Don't mix Terraform and manual deployments – three use-cases in OCI

The idea of this blog post and video have been born very recently. I was delivering a zoom-based webinar for some big team inside Oracle and after a 1-hour presentation, a Q&A session has been arranged. One of the questions was related to mixing manual and Terraform-based deployment. The question has been crafted in a very tricky way. It sounded like this: “Please tell me if this approach is valid, can we go this way and mix Terraform code and actions in Cloud UI”? Hmm… This is a really great question… And my answer was as simple as it is possible. I have recommended to focus 100 percent on writing Terraform code and stay away from the OCI Console. Why? Mostly because Terraform even it is capable and flexible it cannot predict and discover all of our mad ideas and strange concepts and by mixing Terraform and manual deployment we are able to create an extreme mess… In this short video below I am showcasing 3 examples how Terraform will react, what it is capable to fix automatically, and what will require your additional work to help Terraform to manage the mess in the state file in confront to desired-state *.tf configuration files on one hand and the real state of infrastructure exposed via Cloud Rest-API. Hope you will like this video and it will be a great plus funny hands-on experience 🙂

Bon Appetit,

Martin, The Cook.