Why do businesses need infrastructure as code?
Manual intervention was the only way to manage traditional business infrastructures. The server had to be installed on the rack, the operating system (OS) had to be installed by the IT team, and the network connected and configured manually. For most businesses in the past, this was not a problem as the infrastructure hardly ever changed.
Businesses today work in a dynamic environment, and change is a constant reality. Technologies such as virtualization and cloud, coupled with the rise of DevOps and agile practices, have greatly influenced the current infrastructure and the user experience for business services. Modern infrastructure requirements do not allow the use of traditional network management methods. In the old centralized infrastructure, changes can take days, weeks, or even longer. Organizations can no longer wait hours or days to deploy servers or fix network issues. The downtime can make a business lose hefty sums in minutes.
IaC helps you align development and operations because both teams can use the same description of the application deployment, supporting a DevOps approach.
The same deployment process should be used for every environment, including your production environment. IaC generates the same environment every time it is used.
IaC also removes the need to maintain individual deployment environments with unique configurations that can’t be reproduced automatically and ensure that the production environment will be consistent.
DevOps best practices are also applied to infrastructure in IaC. Infrastructure can go through the same CI/CD pipeline as an application does during software development, applying the same testing and version control to the infrastructure code.
Why does IaC matter for DevOps?
IaC is an essential part of implementing DevOps practices and continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD). IaC takes away the majority of provisioning work from developers, who can execute a script to have their infrastructure ready to go.
That way, application deployments aren’t held up waiting for the infrastructure, and sysadmins aren’t managing time-consuming manual processes.
CI/CD relies on ongoing automation and continuous monitoring throughout the application lifecycle, from integration and testing to delivery and deployment.
In order for an environment to be automated, it needs to be consistent. Automating application deployments doesn’t work when the development team deploys or configures environments one way, and the operations teams deploy and configure another way.
Aligning development and operations teams through a DevOps approach leads to fewer errors, manual deployments, and inconsistencies.
Mutable
vs.
Immutable IaC
As IaC becomes the new standard for IT best practices, infrastructures are shifting from traditional modes of operation to more immutable ones. That’s because IT departments are striving to reach continuous delivery, with versioning and automated testing embedded in the DevOps process. This goal is for IT to deploy a package and its dependencies consistently, with identical environments every time.
Mutable IaC
Mutable means that it is prone to change. As one part of the infrastructure changes, it becomes out of sync with the rest. It is vital for security that a consistent application of configurations be in place across the infrastructure.
Immutable IaC
Immutable infrastructure cannot be changed once deployed. Changes will still occur, but they made to the original declarative statements. Once the changes are ready, all like devices or configurations are changed consistently. Consistency is necessary from a security perspective because hackers need one door left open to get in. Closing every door, in the same way, complicates matters for the hacker.
Declarative vs Imperative Approach
An Infrastructure as Code framework can be designed and deployed using two different DevOps paradigms –
declarative and imperative.
Imperative approach
The responsibility of defining the exact steps necessary to meet an end goal is with the user. This means the user has to specify software installation instructions, database creation, configuration, etc. While the execution of
Declarative approach
On the other hand, focuses on defining the ultimate state rather than the exact steps. A user specifies – or declares – the number of workloads to be containerized or virtualized, the application and machines that need to be
Benefits of IaC
With cloud computing, the number of infrastructure components has grown, more applications are being released to production on a daily basis, and infrastructure needs to be able to be spun up, scaled, and taken down frequently. Without an IaC practice in place, it becomes increasingly difficult to manage the scale of today’s infrastructure.
IaC can help your organization manage IT infrastructure needs while improving consistency and reducing errors and manual configuration.