How to select workspaces in Terraform cloud?

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Terraform Cloud offers a few options to select a workspace, ranging from prefix, tags to standard name. Workspace selection pattern plays a critical role in a good project configuration. As it enforces a standard across the wide projects.

In this blog post, I’ll be covering the three options to configure your workspace in Terraform with pros/cons of each.

1. Prefix

Workspace prefixes are great to use when you have multiple environments and the workspaces in the Terraform cloud follow a fixed pattern

In the example, we have the prefix “main-app-” which means

terraform {
  backend "remote" {
    hostname = "app.terraform.io"
    workspaces {
      prefix = "main-app-"
    }
  }
}

Terraform workspaces prefix

To select the correct workspace we can utilise the Terraform environment variable TF_WORKSPACE

export TF_WORKSPACE=dev

Using prefix is highly recommended compared to tags as it enforces a naming convention

2. Tags

The other approach is to utilise tags. This might sound great and easy to use, however I highly discourage it! Tags can become complicated and difficult to manage.

terraform {
  cloud {
    organization = "infinitypp"
    workspaces {
      tags = ["networking", "dev]
    }
  }
}

3. Workspace name

Workspace names are the default approach in selecting a workspace. This is a great approach and it’s great for small projects where multiple environments do not exist.

terraform {
  cloud {
    organization = "infinitypp"

    workspaces {
      name = "main-app-dev"
    }
  }
}

Pros and Cons of each method

Pattern Advantages Disadvantages
Prefix Enforce a naming convention Slightly difficult to understand
Tags Great when there is a strict tag collection library Can become extremely difficult in large size projects
Workspace name Clear and easy to understand Slightly inconvenient as you have to store large workspace names in your config file

 

Summary

In my past experience, using prefix is the way to go. It is easy on day to day operation as workspaces is a resource which you might create quiet often in the beginning of a project, and having a naming standard enforce across your projects is a great practice.

Keep in mind, to create your Terraform workspace via IaC. 

How to create Terraform Workspaces through code?

resource "tfe_organization" "organization" {
  name  = "my-org-name"
  email = "[email protected]"
}

variable "environments" {
  type    = list(string)
  default = ["dev", "prod"]
}

resource "tfe_workspace" "main_app" {
  for_each     = toset(var.environments)
  name         = "main-app-${each.value}"
  organization = tfe_organization.organization.name
}

The above code enforces a naming standard and creates two workspaces:

  1. main-app-dev
  2. main-app-prod

We are using the for_each function to loop through the environment list. This makes it easier to add a new environment.

 

 

 

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