Title: Onwards and Upwards with Terraform 0.12

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April 25, 2016 was just another day in the life of a platform engineer. Well, until I started thinking about upgrading our infrastructure management tools. Specifically, I found myself wrestling with the impending release of Terraform 0.12.

For those who don’t know, Terraform is an open-source tool for building, changing, and versioning infrastructure safely and efficiently. Back then, we were using Terraform 0.8.6 for all our cloud resources—AWS, Google Cloud, even some Kubernetes clusters. It was solid but had its quirks.

The announcement of Terraform 0.12 brought a lot of buzz around new features like support for the AWS S3 backend and improved remote state file handling. However, it also meant dealing with breaking changes that would require us to make significant updates in our Terraform configurations. We’d have to rewrite parts of our codebase just to keep up with the latest version.

As I sat down to plan the migration, I couldn’t help but feel a mix of excitement and trepidation. Excitement because these new features promised to streamline some of our workflows, making our infrastructure more reliable and easier to manage. Trepidation because it meant downtime for services we couldn’t afford to take offline.

I started by reviewing the Terraform 0.12 release notes, carefully noting down all the breaking changes. Then I reached out to my team, laying out the plan: we’d start small with a few isolated modules, then gradually roll out the updates across our entire infrastructure.

The first module to go under the knife was one of our more complex AWS S3 configurations. It took me hours just to get everything working again after enabling the new S3 backend options. Debugging the issues was like solving a puzzle—every line of code had to be scrutinized to ensure it played nicely with the latest version.

But as I tackled each module, I found myself gaining momentum. The improved error messages in Terraform 0.12 made debugging much faster and easier. And for the first time, I could see how our infrastructure changes would play out before they hit production.

One of the highlights was integrating better remote state management with our GitOps workflows. This allowed us to version control our infrastructure changes directly within our code repositories. It felt like we were finally getting closer to true “infrastructure as code” adoption.

However, the journey wasn’t without its bumps. There were days when I found myself arguing with the tool itself about why a certain configuration wouldn’t work or how it could be improved. Those moments reminded me that while Terraform was powerful, it still had room for improvement.

By the end of April, we had successfully migrated our entire infrastructure to Terraform 0.12. The process wasn’t without its hiccups and late nights, but seeing our services running smoothly with a more robust infrastructure management tool gave us all a sense of accomplishment.

Reflecting on this transition, I realized that while technology evolves rapidly, the lessons we learn—about resilience, adaptability, and continuous improvement—are constants. As much as Terraform 0.12 brought new challenges, it also opened up new possibilities for our platform engineering team to grow and deliver even better services.

That’s my day in review for April 25, 2016. I hope this journey through upgrading our infrastructure management tool gave you a glimpse into the practicalities of working with such tools on the ground. Stay tuned as we continue to navigate these technological waters!