HashiCorp Configuration Language
HashiCorp Configuration Language (HCL) is a human-readable declarative language for expressing structured configuration, including infrastructure and service definitions.
Road to Kubernetes
HCL, or HashiCorp Configuration Language, is a declarative configuration language for expressing structured settings and infrastructure definitions.
- How it is used
- Defines Nomad server settings and container jobs as declarative configuration.
- How deep it goes
- Works through server settings and nested job definitions, but defers advanced server configuration and private-image setup.
- Examples
- Uses a Nomad server file and jobs for one container, then Python and Node.js containers with ports and services.
- What you can do after
- Apply it via Nomad to configure a server and plan and run container jobs in its UI.
Read how Road to Kubernetes explains HashiCorp Configuration Language →
Terraform in Depth: Infrastructure as Code with Terraform and OpenTofu
Terraform HCL is the Terraform-specific dialect of HCL, including Terraform's syntax, resources, and functions.
- How it is used
- Defines desired infrastructure in readable Terraform configurations rather than prescribing deployment steps.
- How deep it goes
- Defines Terraform's HCL dialect and details variable-file syntax and loading, including its literal-only restriction.
- Examples
- Shows a production .tfvars file containing a VPC identifier and instance count, alongside a JSON equivalent.
- What you can do after
- Apply it via Terraform: supply readable configuration and variable values, then use init, plan, and apply to deploy changes.
Acing the CCNA Exam: Volume 2 Advanced Networking and Security
HashiCorp Configuration Language is a declarative configuration language for describing infrastructure and services.
- How it is used
- Defines desired infrastructure state for Terraform provisioning and management.
- How deep it goes
- Explains HCL’s declarative role and workflow placement but stops short of syntax or language internals.
- Examples
- Uses Terraform configuration files for resources on AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, VMware vSphere, OpenStack, and Kubernetes.
- What you can do after
- Apply it via Terraform to declare, preview, and provision desired infrastructure resources.
Related concepts
- declarative programmingkind of · Declarative programming is a programming paradigm that specifies desired results, states, relationships, or rules without prescribing the step-by-step operations that produce them.
- JSONalternative to · JSON is a standardized, language-independent text format for representing structured data using objects, arrays, strings, numbers, Boolean values, and null.
- Nomaduses · Nomad is HashiCorp’s workload orchestrator for deploying and managing containerized and non-containerized applications and services across clusters.
- Packeruses · Packer is an open-source tool for creating machine images from declarative configurations across multiple platforms.
- Consuluses · Consul is a HashiCorp service networking platform that provides service discovery, health checking, configuration, and secure connectivity.
- domain-specific languagekind of · A domain-specific language is a specialized language, notation, or terminology tailored to express concepts and tasks within a particular subject domain.
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