Simply put, infrastructure as code (IaC) is the management and provisioning of infrastructure through code instead of using a manual process to configure devices or systems. It's a practical way to manage your operational environment, calling for you to construct your infrastructure just as you do for all enterprise applications—using code. When implemented and appropriately nurtured, IaC can do wonders for your organization. This post explores everything you need to know about infrastructure as code. If you're planning to implement IaC, it will help you make informed decisions.
Manual Infrastructure Provisioning: The Challenges of Traditional Methods
Over the years, IT infrastructure provisioning has been done manually. The people responsible for the process must rack and stack the servers physically. If that weren't enough, they then had to manually configure the hardware to the desired settings and requirements of the operating system and the hosted application. Only after deploying it to the hardware can your application finally be launched. Setting up and configuring your IT infrastructure manually isn't going to do the trick anymore. Why, you ask? Well, here are a few reasons.
High Costs of Manual Infrastructure Management
Manual provisioning consumes a big chunk of human capital. It demands a string of engineers—network engineers, storage engineers, and the like—as it's an extensive process. The more the people involved, the higher the costs.
Reduced Agility in Manual Provisioning
Manual provisioning is dependent on a multitude of services/processes, so it can easily result in a lack of sufficient agility. This translates to not being able to deliver services at your customers' expected speed, which can adversely impact your relationship with them.
Hardware Delays and Failures in Traditional Infrastructure
Fetching the required hardware can take up a lot of time. You'll have to wait for the hardware manufacturer's production and delivery schedules, which could be weeks. It might take even longer if you need customized hardware. Besides, some component or another could go missing or malfunction. Additionally, you risk succumbing to the cons of the "human factor" involved in the process. It always brings in relative inconsistency, unreliability, and deviations from expected standards.
What Is Infrastructure as Code?
It's beyond doubt that cloud computing has had a significant impact on how institutions build, maintain, and scale technological and business-related products and services. The ability to provide servers, databases, and other infrastructure-related products has also increased productivity levels.
However, human error cannot be eliminated as long as manual processes are still around. One can also expect human errors and defects to be present when you launch cloud infrastructure by using the web app plugin buttons. The only way these issues can be resolved is if we can bring about a level of automation into the entire infrastructure. And that's precisely where IaC comes into the picture. It automatically launches cloud foundations quickly, without any human errors. That alone has propelled IaC to the top of the technological options that businesses and corporations consider for their operations.
What Infrastructure as Code Is Not
Some people assume that IaC is a replacement for networking principles. That's a misconception, and business leaders often tend to mix up these concepts. One can successfully develop an organization's infrastructure using both networking principles and IaC. But it's imperative to have a clear-cut understanding of network routing, how the network traffic is routed, network architecture, and the process to configure a network.
These are the basic foundations of networking, and they play a closely connected role with IaC. For example, migration to the cloud is what makes IaC possible in networking. Hence, it's must-have knowledge for the networking team.
However, conflating networking principles and IaC isn't the only point of confusion here. There's also a general assumption that IaC turns operations into development and, in the process, makes the former redundant. However, that's not the case. Operations is a vital part of any organization. The role of networking a couple of years ago was to manually configure the network with the infrastructure as well as writing configuration scripts.
Some people view IaC as just a way to bring the DevOps approach to your current configuration management. But that's not the actual case. IaC calls for automating even your configuration scripts. It also means using a scalable system that's configured through code.
Core Principles of Infrastructure as Code
In the years since companies have implemented IaC, a few have been able to control the art of doing it without much trouble. In other words, only a few companies have succeeded in finding the right tactical strategy to fit the concepts of IaC into their structure.
So, it's evident that there are a few wrong ways to implement IaC, and the end result of those ways is disaster. Many change-management experts usually try to fit IaC into their legacy and last-generation tools. To overcome these problems, you'd have to follow certain principles. So let's now discuss the nucleus of IaC.
#1 Easy and Reliable System Reproducibility
IaC should allow you to painlessly recreate any given chunk of an infrastructure. You should be able to rebuild without putting too much effort into it. It removes the ambiguity that could come in the form of risk or doubtfulness. And IaC instills confidence when it comes to provisioning new services and environments.
#2 Flexibility to Meet Dynamic Infrastructure Needs
You need to ensure that your infrastructure has the answers to all the questions that your software asks. These questions could be about a variety of things, such as the desired storage, compatibility with connected networks, and configuration. IaC should present itself as flexible blocks that can be assembled instantly if and when the requirements arise.
#3 Designing for Continuous Change and Scalability
While it's always a good bet that some component or another will need an upgrade, it's not always easy to make such changes to the existing system. We can't predict how a system's requirements can change over time. That's why one of the core principles of IaC is that the design is always changing. So, you should design your infrastructure and software to be as lucid as possible.
Common Challenges When Implementing Infrastructure as Code
As you'd expect, there are a few stumbling blocks that you'd have to overcome before you go ahead with implementing IaC. Here are a few of those.
Managing Configuration Drift
Even if you consistently configure your servers at frequent intervals, you'll find that drifts in configuration can happen over time. A variety of things can cause this. Once you adhere to an IaC workflow to create something, you should also ensure that no foreign interference happens to it.
When you want to modify something, it should be in compliance with your pre-established maintenance workflow. And if you make non-uniform changes to a similar group of systems, then some of them will be essentially different from the others, potentially resulting in a shift in configurations.
Avoiding Error Duplication in IaC Code
Although the subsequent creation of machines would be through automation, the development of the initial parent code will be done manually. More often than not, wherever there's human work involved, there's always a possibility of minor errors creeping in inadvertently. This can happen despite your regular QA checks.
