Infrastructure as Code (IaC): A Complete Overview

In order to improve workflows and accelerate releases, DevOps focuses on removing barriers between the system and the development teams. Converting your manual system setups into software code, aids in the integration of these teams.

So in this blog, we are going to cover:

1. What is (IaC) Infrastructure as Code?
2. Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Declarative vs Imperative
3. When to use IaC
4. Advantages of IaC
5. IaC Tools & Platforms – Overview
6. Tools Overview Table:
7. IaC DevOps Best Practices
8. Conclusion

What is (IaC) Infrastructure as Code?

The practice of supplying and managing infrastructure specified by code, as opposed to doing it manually, is known as infrastructure as code, or IaC.

Networks, virtual machines, load balancers, and connection topologies are managed using an Infrastructure as Code (IaC) framework. It makes use of the same versioning for source code that a DevOps team does. An IaC model produces an identical environment each time it is used, similar to how a key can only unlock a single door. In addition to being utilized in tandem with continuous delivery, it is crucial to the DevOps process.

Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Declarative vs Imperative

IaC: Imperative

Imperative – focus on the actual provisioning process and may reference a file containing a list of settings and configuration values

IaC: Declarative

Declarative – focused on the desired end state of deployment and relies on an interpretation engine to create and configure the actual resources.

When to use IaC

• You use a large amount of IaaS resources.
• Your infrastructure is rented from many different providers or platforms.
• You need to make regular adjustments to your infrastructure.
• You need proper documentation of changes made to your infrastructure.
• You want to optimize collaboration between administrators and developers.

Advantages of IaC

• Minimizing shadow IT inside of businesses and enabling quick, effective infrastructure upgrades made concurrently with application development
• Creating trackable and auditable configurations by enabling version-controlled infrastructure and configuration modifications.
• Maintaining infrastructure and settings in the appropriate condition while effectively managing configuration drift.
• Connecting directly to platforms for CI/CD.

IaC Tools & Platforms – Overview

There are several tools that fall within the broad IaC category, including configuration management, specialized tools for infrastructure management, open-source tools, and platform-specific IaC alternatives.

Let’s examine some of the most widely used IaC platforms and technologies.

Terraform

The top infrastructure as code (IaC) solution for managing infrastructure across a variety of clouds, including AWS, Azure, GCP, Oracle Cloud, Alibaba Cloud, and even platforms like Kubernetes and Heroku, is Terraform by HashiCorp.

While assuring the intended state throughout the settings, Terraform may be utilized to facilitate any infrastructure provisioning and management use cases across many platforms and providers.

Ansible

Ansible is a free, open-source configuration management solution with IaC capabilities rather than a specialized infrastructure management tool. It is an agentless solution that works with both cloud and on-premises systems and may be used by SSH or WinRM.

It has limitations when it comes to maintaining that infrastructure but shines at provisioning infrastructure and configuration management.

Chef/Puppet

There are two effective configuration management tools: Chef and Puppet. Both seek to offer infrastructure management skills with configuration management and automation across the development process.

1. Chef was created with stronger collaboration features to be readily integrated into DevOps methods. It is used for configuration management and is Best used for Deploying and configuring applications using a pull-based approach.
2. Puppet developed as a result of focusing on pure process automation. Currently, Puppet has automatic observers built in to detect configuration drift. It is a popular tool for configuration management and needs agents to be deployed on the target machines before puppet can start managing them.

Tools Overview Table:

IaC DevOps Best Practices

Avoid automating everything right away

• Try not to automate everything right away if you are a company, an application, or a platform that is still in the early stages of development. This is due to the potential for rapid change. You may start automating your platform’s provisioning and maintenance after it has more or less reached a stable state.

Check and keep an eye on your setups

• Infrastructure as Code should and can still be tested since it is still code. Before deploying your servers, you should install testing and monitoring tools for IaC to look for flaws and inconsistencies.

The more rigid the better

• Give as much detail as you can about the atmosphere you wish to create. Include the developers in the creation of the IaC standards for the runtime environments and infrastructure components. Making sure there are no flaws in the code can make it operate more efficiently.

Conclusion

With so many distinct tools and platforms catered to various use cases, getting started with Infrastructure as Code could seem overwhelming. But if you can get beyond this obstacle, you’ll have a potent infrastructure management tool at your disposal.

The article was hopefully interesting to you. Gratitude for reading!

Related/References

• HashiCorp Infrastructure Automation Certification: Terraform Associate
• HashiCorp Certified Terraform Associate-Step By Step Activity Guides
• Install Terraform in Linux, Mac, Windows
• Why Terraform? Not Chef, Ansible, Puppet, CloudFormation?
• Terraform Providers Overview 
• Terraform Variables – Terraform Variable Types

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