A great question. vRA is a great CMP tool, but how you consume it is entirely up to your users. They can access the vRA UI, API or they can use the vRA Terraform Provider. The last example of extending vRA with the Terraform Service is a perfect example of how to extend the capabilities of vRA with the Terraform providers available.
Hi Manu, Thanks for reaching out. Once you have a TF deployed machine, you can run day 2 actions and create your own resource actions, just like any other resource.
Hi Gary, thanks for this nice video. I'm just a bit confused on a design choice. I would like to implement F5 web publishing, AD service account and AD group creation in the blueprint canvas but I need to chose between Terraform configuration or custom resource from vRO. What should be the best choice ? I suppose using terraform when provider is available (OK for F5 and Active Directory) and keeping custom resource for specific case like our password entries and other too specific configuration elements. What's your opinion ? Thanks a lot !
Great question! As you mentioned, both vRO and Terraform configurations would do the job, and both would work very well. Personally, I develop based on the skills available at the client site. For example, if the customer has been using vRO for many years already, they are already proficient in Javascript, so this would be the best way forward. However, in another customer where they are using Terraform quite heavily, it would make more sense to use Terraform configurations, because this is the skillset being developed. So basically, either are very valid options and I guess it just depends on the environment you're deploying in.
Hi Gary, great video!. Does the terraform provider requires k8s cluster from VRA 8.2+ or is there another way to integrate without it?. And the capabilities of the provider are the same if you have terraform cloud or lets say terraform open source?
Hey Jorge, a great question! To use "Terraform Configurations", yes a k8s cluster is required as this is the only way to run the terraform executable. Unfortunately, there are no OOTB integrations with TF Cloud or TF Enterprise, however anything is possible with Code Stream.
