Run Tasks Are Now Available in the Terraform Registry

HashiCorp Terraform Cloud Run Tasks let you directly integrate third-party tools and services into Terraform runs. Each run task in a workspace sends information to an external service at a specific run stage. The external service processes the information and then sends the appropriate status back to Terraform Cloud. Depending on the workspace’s configuration, failed run tasks can stop runs and prevent Terraform from provisioning infrastructure, or flag them for review.

The Terraform Registry is an open repository where users can share and discover providers, policies, and modules to use in their Terraform code. We’ve now added run tasks as another component that users can share and discover in the Terraform Registry.

With the addition of run tasks, Terraform Cloud users can take advantage of reusable, tested third-party integrations that can provide cost estimation, security monitoring, compliance checks, drift detection, no-code provisioning, and more within your Terraform deployment pipelines.

You can find run tasks under the policy category in the Terraform Registry:

This post looks at some of the use cases and requirements for run tasks.

»Run Tasks Use Cases

You can use run task integrations to enhance your Terraform workflows in many ways, including:

• Cost management: Get visibility into the costs of infrastructure prior to any change.
• Drift detection: Detect and manage changes occurring outside of Terraform.
• Infrastructure management: Track resources and find unmanaged assets.
• Low code/no code workflows: Visual workflow building to automate complex chaining of tools and processes.
• Policy compliance: Ensure compliance with various regulations, such as HIPAA, GDPR, and PCI-DSS.
• Security and authentication: Ensure that you’re not provisioning misconfigurations that could cause security issues.

For full use case examples with instructions, visit our run tasks integration guides.

For a hands-on learning experience with run tasks, check out the HCP Packer validation run task. This run task checks the image artifacts within a Terraform configuration and blocks provisioning if the configuration references images that are revoked.

»Run Tasks Requirements

To get started with run tasks, you need a HashiCorp Terraform Cloud account at the Team & Governance or Business tiers, or a Terraform Enterprise license.

If you’re interested in trying out run tasks, Terraform Cloud offers free trials for paid tiers. Let’s talk if you might be interested in purchasing Terraform Cloud.