From 9b7a6dc9ba1a3636fdb4695e0e1f787938971872 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Armon Dadgar Date: Sat, 19 Sep 2015 20:49:31 -0700 Subject: [PATCH] website: Terraform --- website/source/intro/vs/terraform.html.md | 34 +++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 34 insertions(+) create mode 100644 website/source/intro/vs/terraform.html.md diff --git a/website/source/intro/vs/terraform.html.md b/website/source/intro/vs/terraform.html.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..429ecc417 --- /dev/null +++ b/website/source/intro/vs/terraform.html.md @@ -0,0 +1,34 @@ +--- +layout: "intro" +page_title: "Nomad vs. Terraform" +sidebar_current: "vs-other-terraform" +description: |- + Comparison between Nomad and Terraform +--- + +# Nomad vs. Terraform + +[Terraform](https://terraform.io) is a tool for building, changing, and versioning +infrastructure safely and efficiently. Configuration files describe to Terraform +the components needed to run a single application or your entire datacenter. Terraform +generates an execution plan describing what it will do to reach the desired state, +and then executes it to build the described infrastructure. As the configuration changes, +Terraform is able to determine what changed and create incremental execution plans which can be applied. + +Nomad differs from Terraform in a number of key ways. Terraform is designed to support +any type of resource including low-level components such as compute instances, storage, +and networking, as well as high-level components such as DNS entries, SaaS features, etc. +Terraform knows how to create, provision, and manage the lifecycle of these resources. +Nomad runs on existing infrastructure and manages the lifecycle of applications running +on that infrastructure. + +Another major distinction is that Terraform is an offline tool that runs to completion, +while Nomad is an online system with long lived servers. Nomad allows new jobs to +be submitted, existing jobs updated or deleted, and can handle node failures. This +requires operating continuously instead in a single shot like Terraform. + +For small infrastructures with only a handful of servers or applications, the complexity +of Nomad may not outweigh simply using Terraform to statically assign applications to +machines. At larger scales, Terraform should be used to provision capacity for Nomad, +and Nomad used to manage scheduling applications to machines dynamically. +