Spacelift

We manage a lot of AWS  deployments with Spacelift  configs, so we have a main use case for it. We also use it for versioning and spinning up new environments.

Recently we used Spacelift  for deploying our custom cloud code deployment platform on AWS . We used Spacelift to have A/B testing for different versions of our custom pipeline.

Spacelift has positively impacted our organization by speeding up our deployments and easing a lot of pain with infrastructure deployments, especially because a lot of teams are working simultaneously on the same code base using the same configs.

Every engineer in the team takes on their own infrastructure in their branch, controlling the version and using it without merging to master. Using Spacelift has improved collaboration and speed.

The best feature Spacelift offers is probably its versioning, which provides another layer above infrastructure as code. With versioning, you can do rollbacks and have different versions of the same infrastructure in different environments and jurisdictions, making it very useful.

We use the rollback feature all the time, especially every time we deploy to a new environment.

It would be nice to have out-of-the-box A/B testing with Spacelift because we still use some custom features for that.

Out-of-the-box A/B testing is the main thing I would like to add about the needed improvements, maybe with the custom solution not being declarative configuration but more like Pulumi.

I have been using Spacelift for four years already.

Spacelift is stable.

Spacelift's scalability is okay.

The customer support for Spacelift is okay.

I would rate the customer support for Spacelift as nine on a scale of 1 to 10.

We used Argo CD previously, and we switched from Jenkins  because it is too hard to manage. Jenkins  is even worse than Spacelift in terms of learning curve.

The learning curve for new users getting started with Spacelift is very steep.

I cannot share any metrics related to return on investment, such as money saved, time saved, or fewer employees needed.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing was that licensing was somewhat unclear when HashiCorp changed their own licensing.

We evaluated a few options with Pulumi before choosing Spacelift.

Spacelift does not handle compliance requirements in our organization.

SpaceLift helps with managing secrets and sensitive data very effectively, but we still use a lot of AWS secrets for production.

I already covered how Spacelift supports multiple teams or users working on the same infrastructure.

I monitor and troubleshoot issues within Spacelift through logging.

SpaceLift handles infrastructure drift detection by checking the version control.

We do not use Spacelift for supporting automation for repetitive tasks.

We integrate Spacelift with our existing CI/CD pipelines through GitHub Actions .

SpaceLift is deployed in our organization as a private cloud.

We mostly use AWS with Spacelift.

We did not purchase Spacelift through the AWS Marketplace  as we have a custom setup.

SpaceLift's AI capabilities are very good regarding accuracy and reliability of output because it uses declarative configs, so most of the time they are accurate.

I would rate Spacelift a nine on a scale of 1 to 10.

I do not have any special advice to give to others looking into using Spacelift. Pulumi is also a viable option.

My main use case for Spacelift  involves an implementation of a CI/CD pipeline that deploys Terraform  code in AWS , so we manage all the profiles for the developers and manage all the AWS  resources.

A specific example of how we use Spacelift  in our pipeline is for Terraform  deploys, managing all the resources with Spacelift and having profiles including developer profiles, DevOps profiles, and the cloud management profile, so we manage all the Terraform operations in Spacelift.

The best features Spacelift offers include the management capability where you can deny certain resources that developers can deploy. For example, if you want, you can deny the developer from creating a new VPC or a new cluster, allowing you to specify the resources that developers could deploy.

This feature impacts my workflow by making it easier because it facilitates the review of pull requests, as Spacelift will block anything that is not allowed, making it easier to review pull requests.

SpaceLift impacts my organization positively by giving more agility to the teams when they are deploying, allowing us to manage the AWS resources using Spacelift, so our cloud organization improves after this implementation.

The improvement I noticed after using Spacelift includes an increase in the deployment speed and in the review of pull requests, as we can make the deployments faster.

I think Spacelift can be improved by incorporating some kind of architecture for the resources being deployed, such as using AI to provide some drawn architecture.

Regarding Spacelift's AI capabilities, I think for reliability, if the platform is still running with no downtime or that does not impact the deploys, it is good output for reliability.

I have been working in this position for two years.

Spacelift is stable.

We did not scale the environment because we deployed it with the right sizing.

