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Overview of how to create changes in Overmind

A change in Overmind represents any modification to your infrastructure that you want to analyze for impact and risk. This could be a Terraform deployment, a manual infrastructure update, or any other modification to your cloud resources.

This guide will help you understand how to create and manage changes effectively within Overmind.

What is a Change?

In Overmind, a change is created whenever you:

  • Run overmind terraform plan to analyze proposed infrastructure modifications
  • Submit a Terraform plan through CI/CD integration

Each change includes:

  • Blast radius analysis - What resources might be affected
  • Risk assessment - Potential issues with your modifications
  • Before/after snapshots - State comparison to validate results

Getting Started

Prerequisites

Before creating your first change, ensure you have:

Your First Change

The quickest way to create a change is through the CLI:

# Navigate to your Terraform project
cd your-terraform-project

# Create and analyze a change
overmind terraform plan

This command will:

  1. Parse your Terraform configuration
  2. Generate a plan of proposed changes
  3. Discover your existing infrastructure
  4. Calculate the blast radius and potential risks
  5. Open results in your browser

Change Creation Methods

1. Local Development (CLI)

Use the CLI for local development and testing:

# Analyze planned changes
overmind terraform plan

# Apply changes with tracking
overmind terraform apply -file .overmind/plan.out

Best for: Local development, testing changes, individual deployments

2. CI/CD Integration

Integrate Overmind into your existing pipeline for automated analysis:

GitHub Actions

Add the Overmind action to your workflow:

- uses: overmindtech/actions/submit-plan@main
with:
ovm-api-key: ${{ secrets.OVM_API_KEY }}
plan-json: ./tfplan.json

Manual Integration

For other CI/CD systems:

# Submit a plan for analysis
overmind changes submit-plan tfplan.json

# Get analysis results
overmind changes get-change --format markdown

Best for: Team deployments, automated workflows, consistent analysis

Understanding Change Analysis

When you create a change, Overmind performs several analyses:

Blast Radius Discovery

  • Maps dependencies between resources
  • Identifies resources that could be affected
  • Shows relationships across accounts and services

Risk Assessment

  • Evaluates potential failure points
  • Identifies configuration issues
  • Provides recommendations for safe deployment

Impact Visualization

  • Interactive dependency graphs
  • Resource relationship mapping
  • Change timeline tracking

Configuration Requirements

AWS Access

Overmind needs read-only access to your AWS infrastructure. Configure this through:

  • Temporary access: Uses your existing AWS credentials during CLI execution
  • Managed sources: Permanent IAM role for continuous access (setup guide)

Kubernetes Access

For Kubernetes clusters, install the Overmind source:

helm repo add overmind https://dl.cloudsmith.io/public/overmind/tools/helm/charts
helm install overmind-kube-source overmind/overmind-kube-source \
--set source.apiKey.value=YOUR_API_KEY \
--set source.clusterName=my-cluster

Best Practices

Before Creating Changes

During Development

  • Run overmind terraform plan before making changes
  • Review blast radius and risk assessments
  • Use the interactive graph to understand dependencies

In Production

  • Integrate with your CI/CD pipeline
  • Use GitHub Actions for automated PR analysis
  • Track deployment outcomes with overmind terraform apply

Common Workflows

Individual Developer

  1. Make infrastructure changes locally
  2. Run overmind terraform plan to analyze impact
  3. Review risks and adjust as needed
  4. Deploy with overmind terraform apply

Team Deployment

  1. Create pull request with infrastructure changes
  2. Overmind automatically analyzes changes via CI/CD
  3. Team reviews blast radius and risks
  4. Deploy after approval with tracking enabled

Enterprise Deployment

  1. Changes flow through approval pipeline
  2. Overmind provides risk context at each stage
  3. Deployment tracked with before/after snapshots
  4. Results feed back into organizational learning

Next Steps

Once you understand change creation basics:

Troubleshooting

Common Issues

"No sources configured"

  • Configure at least one managed source
  • Ensure your AWS/Kubernetes credentials are accessible

"Plan parsing failed"

  • Verify your Terraform plan is valid
  • Check that you're running from the correct directory

"Blast radius incomplete"

  • Ensure your sources have proper permissions
  • Check that all relevant accounts are configured

For additional help, visit our support documentation or join our Discord community.