Introduction
Terraform Enterprise offers several configuration options to support a variety of use cases and business needs. When installing Terraform Enterprise (TFE), you can choose between Demo, Mounted Disk, and External Services modes. This guide explains the differences to help you select the appropriate mode for your environment.
Comparison of Deployment Modes
Demo Mode
Demo mode is intended for trial and proof-of-concept purposes only and should never be used for production environments.
- Data Storage: All data is stored inside the container running the application.
- Data Recovery: This mode is not designed for data recovery. If the instance is stopped or experiences a failure, all data can be lost and is unrecoverable.
Mounted Disk Mode
In this mode, all application data is stored locally on the Terraform Enterprise instance's server but is separated from the application services.
- Data Storage: Data is stored on a mounted disk on the host machine.
- Data Recovery: Data can be recovered from backups in the case of an environment failure, but this requires the environment’s encryption password. Without the encryption password, the data is unrecoverable.
External Services Mode
This mode separates the Terraform Enterprise application from its data storage and database, using external resources instead.
- Data Storage: Uses an external object storage service (like Amazon S3) for application data and an external PostgreSQL database.
- Data Recovery: Offers the most robust disaster recovery options, as the data is protected independently of the server hosting the Terraform Enterprise application.
- Scalability: Prevents
out of memoryfailures related to on-disk log storage, as object storage can scale to meet demand.
Recommendation
Both Mounted Disk and External Services modes are valid, supported choices for a production Terraform Enterprise environment. Your choice should depend on your organization's operational capacity and disaster recovery requirements.
- Mounted Disk Mode may be a suitable choice for smaller, tightly managed environments where the operational overhead of managing external services is a concern.
- External Services Mode is the recommended approach for most production environments, especially where data durability, scalability, and robust disaster recovery are priorities. This mode better protects your server and data from instance-level failures.
Additional Information
This guidance applies to Terraform Enterprise v4.
Note: Mounted Disk mode is not available in v5 and later versions of Terraform Enterprise.