What is IaC? Where to learn IaC?

?IaC (Infrastructure as Code) is the DevOps practice of managing and provisioning cloud infrastructure using a code-based approach instead of doing it manually. It evolved as a measure to battle environment drift – a common delivery pipeline problem that occurs when engineers have to manually maintain the settings for each deployment environment. As more unique settings are added, these environments become progressively difficult to manage and impossible to reproduce automatically (also known as?“snowflakes”). This leads to inconsistent environments, which, in turn, hinder the development process.?

Infrastructure as Code is based on the idempotency principle, which enables configuring target environments with the same settings regardless of their initial state.

Engineering teams create environment descriptions (or configurations) which are then automatically applied to the necessary environments in the delivery pipeline. This ensures a?quick, accurate, and more efficient development process, as introducing environment adjustments becomes as simple as making a change in the original description.

Even more importantly, the automation that comes with IaC leads to substantial cost optimization as it frees up your engineers’ time, letting them focus on more important tasks.?

Let’s explore some of the key standards that ensure successful implementation and effective use of Infrastructure as Code.?

Codify all infrastructure specifications

As mentioned before, your engineering teams will create configuration files using one of the Infrastructure as Code tools (more on this later). All infrastructure specifications will be coded into these files which will serve as a single source of truth. They should include all the necessary information for configuring your infrastructure: from resources and components that should be used to how they are related.?

Limit the amount of documentation

While implementation of almost any technology or methodology usually highlights the need to document everything, Infrastructure as Code goes against this principle. That’s because?the IaC code itself serves as infrastructure documentation?since it includes all the necessary configuration information. Furthermore, this documentation will always stay updated as it will be in constant use. As a result, your engineers do not need to devote their time to recording the changes or updates they make.?

The only important thing you need to keep track of is the codebase versions. Using tools for code control such as Git will help you track all code changes, as well as review and test them before live deployment.?

Apply modular architecture to your infrastructure

The microservices architecture principles that have become very popular in software development can be applied in IaC. By breaking the infrastructure up into separate modules, you can gain many benefits, including:

• Better infrastructure control.?A modulated architecture makes it easier to distribute infrastructure access. It ensures more effective collaboration between your teams since they can focus solely on their modules without causing hindrance to one another.
• Easier and quicker testing.?When changes are made only in a particular module instead of the entire infrastructure, testing them becomes a lot easier and less time-consuming.
• Infrastructure consistency.?By using templates to create configurations for each module, you can build consistency throughout the entire infrastructure. This results in easier automation, development, and testing.
• Reusability.?Modules can be treated as templates for changing parameters that change the behavior of deployed resources and reduce the amount of repeated code.

Secure support from a reliable tech partner

Finally, successful implementation of IaC relies heavily on the expertise and skillfulness of?Devops Engineers. However, DevOps is one of the most sought-after skills in the software development industry, which makes finding the right experts challenging.?

Start you DevOps Engineer journey at the thelanofficial.com