A Kubernetes CRD and Controller to handle Terraform operations by generating k8s jobs catered to perform Terraform workflows

What is terraform-operator?

This project is:

• A way to run Terraform in Kubernetes by defining Terraform deployments as Kubernetes manifests
• A controller that configures and starts Kubernetes Jobs when it sees changes to the Kubernetes manifest
• A Terraform runner which runs Terraform plan/apply, and can also perform pre and post scripts

This project is not:

• An HCL to YAML converter or vice versa
• A Terraform module definition

Docs

• Installing Terraform-operator
• Hello Terraform Operator
• Terraform-state
• Terraform-provider credentials (ie Cloud Credentials)
• Other credentials (eg Git creds, proxies, etc.)

Architecture

Below is a diagram of the basic idea of the project

The controller is responsible for fetching tfvars or other files, and then creates a Kubernetes Job to perform the actual terraform execution. By default, the Terraform-operator will save state in a Consul on the same cluster. Even though Consul is the default, other state backends can be configured.

Install the Controller and CRDs

Install using Helm

$ helm repo add isaaguilar https://isaaguilar.github.io/helm-charts
$ helm install isaaguilar/terraform-operator --namespace tf-system

See terraform-operator's helm chart for options

Install using kubectl

First install the CRDs

$ kubectl apply -f deploy/crds/tf.isaaguilar.com_terraforms_crd.yaml

Then install the controller

$ kubectl apply -f deploy --namespace tf-system

Once the operator is installed, terraform resources are ready to be deployed.

Check out the examples directory to see the different options tf-operator handles. See complete-examples for realistic examples.

Hello Terraform Operator

Create your first Terraform resource using Terraform-operator

Apply your first Terraform resource by running this hello_world example:

$ printf 'apiVersion: tf.isaaguilar.com/v1alpha1
kind: Terraform
metadata:
  name: tf-operator-test
spec:
  stack:
    terraformVersion: 0.12.23
    source:
      address: https://github.com/cloudposse/terraform-aws-test-module.git
  config:
    customBackend: |-
      terraform {
        backend "local" {
          path = "relative/path/to/terraform.tfstate"
        }
      }
    applyOnCreate: true
    applyOnUpdate: true
    ignoreDelete: true
'|kubectl apply -f-

Check the kubectl pod logs:

$ kubectl logs -f job/tf-operator-test

Delete the resource:

$ kubectl delete terraform tf-operator-test

More examples coming soon!

Development

Requires the following installed on your system:

• go v1.13.3
• operator-sdk v0.15.1