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Azure Arc vs Terraform
March 09, 2025 | Author: Michael Stromann
5★
Cloud platform for customers who want to simplify complex and distributed environments across on-premises, edge and multicloud, Azure Arc enables deployment of Azure services anywhere and extends Azure management to any infrastructure.
12★
Write infrastructure as code using declarative configuration files. HashiCorp Configuration Language (HCL) allows for concise descriptions of resources using blocks, arguments, and expressions.
Azure Arc and Terraform are both magnificent attempts by humans to wrestle some semblance of control over their ever-expanding, ever-more-chaotic digital empires. They promise to tame the wild and unpredictable realms of hybrid and multi-cloud infrastructure, allowing their users to feel, if only briefly, that they are in charge. Both let you define your infrastructure with code, automate deployments and enforce governance—though, much like galactic peace treaties, the effectiveness of these features depends largely on who’s using them and how much coffee they’ve had.
Azure Arc, as the name suggests, is a sweeping, authoritative force that extends Microsoft’s reach far beyond the comfortable blue-tinted walls of its own cloud. It was introduced in 2019 with the noble mission of bringing Azure’s security, management and services to on-premises servers, Kubernetes clusters and other people’s clouds—because, of course, Microsoft believes everything should ideally be Azure. It's particularly beloved by large enterprises that want all their resources, wherever they are, to behave as if they live in a tidy, well-governed Microsoft-shaped box.
Terraform, on the other hand, is a tool for those who prefer their infrastructure to be a glorious, sprawling mess—but a mess they control. Created by HashiCorp in 2014, Terraform allows DevOps engineers to declare what they want their cloud (or multiple clouds) to look like, then sits back and smugly makes it happen, often with surprising levels of competence. Unlike Azure Arc, Terraform has no particular allegiance—it will provision AWS, Azure, Google Cloud or anything else you point it at, with all the neutrality of an intergalactic hitchhiker trying to get to the next available planet, preferably one with good Wi-Fi.
See also: Top 10 Private Cloud platforms
Azure Arc, as the name suggests, is a sweeping, authoritative force that extends Microsoft’s reach far beyond the comfortable blue-tinted walls of its own cloud. It was introduced in 2019 with the noble mission of bringing Azure’s security, management and services to on-premises servers, Kubernetes clusters and other people’s clouds—because, of course, Microsoft believes everything should ideally be Azure. It's particularly beloved by large enterprises that want all their resources, wherever they are, to behave as if they live in a tidy, well-governed Microsoft-shaped box.
Terraform, on the other hand, is a tool for those who prefer their infrastructure to be a glorious, sprawling mess—but a mess they control. Created by HashiCorp in 2014, Terraform allows DevOps engineers to declare what they want their cloud (or multiple clouds) to look like, then sits back and smugly makes it happen, often with surprising levels of competence. Unlike Azure Arc, Terraform has no particular allegiance—it will provision AWS, Azure, Google Cloud or anything else you point it at, with all the neutrality of an intergalactic hitchhiker trying to get to the next available planet, preferably one with good Wi-Fi.
See also: Top 10 Private Cloud platforms
