Introduction
Layerform helps engineers create reusable environment stacks using plain Terraform files.
When using Layerform, engineers encapsulate each part of their infrastructure into layer definitions.
Engineers can then create development infrastructure by stacking each of those layers. Layerform’s magic is that layers can share the same base layers, allowing for easy and inexpensive reuse.
Layerform also has features to make it easy to develop and test software in the cloud.
For those interested in development environments: we don’t want to run your text-editor and local tools. You still run those on your machine. What we do is allow you to create your own “staging” environment.
Installation
To install Layerform, you can use go install.
$ go install github.com/ergomake/layerform@latest
Tutorial
Follow along and learn how to provision infrastructure layers using Layerform. Engineers can then use those layers to create development infrastructure for themselves.
In this tutorial, we’ll create layers for running the Elastic Stack (Elasticsearch, Kibana, and Beats) on top of Kubernetes.
Tutorial overview
Understand how we’ll use Layerform to create development environments for the Elastic Stack and learn about the advantages of using layers.
Your first layer definitions
Create layer definitions for Kubernetes, Elasticsearch, Kibana, and Beats.
Provisioning your first layer definitions
Provision an S3 back-end with the Elastic Stack layer definitions so that developers can use them to spin up development environments later.
Running the dev infrastructure
Learn how to run the development infrastructure for the Elastic Stack using the layer definitions we’ve created.
Reference
Read about the different parts of Layerform and how it works.
Layer definitions
Learn what are layer definitions and how they work..
Back-ends and provisioning
Learn what is a Layerform back-end and how to use and provision them.
Spawning and killing layers
Learn how to spawn new layer instances or kill existing ones.
CLI Configs
Learn how to configure your Layerform CLI.
Inner workings
Learn how Layerform uses Terraform files and states to spin up infrastructure using layers.