Infrastructure as code (IaC)

Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is an approach for managing and describing data center infrastructure through configuration files rather than through manual editing of configurations on servers or online interaction. According to IaC, the process of configuring infrastructure is similar to software programming. This approach can include either a declarative way of describing the infrastructure (used more often) or through scripts. In essence, IaC has begun to eliminate the boundaries between writing applications and creating environments for those applications. Applications can contain scripts that create and manage their own virtual machines. This is the foundation of cloud computing and an integral part of DevOps.

IaC uses a high-level code description language to automate the provisioning of IT infrastructure. This automation eliminates the need for developers to manually allocate and manage servers, operating systems, database connections, storage, and other infrastructure elements every time a software application needs to be written, tested, or deployed.

Benefits of IaC:

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• Accelerate production and time-to-market

IaC automation dramatically accelerates the process of providing infrastructure for development, testing, and production installations (and for scaling up or shutting down production infrastructure as needed).

• Stability of the environment, eliminating configuration drift

Configuration drift occurs when arbitrary configuration changes and updates result in mismatched development, test, and deployment environments. This can lead to deployment problems, security vulnerabilities, and risks in developing applications and services that must meet strict regulatory standards. IaC prevents drift by providing the same environment every time.

• Faster and more efficient development

By simplifying infrastructure provisioning and increasing its consistency, IaC accelerates every stage of the software delivery lifecycle. Developers can quickly prepare sandboxes and continuous integration/continuous deployment(CI/CD) environments. Test environments, security and usability testing infrastructure are provided faster. And when the code passes testing, the application and production infrastructure in which the code runs are deployed in one step.