Guest: Rob Hirschfeld (LinkedIn, Twitter)
Company: RackN (Twitter)
Show: To The Point
Keyword: Infrastructure as Code (IaC)

With Terraform operations, you need permissions to build, destroy, create and connect things in the cloud. Ideally you want team or individual credentials to do that rather than just one set of credentials. Credentials are required when building a plan for Terraforms, the template that you feed into the tool. These credentials are either from your local machine or embedded in the file. In the case that they are embedded, you are not using the runner’s credentials, and run the risk of somebody getting hold of critical cloud credentials and passing them around or stripping them out of that Terraform file. Rob Hirschfeld, CEO and Co-Founder of RackN, explains in this video why credential management is so important for teams and why it is crucial for organizations to consider the permissions being given to any infrastructure as code tooling.

About Rob Hirschfeld: Rob has been in the cloud and infrastructure space for 20 years and has done everything from start-ups working with early ESX betas to serving four terms on the OpenStack Foundation Board and as an executive at Dell. As leader on the2030.cloud, he believes that the technology of running data centers and applications on cloud is just part of the bigger story. He trained as an Industrial Engineer and carries a passion for applying Lean and Agile processes to software delivery.  Rob has received degrees from Duke University and Louisiana State University.

About RackN: RackN was founded with the vision of operators working together to improve IT operations through shared software and community regardless of infrastructure type. The company believes that operators should be able to maintain control, consistency and choice over their infrastructure without requiring prescriptive appliances or managed offerings.

The summary of the show is written by Emily Nicholls.