Two Tools, Two Philosophies

Infrastructure as Code (IaC) means managing your servers, networks, and cloud resources through code files instead of clicking through UIs. Terraform and Ansible are the two most popular tools — but they're not competitors. They complement each other.

Terraform: Provision Infrastructure

Terraform is a declarative tool: you describe the desired state of your infrastructure, and Terraform figures out how to get there. It excels at creating and managing cloud resources.

resource "aws_instance" "web" {
  ami           = "ami-0c55b159cbfafe1f0"
  instance_type = "t3.micro"

  tags = {
    Name = "web-server"
  }
}

terraform apply creates the EC2 instance. Run it again with instance_type = "t3.small" and Terraform will resize it. Delete the block and Terraform will destroy the instance.

Best for: Creating VMs, VPCs, databases, load balancers, DNS records, S3 buckets — any cloud resource.

Ansible: Configure Servers

Ansible is a procedural tool that connects to servers via SSH and runs tasks in order. It's perfect for installing software, configuring services, and managing application deployments.

- name: Install Nginx
  apt:
    name: nginx
    state: present

- name: Start Nginx
  service:
    name: nginx
    state: started
    enabled: yes

Best for: Installing packages, managing config files, deploying applications, running commands across many servers.

Use Them Together

The winning combination: Terraform to create infrastructure, Ansible to configure it.

  1. Terraform creates 3 EC2 instances and outputs their IPs
  2. Ansible reads those IPs and installs your app stack on each

This separation of concerns keeps each tool doing what it does best. Want your infrastructure managed as code? Let's get started.