What is Infrastructure as Code (IAC) and its Benefits?#

Infrastructure as code (IAC) is a management tool and mindset for controlling your framework like it is software. You can build, update, destroy, and control all elements of operations by writing code instead of clicking on a GUI. This article will give an introduction to Infrastructure as Code and its benefits.

IAC tools are classified into five major categories:

  • Ad-hoc scripts

  • Configuration management mechanisms

  • Server templating mechanisms

  • Orchestration mechanisms

  • Provisioning mechanisms

  • Provisioning mechanisms

With provisioning tools (such as Cloud Formation, Terraform, and OpenStack), you can set up servers, databases, caches, load balancers, queues, monitoring, subnet configurations, firewall settings, routing rules, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificates, and basically any other part of your architecture.

The Benefits of Infrastructure as Code#

Why is learning infrastructure as code necessary?

  • it is quite effective.

  • enhances software deployment

  • short lead times

  • restore from errors easily.

When your infrastructure is defined as code, you can use a wide variety of software engineering practices which will dramatically improve your software delivery process. Some examples are as follows:

Scalability

When your company is small, the Ops team may not have problems with manual configurations. However, as your firm expands, this will create a lot of issues. You can automate the entire deployment process if you use IAC.

Safety and speed

If you automate the implementation and release stages, this process will be substantially quicker since a computer can do the deployment processes much faster than a person, and safer because an automated process will be more uniform, repetitive, and bug-free.

Documentation

With IAC, you can keep your application’s source code in written form. Your stakeholders have a better idea of the system.

Versioning

You can benefit from versioning your IaC source files. You can document the whole history of your infrastructure in the commit log. This can also help with debugging issues. If you encounter an issue, you can analyze prior commits and address the problem easily.

Validation

With IAC, you can conduct code inspections, run tests, and make static analyses for every modification.

Repetition

You can pack your infrastructure into automation to save time and enhance quality by forming on top of reliable and effective elements.

Functionality

IaC takes the burden of doing repetitive tasks off your shoulders and helps you focus on developing.

Summary#

Infrastructure as code (IAC) is a set of practices for managing and provisioning computing infrastructures, such as servers, storage, networks, and applications. IAC has many benefits for developers and organizations. For example, it can be used to automate the deployment of software and configuration changes to servers in a data center.

It also allows organizations to build a repeatable process for deploying new infrastructure or modifying an existing one. As we’ve seen, IAC has various benefits, which include:

  • easier and faster deployments,

  • automated administration,

  • effective management,

  • regulation with version control, and documentation.

See also

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