We built the cloud to be simpler, more flexible, and infinitely more scalable than legacy data centers. Yet somewhere along the way, we lost one of the things that made operations manageable in the first place: a reliable, enterprise-grade inventory — a system of record that tells you what you own, where it runs, who owns it, and what policies apply.
In this short explainer, I talk to my guest Richard Simon about what InfraGraph is, why it matters, how it compares to older data-center inventory tools, and the implications for automation, AI agents, and third-party tooling.
HashiCorp’s Project InfraGraph (announced at HashiConf) aims to restore that capability, not as another dashboard, but as a relationship-first knowledge substrate that connects infrastructure, applications, services, ownership, and policy into a single, trusted model. If it delivers on its promise, InfraGraph could become the missing piece for safer automation, simpler Day-2 operations, and better AI-driven decision-making across hybrid and multi-cloud estates.
In this post, I want to explain why we lost inventory in the shift to cloud, what a graph-based infrastructure model brings back, and how teams should prepare for a future where context, not just telemetry, enables trustworthy automation.
What we used to have (and why it mattered)
In traditional data centers, organizations relied on inventory and lifecycle tools, IBM Tivoli, network managers, systems directors, and similar platforms, which did two critical things:
They cataloged everything. Hardware, firmware, network devices, and software were discovered and recorded.
They were actionable. Tools could push updates, apply patches, and reconfigure devices because they had a trusted view of the environment.
That “system of record” gave operators a single place to answer questions like: what’s running, where is it running, who owns it, and what versions are in use? It was messy, sure, but it worked; it created a foundation for predictable change and controlled automation.
Real use cases worth watching
If InfraGraph works as planned, several practical Day-2 scenarios immediately improve:
- Faster triage: Instead of chasing traces and logs across tools, you query a single model to find affected services, owners, and related policies.
- Drift detection with context: Detect configuration drift and immediately see its impact surface (apps, owners, SLAs).
- Policy enforcement & auditability: Map policies to resources and owners in a structured way; decisions and remediation actions become auditable.
- Agentic automation: Provide LLMs or agents with a trustworthy context so automated remediation can be precise and compliant.
- Third-party integrations: SIEM, SRE, and platform tools can consume the same substrate instead of maintaining competing inventories.
Recommendations for platform teams
- Map your current state: Before adopting anything, document where inventory exists in your stack and what’s missing.
- Define ownership & SLOs for inventory accuracy. Who is responsible for updates? What’s a tolerable freshness window?
- Prioritize APIs and integrations: Ensure any graph solution exposes clean APIs you can integrate into automation and incident workflows.
- Start with high-value use cases: Triage and policy enforcement are low-risk, high-value first consumers of a graph.
- Plan guardrails early: RBAC, audit logs, and approval workflows should be part of the rollout plan.
Conclusion: A practical return to inventory
We don’t need another silo; we need one trustworthy view that multiple teams and tools can rely on. Project InfraGraph is an ambitious attempt to reintroduce that system-of-record in a world of multi-cloud and hybrid complexity. If it can deliver accurate ingestion, relationship-first modeling, and open integrations, and if teams treat the graph as a governed asset rather than a commodity, it could dramatically simplify Day-2 operations and unlock safer, more auditable automation.
The cloud era taught us to be modular and specialized. Now it’s time to stitch those modules together with context. InfraGraph could be the thread we’ve been missing.
Are you excited, cautious, or both? Drop a comment, I’ll collect feedback and share a follow-up demo after a private beta or invite a guest from the Infragraph team, if there’s interest.
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