What issues do you have with Terraform? A few people in my org are considering implementing it.
The state file is atrocious, a constant source of pain. It is hard to set up in the first place, it is hard to import resources into it, it is hard to rename resources within it.
Sometimes, resources don't canonicalize correctly and will always tell you there's something to modify, even though there isn't. Other times, resources don't destroy properly because you are using some untested settings within them.
"It's alpha software" is the best description I can give. It has a ton of rough edges.
The pros: It's decently fast, and a lot more workable than the alternatives (cloudformation or simply tracking stuff by hand). It supports more than just AWS, including fairly obscure stuff like Cloudflare DNS records. It's conceptually solid.
Don't say no to it outright, but you should know what you are getting into.
Btw, Terraform 0.7 comes with initial support for import and state manipulation commands.
Also you mentioned that Terraform was better than the alternatives. Could I ask what other alternatives you looked at and why you ended up choosing Terraform over them?
The reason I ask is that I am also considering Terraform. However other providers also seem to support more than just AWS and are fast enough.
That is pretty much it right there.
I've yet to see another solution that beats it. Warts and all, it's the best I've seen.
Use the AWS API and your config management API ( chef ) to manage the state of the systems.