Why Engineers Should Use ArgoCD Instead of Terraform to Deploy Into EKS
Many engineering teams use Terraform not just to provision AWS infrastructure but also to manage Kubernetes resources inside EKS clusters, including Helm charts and application manifests. However, this approach blurs the boundary between infrastructure and application layers due to a fundamental lifecycle mismatch. Resources like VPCs and IAM roles change infrequently, while Kubernetes manifests and image tags change constantly, making Terraform an unsuitable release engine for both. Mixing the two can cause Terraform and ArgoCD to conflict over cluster state, force rollbacks to carry unnecessary infrastructure risk, and expose CI pipelines to cluster credentials they should not hold. The recommended model restricts Terraform to AWS and the EKS perimeter while delegating all in-cluster deployments to ArgoCD, keeping the two layers cleanly separated.
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