Left bar

The left bar is where all the graphical objects are available to be used in the design area and it gives you the possibility to select a specific cloud provider from the supported ones, set the version of the same provider and switch between Terraform/OpenTofu resources and data sources.

It contains different sections that match cloud provider categories like compute, network, storage but also custom Brainboard sections like containers and modules.

Azure

AWS

GCP

You build your cloud infrastructure by drag and dropping resources from the left bar then configuring their cloud configuration.

Here are the components of the left bar:

Left bar components

1. Cloud providers selector: It allows you to select the cloud provider to use in the current architecture

2. Cloud provider version: This the Terraform/OpenTofu version of the selected provider

   1. Brainboard automatically update the left bar whenever there is a new Terraform/OpenTofu version of the provider.

   2. When you select a version, the left bar will updated for you to reflect the resources available at this specific version

3. Resource type selector: Allows you to switch between cloud resources and data sources

   1. When you select a type (either resource or data), the left bar will updated for you to reflect the resources available within this type.

4. Search bar: Allows you to search resources by:

   1. Full Terraform name, like azurerm_virtual_network, aws_vpc or google_compute_network.

   2. Abbreviations.

   3. Part of the word.

5. Buttons to easily access the configuration of variables, locals and outputs.

6. Button to close or open the left bar.

7. Category of resources: It contains all the resources that belong to the same category as specified by the cloud providers.

   1. Every item is a sub-category, so you need to click on it to see all its resources.

8. Sub-category of resources:

   1. When you hover any element, a small modal will appear to explain what the component is and its Terraform name.