What is Pulumi?

Short answer

Pulumi is an Infrastructure as Code platform that lets you define infrastructure using familiar programming languages like TypeScript, Python, Go, and C#.

How it works

Instead of using a DSL like HCL, you write infrastructure code in a general-purpose language. Pulumi executes the program to determine the desired state and manages updates through its engine.

Example

import * as aws from "@pulumi/aws";

const bucket = new aws.s3.Bucket("my-bucket", {
    acl: "private",
});

Why it matters

Pulumi enables code reuse, testing, and IDE support. Teams can use existing software engineering practices like unit tests and type checking for infrastructure.

Tips

• Use Pulumi stacks for environments.
• Store state in the Pulumi Service or a self-hosted backend.
• Use component resources for reuse.

Common issues

• State management requires the Pulumi Service or S3 backend.
• Language-specific bugs can be harder to debug than HCL.
• Provider coverage may lag behind Terraform.