Advantages of Infrastructure as Code
Infrastructure as code reduces the complexity of cloud infrastructure by leveraging the same software engineering principles, techniques, and tools that have allowed previous software-based systems to scale up. Here are some of the advantages that infrastructure as code brings.
- Repeatability and consistency: Infrastructure defined using IaC can be deployed in a very repeatable manner. Do you require a development environment that is a high-fidelity replication of the production environment? Or do you need to verify that the infrastructure is delivered consistently across several regions? This is readily performed with infrastructure as code.
- Accountability: Changes to the infrastructure can be easily traced by using version control on code files.
- Improved productivity: The majority of developers use an integrated development environment (IDE) on a regular basis. When infrastructure is code, you can use all of the tools that an IDE provides, including autocompletion and the ability to look up methods and their parameters.
- Better alignment across teams: Infrastructure as code enables infrastructure and software development teams to embrace DevOps ideas and collaborate more closely. When infrastructure is coded and incorporated into your company’s software lifecycle, stakeholders are already familiar with a single language and set of norms. This same knowledge promotes cross-team communication, which is essential to DevOps.
Infrastructure As Code Using Pulumi
Infrastructure as code (IaC) is a method for automating the provisioning and administration of infrastructure. Infrastructure as code is fundamentally about applying software engineering principles, techniques, and tools to cloud infrastructure.
Prior to infrastructure as code, infrastructure was (and still is!) provisioned in a variety of ways, including pointing and clicking in a user interface (UI), running commands via a command-line interface (CLI), running batch scripts, and using configuration management tools that were not designed for cloud infrastructure. Each of these approaches has limitations; interactive methods including a UI or a CLI frequently cause issues with repeatability and consistency, whereas batch scripts or configuration management systems may be unable to manage infrastructure declaratively. Modern approaches leverage platforms like Pulumi to embrace and assist the entire software engineering lifecycle.