Terraform Got Us Far. Terragrunt Got Us to Scale.
Scaling infrastructure across multiple clouds and environments is manageable until it isn't. Manual deploy ordering, implicit dependencies, and tribal knowledge about which modules to run first all compound as your footprint grows. We already had a best-in-class Terraform setup. We moved to Terragrunt to scale the orchestration around it.
The Challenge
- Deploy order lived in documentation and people's heads, not in code
- Cross-module dependencies were implicit and error-prone
- No way to deploy a full environment atomically without manual sequencing
- Onboarding new team members required teaching tribal knowledge instead of pointing to structure
Our Solution
We migrated to a Terragrunt-based architecture that makes dependencies explicit through declaration, automates deployment order through dependency graphs, and reduces CI/CD pipelines to a single environment-level command. Backend configuration is defined once and inherited everywhere. The folder structure explains itself.
Key Features
- Declarative Dependencies: Dependency blocks replace manual module sequencing and brittle CI logic
- Full Environment Deploys: A single
terragrunt run-all apply deploys an entire environment in the correct order - Simplified Backends: One root configuration inherited across all modules and environments
- Cross-Cloud Orchestration: AWS and Snowflake module dependencies declared and automatically enforced
- Cleaner CI/CD: GitHub Actions runs environment-level commands, no dropdown selection or manual targeting required
The Result
- Faster onboarding with dependencies visible in code rather than documentation
- Fewer deployment errors from mis-ordered module applies
- Environment-agnostic pipelines that work identically in dev and prod
- A foundation that scales as infrastructure footprint grows across AWS and Azure
Why It Matters
Infrastructure that explains itself through structure is infrastructure your whole team can work with confidently. Terragrunt did not replace our Terraform. It made it possible to operate at scale without the coordination overhead.
Read the full breakdown on Medium to see our folder structure, dependency block patterns, and CI/CD setup in production.
