The DevSecGuide To Infrastructure As Code

The technologies and techniques used to manage and deliver infrastructure using code are referred to as infrastructure as code. Version control, community reviews, automated testing, labeling, continuous deployment, and continuous delivery are all possible with it.

The Ascension of IaC

In reaction to conventional ways of delivering and maintaining infrastructure, DevOps firm Puppet launched infrastructure as code, often known as IaC, in 2009. "The traditional techniques of infrastructure management—manual procedures and documentation, brittle single-purpose scripts, and graphical user interface-based tools—all had their usefulness in the past," according to Puppet.

Today, however, with the constant need to grow infrastructure, the use of ephemeral infrastructure, and increased application system complexity, new methods of maintaining control are required." IaC has now been the cornerstone for multiple businesses, including Ansible, Chef, Salt, and others.

Terraform, a famous open-source IaC framework by HashiCorp used mostly to describe resources in public cloud services, has pushed IaC's growth in recent years. Terraform has made IaC infinitely flexible and accessible, clearing the path for the IaC ecosystem to follow.

Concurrently, cloud providers have developed their own configuration frameworks to aid in the simplification and automation of infrastructure orchestration and administration. Infrastructure engineers may design repeatable setups using AWS CloudFormation, Azure Resource Manager (ARM), and Google's Cloud Deployment Manager.

How Does It Work?

IaC may be declarative, which means it describes what will be provided, or imperative, which means it defines how it will be furnished. Terraform and CloudFormation is declarative frameworks, but AWS Cloud Development Kit (CDK) is an imperative IaC framework. Kubernetes is also quite similar to IaC in that its configuration may be written in code.

Each framework has its own standards and syntax, but IaC consists of resource declarations, input variables, output values, configuration settings, and other parameters. IaC is often JSON, HCL, or YAML-based, and includes all of the configuration required to spin up your infrastructure, including computing, networking, storage, security, identity and access management (IAM), and more.

The Advantages of Infrastructure as Code

Because IaC employs code to specify what is required to get resources up and operating, it allows cloud provisioning to be automated and scaled with increased repeatability.

Automation

Businesses now deploy many apps on a regular basis, and infrastructure requirements to satisfy those demands are continuously evolving. IaC streamlines cloud provisioning by automating all human setups. IaC eliminates the need for developers to manually provision and maintains infrastructure by translating manual infrastructure settings into machine-readable templates. Instead, it allows engineers to use automated processes to create, test, and deploy new infrastructure.

Scalability

IaC makes it simpler and more reliable for teams to set up cloud services at scale while decreasing the risk of misconfiguration and saving time and money. Automation and code configuration makes it much simpler to install cloud services consistently. It also makes it simpler to de-provision infrastructure when it is not in use, lowering total computing costs and maintenance expenditures.

Repeatability

Cloud infrastructure requires consistency. IaC deploys computing, storage, and networking services consistently, allowing you to retain consistency across resources and even across multi-cloud settings. This uniformity reduces human error while also allowing for thorough versioning and logging. Because of the repetition factor, you may supply more resources with less work while maintaining high-quality standards, security best practices, and industry benchmark compliance.

Security

IaC offers an important opportunity for cross-team communication. By using a uniform, standard language to supply cloud resources across environments and clouds, developers and operations can more easily remain on the same page and collaborate to maintain cloud-native apps safely.

Download Paloalto's whitepaper to learn more about The DevSecGuide To Infrastructure As Code only on Whitepapers Online.