Driving Automation and Consistency through Infrastructure as Code
Rapid and reliable deployment of your infrastructure is critical for technology enabled companies . Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is technology that allows organizations to manage and provision their infrastructure through markdown files, rather than manual configuration. This approach brings forth a multitude of benefits, including increased automation, improved consistency, and reduced risk.
What is Infrastructure as Code
Infrastructure as code involves treating your infrastructure—servers, networks, and more—like software code. This means that you define the desired state of your infrastructure in configuration files, which can then be version-controlled, tested, and automated.
Why Should Your Organization Use It
Adopting Infrastructure as Code in your organization offers numerous advantages that streamline cloud operations and enhance overall efficiency. Some of the benefits are included in the list below.
Automation: IaC enables you to automate the provisioning and management of your infrastructure, reducing the need for manual intervention. This leads to faster deployment times, increased efficiency, and reduced operational costs.
Consistency: By defining your infrastructure in code, you can ensure that environments are consistent across development, testing, and production. This reduces the risk of configuration drift, but also allows for managed variability between environments. Typically there is a need for differences in configuration of the infrastructure between production and non-production environments. IaC allows for conditional configuration within centralized source code.
Version Control: IaC files can be stored in version control systems, allowing you to track changes, collaborate with team members, and easily roll back to previous configurations if needed.
Repeatability: IaC allows you to easily replicate your infrastructure environments. This is particularly useful for disaster recovery, scaling, and creating new environments for development or testing.
Reduced Risk: Automation and consistency reduce the risk of human error, which is a common cause of infrastructure problems. IaC also enables you to test your infrastructure changes before they are applied to production, further minimizing the risk of downtime.
How Can Your Organization Get Started
When getting started with enhancing your technical operations using Infrastructure as Code it is important to take the time to follow best practices as it generates critical components within your organization. Some best practices on getting started are listed below.
Infrastructure Design: A foundational step in adopting IaC is the creation of a logical infrastructure design. This blueprint, detailing components and their interdependencies, serves as the direct basis for codebase implementation.
Tool Selection: There are several powerful tools that need to be evaluated based on the needs of the system and organization. Cloud Providers offer their own specific toolsets, some more complex than others. There are also open-source tools that allow you to define and provision infrastructure across various cloud platforms, such as Terraform. Depending on the complexity of your technical organization and available resources should dictate the tools selected for the implementation strategy.
Implementation: While implementation will be specific to the needs of each organization, established best practices provide a critical foundation. Given the inherent repeatability of infrastructure components, modular code design is essential. This approach promotes both code reusability and simplified maintenance. Furthermore, incorporating comprehensive regression testing throughout the development lifecycle ensures consistent functionality from a pristine deployment state.
Automation: Automation will follow standard DevOps practices, such as creating a CI/CD pipeline solution integrated with the version control system. Given infrastructure's foundational role, security is paramount. Implementing the principle of least privilege access is critical to ensure that only authorized users can modify infrastructure configurations.
Management: Updates to infrastructure are frequent, therefore ongoing support should be factored into planning for introducing infrastructure as code into your organization. Falling behind in updates of infrastructure is common and leads to being forced to make updates, typically due to deprecation, at inconvenient moments. IaC will allow support teams to streamline updates without affecting production systems, eliminating this risk.
Embracing Infrastructure as Code
Infrastructure as Code is a critical practice for organizations looking to achieve greater automation, consistency, and reliability in their infrastructure management. By treating infrastructure like software, you can streamline your deployments, reduce risk, and accelerate your time to market. Whether you're using cloud services or managing on-premises infrastructure, IaC can help you build a more efficient and resilient IT environment.