FAQ
Every question engineers ask before using Facets, each linking to the page that answers it.
Overview
What is Facets
Why Facets
- What is Facets, and what would it do for my team?
- I already use Terraform (or Terraform Enterprise, env0, Atlantis). Why would I need Facets?
- Why is this faster than writing the Terraform myself?
- Why buy this instead of building it ourselves or hiring more DevOps engineers?
- Can my developers get what they need without waiting on the platform team?
- Can I see it working at a company like mine? What results do teams get?
- Is our setup mature enough to get value from Facets?
- Who is it for: my platform team, my developers, or both?
How it works
Working with AI
- What's Praxis, and how does it relate to Facets?
- What can my AI assistant do in Facets through Praxis?
- What do teams ask it first?
- Which AI assistants does it work with?
- What does Praxis add to Claude Code or another AI assistant?
- How does my AI assistant know how my code connects to my infrastructure?
- Can it run in CI?
Getting started
- What are the steps to get one service running, and how long does it take?
- What do I need before I start?
- What do I install on my machine?
- Can I try it without connecting my cloud: a trial, a sandbox or a demo?
- Can I adopt it one piece at a time? How much rework does it take?
- How long does it take to adopt Facets, including moving what we already run?
Architecture and concepts
Architecture
- What runs in my cloud account, and what runs on Facets' side?
- Which clouds does it support, and can I mix them?
- Does it work on-prem, in a private cloud, or air-gapped?
- How does it fit a multi-account AWS or GCP folder setup?
- Where does Terraform run, and where is the state kept?
- If Facets goes down, does my infrastructure keep running?
Core concepts
Projects and teams
Modules and the catalog
- What's a module, and can I write my own?
- Does it cover the services I use? What if it doesn't?
- Does it handle Helm charts as well as Terraform?
- Do I pick the modules myself, or can Praxis pick them?
- Can I use my existing Terraform modules?
Importing existing infrastructure
- Will it touch or change anything already running in my cloud?
- Can it take over what I already run (Terraform, Terraform Cloud, Pulumi, or things made by hand) without recreating it?
- Will importing change or recreate anything?
- What happens to resources that don't fit a module?
- Can my Facets services use resources that stay outside Facets, like an old database?
- Can I point Facets at my existing Terraform state?
Deploy and operate
Environments and releases
- What happens when I change something that's already running?
- How do I keep staging and production the same, except where they should differ?
- Can I see what would break before I change something?
- Can I see what it will create, and what that will cost, before anything is provisioned?
- If a release goes wrong, can I roll back, and what does that undo?
Secrets and variables
- How does a service get its database's address and credentials?
- Where are my secrets kept? Can I use Vault, AWS Secrets Manager or my own KMS?
- Are secrets kept out of release logs?
CI/CD and container images
Operations, debugging and cloud cost
- When something breaks, how do I find what changed?
- If someone changes things outside Facets, will Facets undo it or flag it?
- How are upgrades to Kubernetes, nodes and databases done without downtime?
- Can I restart or scale a running resource from Facets?
- Does it include monitoring, cost tracking and alerts?
- Does it work with the tools we use for alerts, like Slack, Microsoft Teams or PagerDuty?
Backups and disaster recovery
- Can I stand up a DR copy or a new region from what I have?
- What does Facets back up, and how quickly can it recover if the control plane fails?
Security and governance
Approvals and guardrails
- What can my AI assistant change, and what needs my approval?
- Where do I review a change?
- What happens if a change is wrong?
- Can I block a change, or require approval, before it goes out?
Access control
Cloud and Git access
- What access does Facets need to my cloud and Git accounts, and why?
- How does Facets connect to my cloud: stored keys or a role?
- Can I narrow that access, or grant wide access only during setup?
- Can I start read-only, or with only part of my estate?
- What identity does Facets act as in my accounts, and can I tell its changes from a person's?
- Do cloud credentials ever sit on my laptop?
- Is my setup stored in my own Git?
- Which Git providers does it work with?
What Facets doesn't do
Hosting
Hosting and self-hosting
- Is it hosted only, or can I run the control plane in my own cloud account? Which should I pick?
- If I self-host, what runs in my account and how long does setup take?
- On the hosted version, where are my state, secrets and metadata kept?
- Can the control plane and UI stay on my private network?
- Who upgrades the control plane?
Getting started
What you need before you start, how to try Facets, the steps to your first running service, and how to adopt it one piece at a time.
Architecture
What runs in your cloud and what runs in Facets, where Terraform runs, the clouds and setups Facets supports, and what keeps running if Facets is down.