IaC

The real challenge in Kubernetes deployment goes beyond cluster setup to configuring RBAC, secrets management, and infrastructure-as-code. Teams without prior experience make decisions that require painful redesigns later, as shown by organizations requiring 50% of their year dedicated to cluster maintenance.

Terraform users struggle to bring existing infrastructure stacks under management because Terraform cannot automatically incorporate them into its state without manual intervention.

Automation pipelines and scripting struggle to handle stateful resource management and state logistics across multiple code paths, despite being critical for continuous integration.

A HashiCorp survey revealed that more than half of Terraform users encounter state-related problems, indicating widespread technical complexity and inadequate state management solutions.

AWS IaC solutions lack the ability to deploy running resources via simple URLs (which would allow non-technical stakeholders to provision infrastructure). Instead, developers must use CLI tools, and CloudFormation—the only AWS IaC supporting URL deployment—is painful to write and slow to iterate on.

Complex Terraform deployments with modules, multiple environments, split state, and orchestration tools like Terragrunt create challenging issues that require structured planning and disciplined workflows.