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Simone Morellato
Simone Morellato

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Sveltos vs Terraform: Friends, Not Rivals, in the Cloud-Native World

Introduction

When you’re managing modern infrastructure, chances are you’ve encountered Terraform. It’s the industry-standard tool for provisioning and managing infrastructure across clouds.

But what happens once you’ve stood up your Kubernetes clusters? You still need to manage add-ons, policies, and application lifecycles across potentially dozens—or hundreds—of clusters. That’s where Sveltos comes in.

In this post, we’ll explore how Sveltos and Terraform compare, their key differences, and why they’re actually complementary tools rather than competitors.

Terraform at a Glance

Terraform, by HashiCorp, is designed to provision and manage infrastructure through a declarative model. You describe resources in HCL (HashiCorp Configuration Language), run terraform apply, and Terraform ensures those resources exist.

Typical Terraform responsibilities include:

  • Creating Kubernetes clusters (EKS, GKE, AKS).
  • Provisioning VMs, networking, databases, IAM roles.
  • Managing multi-cloud environments with a unified language.

It’s infrastructure plumbing—the foundational layer you need before workloads can run.

Sveltos at a Glance

Sveltos is a Kubernetes-native controller that automates add-on and configuration management across multiple clusters. Instead of worrying about how to bootstrap Prometheus, Istio, or policy engines into every new cluster, you let Sveltos handle it.

Key Sveltos capabilities include:

  • Deploying Helm charts, YAML manifests, or GitOps-managed resources across clusters.
  • Continuously reconciling declared state (no “drift” until your next CLI run).
  • Targeting clusters dynamically using labels or cluster events.
  • Multi-tenancy and RBAC-aware distribution of add-ons.

In short: Terraform builds the cluster, Sveltos keeps it running the way you want.

Similarities Between Sveltos and Terraform

At first glance, Sveltos and Terraform seem similar. Both are:

  • Declarative: You describe the desired state, and the tool ensures reality matches it.
  • Multi-cluster aware: Both can operate across many clusters/environments.
  • Automation-friendly: Each can be embedded in CI/CD pipelines or GitOps workflows.
  • Extensible: Terraform through providers, Sveltos through templates and Kubernetes-native integrations.

These shared principles can sometimes make them look like competitors. But the details reveal a different story.

Key Differences

Aspect Scveltos Terraform
Primary Focus Kubernetes add-ons, manifests, Helm charts, and policies Cloud infrastructure (VMs, networks, IAM, clusters)
Execution Model Runs as a controller inside Kubernetes, continuously reconciling CLI-based, executes when you run apply
State Management Uses Kubernetes API (etcd) as the source of truth Requires a state file (local or remote backend)
GitOps Alignment Natively integrates with Argo CD and Flux Needs external tooling (Atlantis, Argo plugins)
Scope Application/config lifecycle in K8s Infrastructure lifecycle across clouds
Real-time Updates Reacts automatically to cluster labels, resource changes, or events Must be triggered manually (CI/CD pipeline or CLI)

So while both use declarative models, Terraform’s natural home is in infrastructure provisioning, while Sveltos shines in ongoing Kubernetes cluster management.

A Real-World Workflow: Better Together

Here’s where things get exciting: Sveltos and Terraform are not mutually exclusive—they’re perfect partners.

Imagine you’re setting up a new environment for your engineering team:

  1. Terraform phase:

    • Provision a new EKS cluster.
    • Configure networking, IAM roles, and storage.
    • Output cluster credentials.

  2. Sveltos phase:

    • Detect the new cluster automatically (via Cluster API or registration).
    • Apply a ClusterProfile that installs:
      • Prometheus & Grafana for monitoring.
      • Kyverno for policy enforcement.
      • Fluent Bit for logging.
    • Keep these add-ons up to date as versions evolve.

The result? Terraform gets the cluster online, Sveltos keeps it healthy and consistently configured.

Conclusion

Terraform and Sveltos address different but complementary layers of the cloud-native stack. Terraform is your builder—it lays down the infrastructure foundations. Sveltos is your caretaker—it ensures Kubernetes clusters remain properly configured, consistent, and secure over time.

If you’re already using Terraform, you don’t need to replace it with Sveltos. Instead, think of Sveltos as the natural next step for multi-cluster Kubernetes environments. Together, they give you the power to manage both where your clusters run and how they run.

✨ Want to try it out? You can:

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