What is Infrastructure as Code (IaC)?
Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is a method of managing and provisioning computing infrastructure through machine-readable definition files, rather than physical hardware configuration or interactive configuration tools. The concept is similar to how software developers write code to manage the behavior of a computer program; in IaC, scripts are written to automatically manage and provision the infrastructure.
Here are some key points about IaC:
- Automation: IaC automates the provisioning of infrastructure, making the process faster, more repeatable, and less prone to human error.
- Version Control: Infrastructure code can be version-controlled, allowing changes to be tracked and audited, and enabling collaboration among team members.
- Consistency: By codifying environments, teams can ensure consistency across development, testing, and production environments.
- Idempotency: IaC configurations are typically idempotent, meaning they can be applied multiple times without changing the result beyond the initial application, ensuring reliable and predictable infrastructure state.
Tools like terraform, pulumi, AWS CloudFormation, ansible, Puppet, and Chef are commonly used for implementing Infrastructure as Code.
Source: GPT-4