The customer support experience is good as they assist when we have some doubt or an issue.

My experience with customer support is that they are responsive and helpful, with the SLO and SLA being really fast to answer.

Prior to Spacelift, I used a simple GitHub Actions  pipeline for Terraform deploying, and we switched because Spacelift provides more governance over Terraform.

Spacelift was deployed in a containerized cluster.

I can see the return on investment by specifically looking at the time saved.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing was really clear, so I did not encounter any problems.

We did not evaluate other options before choosing Spacelift; we just looked for Spacelift.

My advice for others looking into using Spacelift is that the governance is valuable. I would rate this review an 8.

My main use case for Spacelift  is infrastructure orchestration, where I'm currently working on S3  and SQS.

I use Spacelift  with S3  and SQS by having a config setup for the S3 module as well as SQS, and we use GitHub  actions. Whenever a Terraform  module change on that git is done, a GitHub  action is executed which in turn does an action on Spacelift that creates the plan, and then it executes the plan after the approval of the ongoing process where the IAM  is used for three sets of people: the approver, who is the main administrator, and us, who will be the creators.

In Spacelift, the three steps we follow are plan creation, which is done via GitHub actions, and the approver has to go and approve this particular plan so that it can be available for execution. Currently, we have disabled any delete modules as we don't want to give that feature right now, and we are just focusing on read and write of Terraform  modules.

The best features Spacelift offers include the drift detection feature, which is the most useful one for us, as well as comparison of the modules in versions, which we weren't able to do in our in-house tooling.

The drift detection has helped my team by addressing the major problem we faced in our internal tooling for infrastructure orchestration, which was if there were any manual changes done on AWS  or the console itself missing the updates in the saved modules. Now these Terraform module versioning is done by Spacelift, which helps us compare what was there earlier and if any changes were done outside of the set system.

SpaceLift has positively impacted my organization by reducing a lot of confusion with the integration of Terraform modules, because a lot of our tooling involved direct and indirect Terraform module creations; now it is more streamlined for each and every resource that we control.

I'm new to Spacelift integration, and so far I have not seen anything that needs significant improvement; the UI is great, the functionality is great, and the drift detection features are great. There are more features that are onboarded every day, so for me, I have not hit any bottlenecks that need to be improved.

If I had to think of one area where Spacelift could improve, it would be the graph where we orchestrate, as the graph looks very complicated and complex, so perhaps it could be simplified.

I would find it helpful to have a flowchart similar to Argo CD so that we know what the orchestration metrics are and everything.

I have been using Spacelift for just over a year.

I purchased Spacelift through the AWS Marketplace .

My advice to others looking into using Spacelift is to be open to OpenTofu as well as Terraform so that you are able to identify issues and also understand the integrations that Spacelift provides. I rate this product an 8 out of 10.

My main use case for Spacelift  is using it as a Terraform  collaboration provider tool.

Day-to-day, when I create a PR and get it merged, I am able to review the Terraform  plan in Spacelift  and then verify that it contains the changes that I am looking to make. If so, then I can apply it.

I also use Spacelift as a registry for Terraform modules.

Spacelift has positively impacted my organization because it works well; it allows everybody to collaborate in the same Terraform repo without stepping on each other's toes. I think that is the number one feature that is most required from using Spacelift or obtaining it.

The best features Spacelift offers include the ability to ensure that only one change is merged in at a time and ensure that everybody sees that unified page where it shows all of the runs that were already executed.

That unified view of runs helps my team because it allows anybody, whether they are technical or not very technical, to review the page and understand what got applied. It also makes it easy to use so that less technical or less DevOps engineers are able to create change requests into our Terraform.

I think an improvement for Spacelift would be a feature to run multiple stacks.

What I mean by that is if you have multiple stacks that rely on each other, it would be nice to detect that. For example, if you modify a module, it would be beneficial to have this capability.

There are no other improvements needed for Spacelift that I have not mentioned.

I have been using Spacelift for over one year, approximately two years.

My advice to others looking into using Spacelift is to use it and review all the TACO platforms and see if you really need it before purchasing it because for some simple workflows, you can get away with something simple. I would rate this product an 8 out of 10.