI. The article highlights the continuous improvement of the CockroachDB Terraform provider, which is increasingly aligning with Cockroach Cloud's UI features, offering users enhanced capabilities for integrating and managing their database infrastructure.