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CloudForms vs Terraform
March 19, 2025 | Author: Michael Stromann
10★
Red Hat CloudForms is an infrastructure management platform that allows IT departments to control users' self-service abilities to provision, manage, and ensure compliance across virtual machines and private clouds.
12★
Write infrastructure as code using declarative configuration files. HashiCorp Configuration Language (HCL) allows for concise descriptions of resources using blocks, arguments, and expressions.
See also:
Top 10 Cloud Management platforms
Top 10 Cloud Management platforms
CloudForms and Terraform, at first glance, seem like two different names for the same inscrutable magic that makes computers appear and disappear as if by sorcery. Both let you boss around cloud environments without ever touching a screwdriver, both speak in the mysterious tongue of infrastructure as code and both are beloved by IT professionals who prefer their machines obedient and their mornings free of catastrophic surprises. They also share an uncanny ability to make things happen in multiple clouds at once, which is either incredibly useful or mildly terrifying, depending on how much you trust the stability of reality.
CloudForms, which hails from Red Hat (a company that sounds like it should either run a circus or command a pirate ship), has been around since 2012 and specializes in keeping a firm grip on sprawling, chaotic IT environments. It’s designed for enterprises that wake up in cold sweats about compliance audits and need something that will not only provision infrastructure but also tell them exactly how much of it exists, what it’s doing and whether it’s thinking about misbehaving. If Terraform is a DevOps engineer’s best friend, CloudForms is an overprotective IT administrator, constantly keeping an eye on things and occasionally wagging a metaphorical finger at infra that steps out of line.
Terraform, by contrast, comes from HashiCorp and first graced the world in 2014, bringing with it the bold notion that infrastructure should be described in code and then obediently assemble itself without asking too many questions. It thrives in the hands of developers and DevOps teams who see no reason why spinning up a server should involve anything more than typing a few lines in HCL, hitting enter and watching magic unfold. Where CloudForms is about control and oversight, Terraform is about building and destroying infrastructure at will, an approach that’s fantastic for managing cloud environments but slightly alarming if you have a habit of misplacing important files.
See also: Top 10 Cloud Management platforms
CloudForms, which hails from Red Hat (a company that sounds like it should either run a circus or command a pirate ship), has been around since 2012 and specializes in keeping a firm grip on sprawling, chaotic IT environments. It’s designed for enterprises that wake up in cold sweats about compliance audits and need something that will not only provision infrastructure but also tell them exactly how much of it exists, what it’s doing and whether it’s thinking about misbehaving. If Terraform is a DevOps engineer’s best friend, CloudForms is an overprotective IT administrator, constantly keeping an eye on things and occasionally wagging a metaphorical finger at infra that steps out of line.
Terraform, by contrast, comes from HashiCorp and first graced the world in 2014, bringing with it the bold notion that infrastructure should be described in code and then obediently assemble itself without asking too many questions. It thrives in the hands of developers and DevOps teams who see no reason why spinning up a server should involve anything more than typing a few lines in HCL, hitting enter and watching magic unfold. Where CloudForms is about control and oversight, Terraform is about building and destroying infrastructure at will, an approach that’s fantastic for managing cloud environments but slightly alarming if you have a habit of misplacing important files.
See also: Top 10 Cloud Management platforms
