What is Infrastructure as Code? (Tutorial)

In the fast-paced world of software development and IT operations, Infrastructure as Code (IaC) has emerged as a game-changing practice for provisioning and managing technology resources. This in-depth tutorial explores the core concepts behind IaC, its transformative benefits, the tools that power it, and expert strategies for adopting it successfully. Whether you‘re a seasoned developer or an IT ops pro, understanding Infrastructure as Code is essential for thriving in the era of cloud computing and DevOps.

Infrastructure as Code Explained

At its core, Infrastructure as Code is the practice of managing and provisioning technology infrastructure through machine-readable definition files or code, rather than manual, interactive configuration. With IaC, computing resources like networks, servers, storage, and other infrastructure are defined in a declarative way using a high-level programming or configuration language.

Under the hood, IaC tools like Terraform, CloudFormation, and Ansible translate these definitions into API calls that provision the actual resources in a cloud provider like AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud Platform. The IaC tool handles the complexities of dependencies, ordering, and idempotence to ensure the defined end state is reached reliably.

Here‘s a simple example of defining an AWS S3 bucket using Terraform HCL syntax:

resource "aws_s3_bucket" "data_bucket" {
  bucket = "my-data-bucket"
  acl    = "private"

  tags = {
    Name        = "My Data Bucket"
    Environment = "Prod" 
  }
}

With this code, Terraform will provision a private S3 bucket named "my-data-bucket" with the specified tags. The beauty of IaC is that this same code can be used to consistently provision identical buckets in multiple AWS accounts or regions.

The Benefits of Infrastructure as Code

Adopting Infrastructure as Code unlocks a host of benefits for organizations seeking to streamline their operations and accelerate innovation. Key advantages include:

1. Automation and Efficiency – IaC eliminates time-consuming, error-prone manual provisioning processes. Instead, proven code is used to spin up entire environments with the push of a button. A 2020 State of DevOps Report found that teams using IaC tools like Terraform provision 47x more frequent than those relying on manual config (State of DevOps Report, 2020).

2. Consistency and Reliability – With infrastructure defined as code, you guarantee the same configuration is provisioned every time, eliminating variance between environments. This consistency is critical when you‘re deploying applications across dev, test, and production environments. Research shows that IaC adopters have 7x lower change failure rates compared to traditional ops (State of DevOps Report, 2019).

3. Version Control and Collaboration – Infrastructure code can be version controlled, peer reviewed, and tested just like application code. This enables collaboration between dev and ops teams, as well as auditable change tracking. IaC is a key practice in DevOps, with 77% of DevOps teams using IaC compared to only 36% of traditional ops (Puppet Labs DevOps Survey, 2019).

4. Reusability and Standardization – Common infrastructure components can be codified into reusable modules, promoting consistency and efficiency across projects. Teams can build libraries of proven infrastructure templates. This standardization pays dividends at scale – companies with a high degree of IaC adoption are 1.5x more likely to exceed profitability goals (State of DevOps Report, 2020).

Infrastructure as Code Best Practices

As you embark on your Infrastructure as Code journey, several best practices will set you up for success:

1. Codify Everything – Strive to define all of your infrastructure in code, from foundational networking and security to application-specific components. Minimize one-off, "snowflake" resources.

2. Use Version Control – Manage your infrastructure code in a version control system like Git. Apply standard branch, review, test, and merge workflows, just like application code.

3. Embrace Modularity – Abstract common infrastructure patterns into reusable modules. Share and compose these building blocks across projects for consistency and efficiency.

4. Test Rigorously – Apply testing practices to your infrastructure code. Use tools like Terraform Validator or CloudFormation Linter to catch syntax issues. Implement unit and integration tests to verify your infrastructure behaves as expected.

5. Implement Staged Rollouts – Before pushing infrastructure changes straight to production, deploy to staging environments and verify. Use blue/green deployment techniques to gradually shift traffic.

6. Plan for Rollbacks – Have a rollback strategy in place before applying changes. Regularly test your rollback procedures to ensure you can recover quickly if issues arise.

