CI/CD stands for Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment, which is a software development approach that emphasizes the automation of building, testing, and deploying code changes to production as quickly and frequently as possible. CI/CD aims to streamline the software development process, increase collaboration among team members, and reduce the risk of errors and conflicts during development and deployment.
The key phrase from the description above is “automation,” “deploying changes” to production “quickly,” and “frequently.” Infrastructure as Code supports CI/CD processes by deploying development, test, QA, or production infrastructure environments using code. More importantly, these environments can be ad-hoc CI/CD environments, except for production, which most likely needs to run 24/7; all the other environments can be quickly built when required, and just as quickly dismantled. Development, test, and QA environments can be destroyed until the underlying infrastructure is required again.
Software engineers care about the application’s code, and not so much about the underlying infrastructure that supports the application. However, management cares very much about the cost. Security cares about the “security” of the underlying infrastructure. This is where IaC comes to the rescue. It can deploy the infrastructure using CI/CD processes. IaC can perform infrastructure deployments in minutes using a repeatable, version-controlled, pre-approved, and security-compliant infrastructure.
This is where “Infrastructure as Code (IaC)” benefits everyone.
Benefits of IaC include:
- Consistency: IaC enables consistent and repeatable infrastructure provisioning across multiple environments and deployments.
- Scalability: IaC makes it easy to scale infrastructure up or down as needed, based on changes in demand or usage patterns.
- Automation: IaC reduces manual efforts and errors by automating repetitive tasks such as configuration and deployment.
- Version control: IaC allows infrastructure changes to be version-controlled, making it easy to track changes, roll back to previous versions, and collaborate among team members.
- Cost savings: IaC can reduce infrastructure costs by enabling developers and system administrators to optimize infrastructure usage and avoid overprovisioning.
Infrastructure as code (IaC) is a software development practice that involves managing and provisioning IT infrastructure using code and automation tools. Instead of manually setting up and configuring servers, networks, and other infrastructure components, IaC enables developers and system administrators to define their infrastructure in code, which can be version-controlled, tested, and deployed like any other software.
Believe it or not, IAC also enables developers, administrators, or engineers more freedom during the development or testing of new systems. IaC allows developers and engineers to deploy pre-approved infrastructure in support of their development and test environments quickly, efficiently, and without manual deployment methods; it can be completely automated. IaC infrastructure deployments can even be included as a procedural step in tools such as Jenkins, Circle CI, Gitlab, etc.
Reduction in operating expense
Infrastructure as Code (IaC) can create a complete infrastructure in minutes in a repeatable, consistent, and agreed configuration. In contrast, manual configuration can take tremendously longer (because it is a manual process). And prone to errors. Engineers will use agreed IaC platforms, reducing the probability of deploying infrastructure that is not required or improperly sized.
Better use of Time (Manpower cost savings)
An automated installation allows all involved to focus on critical, high-value tasks (not spending half a day manually setting infrastructure, for example). Or worse, it can eliminate permanent infrastructure because a manual setup of infrastructure is prone to error and time-consuming; there is a tendency to leave it running. Instead, IaC can be deployed only when required and destroyed until the infrastructure is required once again.
Disposable Environments (CapEx cost savings)
Improving the velocity, Iac makes the build of infrastructure more efficient by allowing someone to quickly set up a complete infrastructure in minutes (not hours).
Terraform (& Ansible) to the rescue
An excellent article by one of the employees at Gruntwork.io is an excellent read about Terraform. The article is about why Gruntworks use Terraform as opposed to other tools. The article logically discusses choosing between Chef, Puppet, Ansible, SaltStack, Cloudformation, and Terraform.
First, let me state for the record, this process does not belong exclusively to software development (not by a long shot). Just having the ability for any IT department to create test and production environments that utilize a documented, repeatable, standard configuration, and easily migrated from test into production, in my opinion, has to be attractive to any IT shop.
“Infrastructure as Code” scripts work with the most popular cloud platforms and on-premise platforms. Note: While Infrastructure as Code works with many platforms, the scripts are not automatically transferable from one platform to another platform.
Terraform is platform-agnostic; you can use it to manage bare metal servers or cloud servers like AWS, Google Cloud Platform, OpenStack, and Azure. Or on-prem in private clouds such as VMWare vSphere, OpenStack, or CloudStack. In Terraform lingo, the supported platforms are called providers.
Terraform & Ansible coding empowers conventional businesses, software development businesses, and small startup businesses, all of the above, to deploy standardized, immutable, and repeatable infrastructure into an on-premises data center or cloud environment using Infrastructure as Code. The code is put into configuration management and stored in a repository for all engineers to deploy infrastructure configuration from development through QA tests and release it into production.
