Terraform¶

HashiCorp Terraform is an infrastructure as code (IaC) tool similar to Ansible that lets you define network resources in human-readable configuration files. In this home lab, it is used to provision virtual machines from the Proxmox Virtual Environment.

Integration with Ansible¶

When I initially started automating my home lab, I used Ansible to provision virtual machines. In time, I migrated to using Terraform for provisioning virtual machines in order to get exposure to using its technology. I want to have a seamless integration with Ansible since that is the primary interface to provision virtual machines. To achieve this, I've created a separate task file that mirrors what the existing provision.yml task file in the vm role does. This task file dynamically creates the necessary Terraform config files and performs the Terraform command to provision the target host.

HashiCorp Vault¶

Another opportunity to learn a new technology is using HashiCorp Vault to keep secrets used in deploying virtual machines. The current Ansible tasks use Ansible's vault. In time, I will probably use HashiCorp Vault for all secrets used in Ansible playbooks.