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Introducing Infrastructure as Code and Terraform

Lesson Content

Getting Started with Terraform on SAP BTP

SAP_MOOC_terra1_unit2_lesson1_INTRO_Video.mp4

Hello and welcome to the learning course on "Getting started with Terraform on SAP Business Technology Platform". My name is Christian Lechner, and I am one of the folks who will guide you through the course, and with me is Rui. Hi, everybody. I'm Rui Nogueira, and together with Christian, we will guide you through all the basics around using Terraform together with SAP BTP. Cool. Then let's get started with the first unit, and that's getting started with Infrastructure as code. We will talk a bit about introducing infrastructure as code as a concept and Terraform specifically. And what are the learning objectives within this lesson? First, we want to explore the motivation behind infrastructure as code, as well as understand what infrastructure as code means. Based on that, we will elaborate on what Terraform and OpenTofu are, as well as discover how Terraform can be used on the SAP Business Technology Platform. But let's start with the motivation. What's the idea behind infrastructure as code, Rui? Well, I think it's really important to address the question first, why infrastructure as code is important. Let's have a look at Google's state of Dev OPS report from 2023, where they look into operational performance of companies using public cloud offerings. One of their key findings was that only teams that make use of a flexible infrastructure can increase their software and operational performance. Such teams use infrastructure as code in their day-to-day work to set up their infrastructure in a standardized, flexible, and repeatable way. With that approach, they can deliver their services much quicker and with a higher degree of quality. So now that we have looked into why infrastructure as code is important, let's hear, Christian, what infrastructure as code means in detail? Of course. So infrastructure as code is a concept, and it describes the ability, as you already mentioned, to provision but also to manage your infrastructure. Now, this is not done by using some imperative bash scripts, but by using code, as you would do it in application development. You use code to provision and manage infrastructure and get rid of any manual processes, manual settings, all of the click ops stuff. The goal is to describe the target infrastructure and declaratively define what goal you want to achieve with respect to the infrastructure that you want to set up. That's what you put into an infrastructure as code tool. What you do not put into an infrastructure as code tool is how to achieve this. You just say that's my target state. What's important and that's really something that's kind of core of infrastructure as code is that with this concept you can provision, change and manage your infrastructure consistently in a trackable and reproducible way. This has a lot of other effects in the direction of compliance and regulatory aspects. And this is really important. It's not just kicking off a one-time infrastructure setup, but it's about managing infrastructure from the start until the end. That's the main concept. But what about the implementation of this concept? We already talked about terraform. Can you tell us more about terraform? Sure, Christian. So Terraform is actually a standard for infrastructure as code. The company behind Terraform is HashiCorp, and what we put here on the slide is actually how HashiCorp defines Terraform. In essence, Terraform lets you define both cloud and on-prem resources in a human -readable configuration file that you can version, reuse and share. And then you can use consistent workflows to provision and manage all your infrastructure throughout its lifecycle. And what you see here on the right side of the slide is a screenshot from a Terraform script which is using the Terraform provider for SAP BTP. By going through the code, it's pretty easy to understand what the script will be doing. The code provides the name, the subdomain, and the region for your sub-account, and then you see the next block. There, you want to have a role collection assigned to users, and you write it in code, and Terraform will take care together with the respective provider, how this is done. And that's actually exactly what Christian said before, that you can define your target state, and Terraform will ensure that this target state will be reached. But now I think it's important to understand what are the specific benefits of Terraform, Christian. So Terraform, as we just explained, is one tool that implements this infrastructure as code paradigm. Now the benefits of Terraform are that it is widely spread. It's basically the de facto standard or the gold standard for infrastructure as code in the IT industry. Terraform supports more than 3,000 providers for variable hyper scalers and other technologies. This means that you can address a lot of functionality within Terraform and that is from my perspective unmatched with any other infrastructure as code tool. Besides the core functionality or the core value assets that Terraform and HashiCorp provide, there is a rich ecosystem surrounding Terraform since it's a de facto industry standard. A lot of tools have been created around Terraform, which might address some of the white spots that Terraform has, but this means that you really have a very powerful and rich toolset at your hands to develop and manage infrastructure as code with Terraform, and benefit from the points that we mentioned at the beginning. But isn't there something else? I heard that there's not only Terraform that's using this HashiCorp configuration language, but there is something else. What else could be used instead of Terraform? Yeah, Christian. So let's talk about OpenTofu then. So OpenTofu is managed by the Linux Foundation and is based on the last version of Terraform that was provided via an OpenTofu source license. OpenTofu itself is provided via the Mozilla Public License 2.0, or in short, MPL 2.0. After HashiCorp changed the license of Terraform in August 2024, a couple of companies forked the last version of the Terraform code that was provided through this open source license. Those companies named their project OpenTofu, which is now provided within the Linux Foundation. The goal of OpenTofu is to provide it under the MPL 2.0 license and deliver it as a drop -in replacement for Terraform. And as a drop-in replacement, you can use it in the same way as Terraform itself. But in this course, we will look into using Terraform within the SAP Business Technology Platform. And Christian, how can you actually use now Terraform with the SAP Business Technology Platform? That's a great question. The main point, how to make use of Terraform for a specific platform or a specific technology are providers like the Terraform provider for SAP BTP, which is basically a plugin connecting the platform to the Terraform framework. The Terraform provider for SAP BTP was developed throughout the course of 2023 to 2024 with the input of several customers. We started the very first proof of concept in February 2023. After one year, we were able to release the first general available version 1.0.0 in February 2024, which you can use in productive scenarios to set up your infrastructure on SAP BTP. Now, with respect to, let's say, updates, bringing in new functionality fixing bugs, we stick to a monthly cadence. So we usually have a monthly update cycle to bring out a new version of the provider, which then contains new features, bug fixes, or some updates of dependencies. And this provider will be the core of this course. So we will show everything around Terraform using this provider. And with that, we are already at the end of the first lesson. So, Rui, do you want to summarize what we learned until now? Yeah, sure. So, we learned how you can improve operational and software performance in the public cloud with a flexible infrastructure. We heard as well that this is quite essential and that infrastructure as code is a means to provision and manage this infrastructure. We also learned that Terraform is the de facto or gold standard for infrastructure as code with thousands of Terraform providers out there for all kinds of technologies in the IT industry. And last but not least, that we have now the Terraform provider for SAP Business Technology Platform to help you provision and manage your landscape with SAP BTP. And with that, we are now done. with this lesson and looking forward to seeing you in the next lesson. Bye-bye.