Terraform & Cloud Infrastructure: Build Systems That Run Themselves
Cloud infrastructure provisioned through the console eventually becomes unmanageable—no audit trail, no reproducibility, no safe way to change things. We build Terraform-managed infrastructure for your database workloads that's reviewable, reproducible, and ready for regional failover.
What We Mean by Cloud Infrastructure
Cloud infrastructure is the layer below your application: the VPCs, subnets, security groups, database instances, load balancers, IAM roles, and DNS records that make everything run. Most teams provision these manually through the console early on—then struggle to understand, change, or reproduce what they've built.
Infrastructure as Code (IaC) with Terraform turns your cloud setup into version-controlled code. Every resource is defined, every change goes through code review, and you can reproduce your entire environment—including all database infrastructure—in a new account or region in under an hour.
For database-heavy workloads, the infrastructure decisions that matter most are network topology (how application servers reach the database), connection pooling (how you handle connection limits at scale), and disaster recovery (what happens when a region fails). Getting these right before you need them is the work we do.
- Your infrastructure exists only as console configuration nobody can explain
- You've never tested what happens if us-east-1 goes down
- Database connections timeout under load because pooling isn't configured
- Engineers are afraid to change infrastructure without breaking something
- Your DR plan is a document nobody has tested
- Cloud costs grow 15–20% month-over-month without proportional traffic growth
Decisions We Help You Get Right
The tool isn't the hard part — knowing which one fits your situation, and how far to take it, is. Here's how we think through the calls that matter most.
Managed database vs. Kubernetes
For most teams, RDS, Aurora, Cloud SQL, or AlloyDB handle patching, backups, replication, and failover with less overhead than running stateful workloads on Kubernetes yourself. K8s earns its place when you need database versions or configurations managed services don't offer, or when multi-cloud portability is a hard requirement — not as a default architecture choice.
Terraform vs. CloudFormation
CloudFormation if you're all-in on AWS and want native IAM integration. Terraform if you're multi-cloud or likely to be — its provider ecosystem, state management, and module system make it the better choice for most teams, even AWS-only shops, because the patterns transfer the moment you add GCP or Azure.
What multi-region failover actually requires
Four components, not one tool: data replication (Aurora Global Database, logical replication, or Cloud Spanner), DNS routing with health checks (Route 53 or Cloud DNS), application config that switches connection strings on failover, and runbook drills run on a schedule. We size all four to your real RTO and RPO — usually less demanding than teams assume — instead of over-engineering for five-nines you don't need.
Audit-first vs. greenfield
Most engagements start with importing existing, manually-provisioned infrastructure into Terraform state and refactoring CloudFormation stacks where it helps — not tearing down and rebuilding. We migrate to IaC incrementally, in place, without disrupting production.
What Proper Cloud Infrastructure Delivers
Infrastructure as Code — Everything Reproducible
Every resource defined in Terraform. No manual console changes that can't be tracked, reviewed, or rolled back. Reproduce your entire infrastructure in a new account in under an hour.
Multi-Region Failover Built In
Regional outages happen. We design failover architecture before you need it—not after an incident. Regular runbook testing so your team knows exactly what to do when AWS us-east-1 goes down.
Cost Optimized from Day One
Cloud bills grow silently. We right-size instances, implement Reserved Instance strategies, and configure auto-scaling so you don't pay for peak capacity 24/7 to handle 2 hours of daily traffic.
What We Build
Terraform IaC Implementation
- Full infrastructure audit and import to Terraform state
- Module design for reusable, environment-agnostic configs
- CI/CD pipeline for infrastructure (plan/apply on PR merge)
- State management with remote backend and locking
Database Infrastructure Design
- RDS, Aurora, Cloud SQL, AlloyDB architecture
- Connection pooling (PgBouncer, RDS Proxy)
- Read replica routing and failover configuration
- Backup strategy, PITR, and restore testing
Multi-Region & Disaster Recovery
- Aurora Global Database or logical replication setup
- DNS health checks and automatic failover routing
- RTO/RPO assessment and architecture matching
- Quarterly failover drills and runbook maintenance
Security & Compliance
- VPC design, private subnets, security group architecture
- IAM role design with least-privilege access
- Encryption at rest and in transit configuration
- Audit logging (CloudTrail, VPC Flow Logs, DB audit logs)
Frequently Asked Questions
Start With a Free Infrastructure Audit
Share your current cloud setup—even if it's mostly console-provisioned and undocumented. We'll review your architecture, identify the highest-risk gaps, and tell you what a Terraform migration would take.
The Best Time to Design DR Was Before You Needed It
Regional outages, accidental deletions, misconfigurations—the teams that recover in minutes are the ones that designed their infrastructure before the incident, not during it.