These minor issues could prove to be crucial since, if you look at the big picture, such errors might also be in multiple machines created by means of automation. So you'll have to double-check your IaC-generating code because it's better to be safe than sorry. This calls for stricter, more rigorous testing processes and a well-defined, concrete auditing process, which can add to your overheads.
The Demand for Skilled IaC Professionals
You need a high level of technical expertise to work with IaC tools. From a management perspective, this means investing in your current employees. In some cases, it might mean hiring new ones or resorting to outsourcing services during the initial phases. Doing this will give your staff an opportunity to familiarize themselves with the tools. So you're going to have to invest in your resources—people—if you plan to implement IaC.
Infrastructure as Code Best Practices
You should follow certain best practices to reap the maximum benefits of implementing IaC.
Code Code Code
A rule of thumb is that, wherever possible, you should deploy code to describe your infrastructure. Often, it'd be possible to codify your traditional and cloud infrastructure. For instance, your physical/virtual server management can be codified by Terraform, CloudFormation, YAML, and Python scripts. You can utilize Puppet/Chef modules for network management, Dockerfile for container management, and so forth. And you can establish these configuration files as your single source of truth when it comes to your infrastructure specifications.
Version Control Everything
Such configuration files will be version controlled. Since they're coded, it becomes possible for you to track, manage, and restore the changes made, should the need arise. It'll also assist in diagnosing the problems. There are many source code management tools available that you can make use of for your versioning and change tracking.
Keep Documentation Lean and Code-Driven
Your IaC code will serve as documentation in itself. So, instead of humans manually executing based on the guidelines in documents, deploying code is more clear-cut and consistent. Additionally, you won't have to do manual upgrades every time. If needed, for your more junior employees, you can promote better understanding by generating additional documentation through this code.
Adopt a Modular Infrastructure Design
Microservices is an architectural style in which engineers develop and maintain applications as many small deployable units. Similarly, by harnessing IaC, you can divide your infrastructure into multiple modular components and then combine them through automation.
This approach has many advantages, such as limiting the number of configuration changes, better control over accessibility, and more efficient dependency management. Modularity is, therefore, a must, as it seamlessly integrates the entire infrastructure.
Key Benefits of Infrastructure as Code
Here's why the implementation of IaC deserves a red carpet rollout:
IaC Enables and Accelerates DevOps Practices
IaC will be crucial if you're thinking about implementing DevOps in your organization. It can be the trump card that you need to enable the DevOps best practices and to get the most out of DevOps. The principles of IaC and DevOps intertwine when it comes to collaboration and automation. Also, the DevOps toolchain often encompasses infrastructure automation tools. When infrastructure is coded, it paves the way for the platform to achieve superior quality control through better testing, reduced recovery times, and more predictable—as well as more effective—deployments.
Some other benefits of the process include cost reduction in terms of experimentation and innovation, time savings by facilitating redeployment instead of repairing your existing servers, and minimized mean time to resolution (MTTR).
Manage Infrastructure Like Application Code
You'll save your infrastructure's file definition in a version control system. This has various benefits. For one thing, there will be a single source of truth. You'll also easily find the location of files, and you'll have the ability to roll back your changes easily, identifying and clearing any redundant files.
Additionally, it minimizes resource dependency; IaC enables logging, documenting, and tracking changes to your server configuration. So, even in the event that a concerned person is unavailable, you can easily track and manage issues you face in setting up a new configuration. That's because you can always pinpoint what changes were made, see who made them, and infer what can be done.
Achieve Consistent Infrastructure Configurations
While it's a given that things in production and development environments differ from one another, IaC enables you to maintain a bigger version of the infrastructure for production and a smaller one for development. When you implement IaC, you're also ensuring efficient configuration management. As it standardizes the infrastructure setup, you'll see that misconfigurations in the application are significantly reduced. Consequently, this will minimize the chances of potential incompatibility issues with your infrastructure.
Improve Developer Productivity and Satisfaction
With IaC, programmers can develop in their own sandbox environments. Also, testers can get a copy of production that they can work on. So IaC is a win-win for both of them. Additionally, it provides the developers with an opportunity to apply well-established practices from development to ops.
From the management perspective, IaC can also enhance developer productivity. It enables the multi-stage deployment of cloud architectures, thereby increasing the efficiency of your SDLC. Furthermore, you can adopt continuous integration and continuous deployment techniques, which bring benefits such as faster fault isolation, reduced release cycles, and quicker software builds.
Popular Infrastructure as Code Tools and Their Capabilities
There are two types of tools: configuration management tools and configuration orchestration tools. They're both part of the bigger cloud known as IaC tools. Engineers use these tools to automate the deployment of other servers. Configuration management tools aid in the process of configuring the software and the systems in the infrastructure. The most widely used tools across organizations are Azure, AWS CloudFormation, Chef, and Puppet.
These tools analyze the organization's problems and the issues troubling the infrastructure and try to bring it into the proper state. During the analysis, the tools visualize what the infrastructure is supposed to look like and build a model of that desired end state. This is also done seamlessly, without major complications and with minimal manual interactions.
Why Infrastructure as Code Is Essential for Modern IT
Companies that bring IaC to the forefront of their operations can deliver results consistently. You can completely avoid manual configurations and setups, and the legacy tools give way to new generation tools and technologies.
Without IaC, infrastructure teams across organizations have to maintain the settings of individual development environments. With IaC, you save a lot of time through human resources and operational costs. Besides enabling improvement in how the code goes to production, IaC also makes the entire process more reliable, secure, fast, and agile.
When used efficiently, it can engage the entire organization and provide a better and more efficient workflow. Hence, IaC can provide just the right x-factor. It can serve as the differentiator you need to stay ahead of the competition.