Infrastructure as code has improved delivery speed and reduces deployment errors across teams
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for Pulumi Enterprise is that our platform and DevOps engineering teams use it to support multiple application teams.
A specific example of how our platform and DevOps teams use Pulumi Enterprise is that we implemented it using Python and TypeScript to define infrastructure for one of our customers. Infrastructure code is version-controlled, tested, and structured as application code, improving readability and reuse.
Additionally, my main use case for Pulumi Enterprise includes building reusable Pulumi components for common patterns such as VPCs, IAM roles, and container platforms in our AWS cloud.
What is most valuable?
Regarding the best features Pulumi Enterprise offers, infrastructure code stands out because it is version-controlled. Stacks are organized by environment and workload, and the policy as code feature enforces security and compliance standards.
Pulumi Enterprise has had a positive impact on my organization. It is deployed as a managed SaaS platform connected to our AWS account. The SaaS deployment reduces the operational overhead on us while still enabling enterprise-grade controls.
What needs improvement?
In terms of how Pulumi Enterprise can be improved, I would say its documentation can be improved for entry-level users. More complete documentation would help new users get into the details and avoid the initial challenges one can encounter with Pulumi. The UI could be more intuitive as well.
Regarding needed improvements for Pulumi Enterprise, support is good and I am satisfied with it. I believe pricing can be made more cost-effective for us.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Pulumi Enterprise for around one to two years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Regarding Pulumi Enterprise's stability, I have found it stable in our production use. Deployment, state management, and previews have consistently worked without platform-related failures. Overall, it has proven to be a stable platform.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
In terms of Pulumi Enterprise's scalability, I have found it scalable and it has served us well as the team size grew. It scales well as infrastructure complexity grows. Its stack isolation and reusable components allow us to manage many environments without conflicts. Overall, this has been a scalable and stable platform.
How are customer service and support?
Regarding Pulumi Enterprise's customer support, it has been responsive and knowledgeable when we have needed help. No issues have been observed.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We have not used a different solution previously.
What was our ROI?
I can share that we have seen specific outcomes with Pulumi Enterprise; it is a premium offering but comes with a premium aligned with its capabilities. I would say the ROI is justified for teams managing complex, multi-team infrastructure environments. The ROI is faster for us as we are experiencing infrastructure delivery improvements and fewer deployment errors using Pulumi. This has helped us significantly in terms of having a reliable Infrastructure as Code tool.
We have seen a clear ROI through faster infrastructure deliveries and fewer deployment errors.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Pulumi Enterprise is that these areas can be improved. The pricing can be made lower.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Before choosing Pulumi Enterprise, I evaluated Terraform Cloud, open-source Terraform, and cloud-native Infrastructure as Code tools. Pulumi stood out.
What other advice do I have?
I rate Pulumi Enterprise an 8 out of 10 overall.
I rate it an 8 because the learning curve and enterprise pricing keep it from being a perfect fit for every team. These areas can be improved, which is the reason for the two-point reduction.
For others looking into using Pulumi Enterprise, I would say it is a great choice for teams with strong software engineering practices. My advice would be to invest upfront in code structure, reusable components, and team training to fully benefit.
In terms of additional thoughts about Pulumi Enterprise, I would summarize that it is best viewed as an infrastructure engineering platform rather than just an Infrastructure as Code tool. Teams that treat infrastructure as software will get the most long-term value from it.
My overall rating for Pulumi Enterprise is 8 out of 10.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Pulumi offers built-in Dynamic Resource providers which helps with custom RDS cluster deployments
What do you like best about the product?
* Pulumi enables us to define our AWS cloud resources through IaC components which is versioned along with our application code.
* For our infrastructure testing requirements, it provides seamless testing, modularization and CI/CD integrations for our deployments.
* Since Pulumi keeps the metadata of our infrastructure, its easy to manage our cloud resources & we make use of its CLI to create/update/delete the stack state.
* There are no security concerns while running commands through its CLI, Pulumi doesn't store any of our cloud credentials. All configurations & secrets are encrypted by our encryption provider.
What do you dislike about the product?
* We didn't face any inconvenience while using Pulumi as its an open-source IaC platform best suited for our AWS deployments.
* We can easily validate our applications & infrastructure through any native testing frameworks.
* Pulumi Packages promotes reusability of our IaC scripts which saves us a lot of time. Each component is production-ready so we don't have to spend much time on configurations.
* Overall, we are satisfied with the services offered by Pulumi for our cloud infrastructure modularization & deployments.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
* We handle our CI/CD integrations, secret management & resource deployments through Pulumi Cloud platform.
* It offers more flexibility to configure our infrastructure for deployments & the event-based triggers which will update our stacks periodically.
* We utilize its built-in dynamic resource providers to incorporate arbitrary code straight into our Amazon RDS cluster deployment process.
* Further, we can seamlessly integrate various monitoring & observability tools such as Dynatrace, Grafana and Prometheus to gain accurate insights, carry out periodic health checks and keep track of performance & utilization of our cloud resources.
Bridging the gaps between DevOps and R&D
What do you like best about the product?
Pulumi, being the first imperative-based Infrastructure-as-Code tool, has revolutionized the deployment of infrastructure in hyperscalers, making it accessible not only to DevOps engineers but to all engineers. This breakthrough has addressed the challenges faced by DevOps teams, as revealed in the survey conducted by firefly.ai called "State of IaC" (available at https://www.firefly.ai/state-of-iac).
Pulumi (especially Pulumi Cloud) has significantly increased engineering efficiency by streamlining the IaC process, while also simplifying compliance and infrastructure versioning. By reducing the likelihood of downtime or service disruptions, Pulumi aids in troubleshooting infrastructure changes, making it an invaluable asset for organizations striving for optimal performance and reliability.
What do you dislike about the product?
Migrating from Pulumi Cloud to Pulumi OSS can indeed be a challenging task. Pulumi Cloud offers additional features and capabilities that are not available in Pulumi OSS, which can make the transition more complex
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Pulumi serves as a bridge between my DevOps team and R&D, allowing seamless communication and collaboration
Pulumi has enabled our team to reproducibly and securely publish our infrastructure
What do you like best about the product?
Pulumi enables us to share and import standard infrastructure modules from a shared library, rather than copying and pasting large code chunks. This reduces our cost and maintenance burden in resolving security fixes, because we can fix it centrally and simple re-up our pulumi stacks.
What do you dislike about the product?
The learning curve for pulumi and it's specific implementation of promises can be steep and the number of examples and scenarios they present for promises could be improved.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Pulumi allows us to maintain and update our infrastructure programmatically and directly integrates with our existing programming expertise and version control systems.
How much is a "best in class" solution worth?
What do you like best about the product?
Pulumi brings IaC to the next level by allowing to encode your infrastructure in general purpose languages. This is better than alternatives like Terraform which forces the usage of HashiCorp Configuration Language (HCL).
What do you dislike about the product?
A year into our subscription with Pulumi, my team was contacted by a Pulumi representative who told us our subscription fee would TRIPLE by the end of the year, reaching 60k-100k annually, despite us signing a contract with them previously. In addition to this, Pulumi's website and CLI can both be very slow.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Pulumi brings programmatic infrastructure as code and manages the state of our stack in the cloud (thus removing the need to backup our state).
