Terraform vs. Jenkins: Key Differences Explained

Terraform and Jenkins serve different but complementary roles in DevOps automation. Terraform focuses on infrastructure as code (IaC) for provisioning and managing cloud resources across multiple providers using HCL, while Jenkins handles CI/CD workflows for building, testing, and deploying applications using Groovy-based pipelines. The article provides detailed examples of both tools, including a complete Azure VM deployment with Terraform and a Maven-based build pipeline with Jenkins. While they can work independently, combining them creates powerful automated workflows that handle both infrastructure provisioning and application deployment, with Jenkins often triggering Terraform runs as part of deployment processes.