HashiCorp, developer of partially open-source infrastructure tools like Terraform, Vault and Nomad, is at the user conference HashiConf 2024 Invited to Boston. 1,400 visitors accepted the invitation. There were several announcements of new features during the keynote, almost all of which were related to the HashiCorp Cloud Platform (HCP). The company remained silent about the elephant in the room during the keynote. The only mention was made in the preliminary discussion for press representatives: the planned acquisition by IBM is being further prepared and the synergy effects are awaited. Those responsible in the ongoing takeover process cannot be persuaded to provide more detailed statements, perhaps mainly because the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) keeps a close eye on what information is published. Is and when.
Advertisement
The announcements made by co-founder Armon Dadgar in the keynote reveal a clear strategy against the backdrop of the acquisition announced in April: HashiCorp is strengthening its cloud platform and thus the product that is best . If the company soon gets access to IBM’s large customer database, it will become easier to offer such a business model without hiring a large number of experts. Customers who self-host vaults such as HashiCorp software and only purchase consulting services from HashiCorp are therefore currently receiving less attention. At the bottom of the food chain are those who only use open-source software like Terraform. In the opening discussion, HashiCorp CEO Dave McGannett emphasized that the focus on HCPs also matches the interests of customers. Anecdotally, he noted that even regulated companies such as banks are now interested in delegating secret management to HCP Vault.
News in infrastructure sector
HCP-related announcements affect two large business areas, “Infrastructure Lifecycle Management” (ILM) and “Security Lifecycle Management” (SLM). The biggest innovation in ILMThat includes infrastructure management Terraform, the public beta phase of the Terraform stack and integration of the stack into HCP. terraform stack Introduced in late 2023, initially only tested in a closed beta and addressed the problem that describing similar environments (e.g. classical for testing, staging and production) meant too much duplication. And so it was unnecessary and difficult to manage the Terraform code. Stacks solve this through components that are put together to create a deployment. Now anyone can try a stack, and what is new is that you can manage such stacks in HCP and thus in the graphical interface. Anyone who is an HCP customer and manages Terraform there can control up to 500 resources in the public testing phase.
HashiCorp divides its products into two business areas: Infrastructure Lifecycle Management (ILM) and Security Lifecycle Management (SLM).
(Image: HashiCorp)
HashiCorp is also shipping “Module Lifecycle Management” to Terraform in the testing phase. This platform allows teams to notify their developers that a Terraform module has reached the end of its life and request them to update it. This function can now also be tested. Apparently HashiCorp is aware that a relevant proportion of Terraform users have created their own automation scripts and so they are not among the paying customers. This can now be addressed with a migration assistant, which also includes a Terraform provider and which generates the Terraform code itself and thus supports the migration of automation to HCP or Terraform Enterprise.
The Developer Portal are two new features for HCP Waypoint that platform teams can use to provide ready-made templates for new applications to developers across the organization. HCP Waypoint is ready to move beyond the testing phase. The beta contains templates and add-ons for new waypoints, as well as waypoint actions. With these, the tool learns not only to provide the infrastructure once, but also to complete recurring tasks through the platform after the initial setup. As an example, Dadgar showed on stage how developers can use it to control maintenance mode.
News related to security sector
Even in the field of SLM HashiCorp has completed new features. The company saved the detailed presentation for the keynote until another day and initially announced the news only in writing. The integration of Vault Radar into HCP was announced at the beginning of the year and tested in a closed beta. Now HCP Vault Radar is ready for public testing: the software discovers secrets (e.g. passwords, tokens and private keys) in Git and Confluence and thus provides early warning of leaks. Furthermore, an agent can detect such secrets at the pre-commit stage on the way to GitHub and immediately abort the commit. In the public beta you can monitor up to 50 repositories.
Auto-rotation of secrets in HCP Vault has been released from the testing phase. Secret management can automatically regenerate access data for Amazon AWS, Google Cloud, MongoDB, and Twilio after a set period of time and send the new secret to applications that work with it.
HashiCorp has its own product for giving people (ie developers and admins) access to resources: With Boundary, you can give people access without giving them permanent access data. New in the beta phase are transparent SSH sessions through Boundary, where the user simply connects with their own SSH client.
HashiConf will run till October 16. There will be a lot of conference content Livestreamed for free,
Transparency note: The organizer covered the author’s travel expenses to HashiConf in Boston.
(yam)
Google will build seven nuclear reactors to power its artificial intelligence data centers
