Exploring Cloud Services Catalog Terraform Connector

  • Release version: Yokohama
  • Updated January 30, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Exploring Cloud Services Catalog Terraform Connector

    The Cloud Services Catalog Terraform Connector integrates with the Cloud Provisioning and Governance application to streamline provisioning and management of cloud resources using Terraform templates. It enables ServiceNow customers to create and update catalog items directly from Terraform templates, supporting multi-cloud environments and various Terraform configurations. This connector enhances automation and governance in cloud resource management.

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    Key Features

    • Terraform Template Discovery: Automatically discover Terraform templates and workspaces stored in public and self-hosted GitHub, GitLab, and Microsoft Azure DevOps repositories.
    • Catalog Item Creation: Generate catalog items from discovered Terraform templates to provision resources across multiple clouds.
    • Change Detection and Management: Detect changes in Terraform templates and create Infrastructure as Code (IaC) change tasks to update or deactivate affected catalog items, ensuring catalog items stay current with template changes.
    • Multi-Repository Support: Utilize hierarchical structures of multiple repositories for effective IaC discovery and management.
    • Metadata Specification: Define metadata to populate catalog item form fields, simplifying the provisioning process.
    • Terraform as Configuration Provider: Support for Terraform Open Source, Terraform Enterprise, Terraform Cloud, and OpenTofu to provision resources in AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, VMware vSphere, and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (via an add-on).
    • Cost Reduction: Reduce Terraform Cloud license costs by reusing discovered Terraform workspaces instead of creating new ones, optimizing resource and license management.

    Important Notes

    • IBM Cloud Platform provisioning support has been deprecated starting with version 1.5.2 of the Terraform Connector.
    • Admin rights are required to configure the alias name for Terraform Open Source at the VM host level to use OpenTofu.
    • Provisioning resources to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure requires the Cloud Provisioning and Governance: Oracle Cloud (OCI) Add-On for Terraform Connector app.

    Practical Benefits for ServiceNow Customers

    • Automate and simplify cloud resource provisioning directly from Terraform templates within ServiceNow.
    • Maintain catalog items in sync with Terraform template changes through IaC change tasks, ensuring accurate and updated provisioning options.
    • Manage multi-cloud environments efficiently with support for multiple cloud providers and Terraform configurations.
    • Optimize cost by reusing Terraform workspaces, reducing unnecessary license expenses.

    Whether you're starting or expanding your implementation of Cloud Services Catalog Terraform Connector, learn more about the available features that help in provisioning and managing cloud resources across various public and private clouds.

    The Cloud Services Catalog Terraform Connector integrates with the Cloud Provisioning and Governance application and helps you to create or update catalog items from the Terraform templates. Then, you can use the catalog items to provision the cloud resources.

    Key features of Cloud Services Catalog Terraform Connector

    • Discover the Terraform templates and workspaces from the Terraform environment.
    • Create catalog items from the Terraform templates.
    • Detect changes in the Terraform template and use the IaC change task workflow to update the catalog item.
    • Utilize the multi-repo support.
    • Specify metadata to populate the catalog item form fields and values.
    • Reduce the Terraform Cloud license cost by using the discovered Terraform workspaces to provision the cloud infrastructure.
    Use Terraform as a configuration provider

    Use the Terraform Open Source, Terraform Enterprise, and Terraform Cloud config provider to provision resources in the following clouds.

    Starting this release, you can use OpenTofu with Cloud Provisioning and Governance. You must have admin rights to configure the alias name for Terraform Open Source at the vm host level.
    • Amazon Web Services (AWS)
    • Microsoft Azure
    • Google Cloud Provider
    • VMware vSphere
    • IBM Cloud Platform (Deprecated)

    In addition, you can use the Cloud Services Catalog Terraform Connector to provision resources to the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) through the Cloud Provisioning and Governance: Oracle Cloud (OCI) Add-On for Terraform Connector app. For more information, see Cloud Provisioning and Governance: Oracle Cloud (OCI) Add-On for Terraform Connector.

    Starting with Cloud Provisioning and Governance: Terraform Connector version 1.5.2, the app doesn't support provisioning resources to the IBM Cloud Platform.

    Discover the Infrastructure as Code (IaC) templates
    Use Cloud Services Catalog Terraform Connector to discover the IaC (Terraform) templates from the Terraform environment. Terraform Enterprise or Terraform Cloud organizations use various Version Control Systems to store the Terraform templates. Cloud Services Catalog Terraform Connector can discover the templates stored in the following VCS:
    • Public and self-hosted GitHub
    • Public and self-hosted GitLab
    • Public and self-hosted Microsoft Azure DevOps
    For more information, see Run the IaC Discovery.
    Utilize the hierarchical structure of multiple repositories with the support of Terraform Connector IaC discovery capabilities.
    Create catalog items from the Terraform templates
    Use the Cloud Services Catalog Terraform Connector app to create catalog items from the discovered Terraform templates and use them to provision resources in various clouds. For more information, see Create a catalog item from the Terraform template.
    Detect changes in the Terraform templates
    Use IaC Discovery to detect changes in the Terraform templates that are used in existing catalog items. When Cloud Services Catalog Terraform Connector detects a change in the Terraform template, it creates an IaC change task. You can use the IaC change task to update the affected catalog item or deactivate it, and then create another catalog item from the updated Terraform template. For more information on the catalog item change task, see Manage the Terraform template-based catalog items.
    Reduce Terraform Cloud license cost
    Use the discovered Terraform workspaces to provision the catalog items from the Terraform templates. Reusing workspace helps you to manage the Terraform Cloud license cost by avoiding the creation of workspaces.