Infrastructure as Code in DevOps Workflows

Infrastructure as Code is a foundational practice in DevOps, a methodology that brings software development and IT operations together to shorten release cycles and improve quality. With IaC, infrastructure provisioning can be integrated into CI/CD pipelines, enabling fully automated deployment workflows.

Here‘s an example of a GitOps style deployment pipeline powered by IaC:

1. A developer commits a change to application code, which kicks off the CI/CD pipeline.
2. The updated code is built, packaged, and pushed to an artifact repository.
3. Meanwhile, changes to the infrastructure definition files are detected and reviewed.
4. Upon approval, the IaC tool (e.g. Terraform) plans and applies the infrastructure changes.
5. The updated application package is deployed to the newly provisioned infrastructure.
6. Monitoring and alerting systems confirm the health of the updated application.

This end-to-end automation, made possible by IaC, enables teams to safely ship changes to production with speed and confidence. Elite DevOps performers deploy 208x more frequently and have 2,604x faster lead times than low performers (State of DevOps Report, 2019).

Challenges and Pitfalls

While the benefits of Infrastructure as Code are significant, adopting the practice is not without its hurdles. Common challenges include:

• Learning Curve – Describing infrastructure in domain-specific languages like HCL or CloudFormation templates can be unintuitive at first, especially for traditional ops pros.
• Tooling Overload – The IaC landscape is complex, with a dizzying array of open-source and commercial tools. Teams can get bogged down evaluating and integrating toolchains.
• Debugging and Troubleshooting – When infrastructure and application code are deeply intertwined, tracing issues across the stack can be painful. Solid observability is a must.
• Governance and Security – Applying consistent governance and security policies to infrastructure code at scale requires thoughtful planning and execution.

Strategies for overcoming these challenges include:

• Provide training and pair-programming to get team members up to speed on IaC concepts and tools.
• Standardize on a small set of proven IaC tools that integrate well and suit your team‘s skills and cloud platforms.
• Invest in robust monitoring, logging, and tracing to provide end-to-end visibility across infrastructure and application layers.
• Implement policy as code to codify and enforce governance and security constraints on your infrastructure.

The Future of Infrastructure as Code

As the world moves toward cloud-native, serverless, and edge computing paradigms, Infrastructure as Code will evolve to meet the needs of these dynamic environments. Emerging trends shaping the future of IaC include:

• Unified Multi-Cloud Provisioning – As organizations embrace multi-cloud strategies, IaC tools that enable seamless provisioning across cloud providers via a unified language will gain traction. 68% of enterprises are pursuing multi-cloud strategies (Flexera 2020 State of the Cloud Report).

• Policy as Code – Codifying security, compliance, and governance policies in a machine-readable format will enable automated enforcement at provisioning time. This "shift left" on security will bake best practices into infrastructure from the start.

• GitOps – Git will serve as the single source of truth for both application code and infrastructure definitions. Merging a pull request will automatically trigger deployment pipelines to provision and configure infrastructure in line with the updated code.

• Serverless Infrastructure – As serverless abstracts infrastructure management, IaC tools will focus on defining the event-driven functions, APIs, and data flows that comprise a serverless application. By 2022, over 50% of enterprises will have deployed serverless functions (Gartner, 2019).

Conclusion

Infrastructure as Code is revolutionizing how organizations define, provision, and manage the technology that powers their applications. By applying software engineering practices to infrastructure automation, IaC boosts developer productivity, environment consistency, and operational efficiency.

As cloud computing evolves, Infrastructure as Code will be essential for harnessing the power of cloud-native architectures and serverless paradigms. Forward-thinking organizations will invest in maturing their IaC practices, empowering their teams to ship innovative solutions at unprecedented velocity and scale.

Embracing Infrastructure as Code is key to thriving in the age of DevOps and continuous delivery. By codifying infrastructure, you‘ll unlock the agility and reliability needed to compete in a software-driven world. Get started on your IaC journey today and set your organization on the path to operational excellence.