Why You Should Deploy Infrastructure as Code (Benefits and Examples)
Why You Should Deploy Infrastructure as Code. Cloud computing is revolutionizing the business space and helping businesses scale their operations. The modern business world realizes the potential of cloud migration and is switching towards the cloud for faster and more effective data processing and management.
And holding the center ground for automation in cloud technology, Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is the need of the hour for your growing business in the cloud space.
You can provision databases, servers, and other infrastructure within a few clicks, which helps boost the developers’ productivity and ultimately helps your business.
The ease of launching a cloud infrastructure by clicking a button on a web app has broken the barriers in the cloud computing world and opened new doors of opportunities for businesses globally.
There are multiple benefits that IaC has for your businesses, but we have shortlisted the top benefits in this article. Before we jump to the benefits, let’s understand the basics of Infrastructure as Code to solidify the foundation.
What is Infrastructure as Code?
According to Wikipedia, IaC is replacing the traditional and manual efforts in IT resource provisioning and management with lines of code.
The method breaks apart from standard operating procedures and processes to manage and provision the infrastructure. It enables businesses to do it with a simple line of code.
Using code to deploy and configure the infrastructure makes the process fast and effective. It’s like treating your database, networks, and servers as software to achieve the desired outcome.
Infrastructure as Code automates the infrastructure deployment process with consistency and machine readable files, rather than interactive configuration tools or physical hardware configuration.
There are broadly two IaC methods that you can use: imperative and declarative. In the imperative approach, you need to define each step to achieve the desired state.
On the contrary, you need to declare the desired end state you want to achieve in the declarative state, and the system will automatically deliver you the desired state.
Irrespective of the IaC approach you use, it has exclusive benefits for your organization:
The Benefits of Infrastructure as Code
There are multiple benefits IaC can deliver to your organization, but here are the primary ones:
Configuration consistency
Standard processes and operating procedures can maintain consistency in the infrastructure development process, but differences in configurations can arise because of human errors.
With the help of IaC, you can standardize the infrastructure set up to minimize the possibility of deviations or errors. It decreases the possibility of incompatibility and infrastructure issues that are hard to debug.
You can complete tasks consistently and don’t need to wait for the physical presence of an IT admin. The changes made to the software can be implemented globally, and it won’t affect the software’s version.
An excellent software development cycle
IaC transfers the powers into the developer’s hands and can focus on application development more. It is possible because the infrastructure provisioning becomes more consistent and reliable with IaC.
Developers can write the code once and use it multiple times to save effort and time and keep the control in their hands. IaC allows you to use continuous deployment techniques and integrations to minimize the introduction of human flaws and errors in the post development stage.
You can spin down the environments when not in use with the help of IaC scripts. It will result in the shutting down of resources created by the script. It can increase the productivity of the engineers and provide them with an organized and clean cloud account.
Lower risk
If one of your lead IT admins has the institutional knowledge regarding your infrastructure that leaves your company, IaC saves you from the hiccups to attempt reverse engineering and understand the ins and outs of the infrastructure on your own.
It serves as a form of documentation to instantiate infrastructure and be insurance if your lead engineers decide to quit the organization.
Infrastructure as code documents, tracks, and logs every change made to your server configuration for future use. The configurations can be tested and can run like the usual code. The new issues or errors can be quickly figured out in a IaC, and the correction process minimizes the risk and failure of the infrastructure.
Minimal management overhead
In the traditional approach to managing and governing networks, storage, and different hardware layers, a dedicated team of admins were required to properly function data centers.
With the introduction of IaC, the need to make admins administer the infrastructure physically eliminates, and they can focus on future technologies to implement and improve the existing infrastructure.
It will help your engineers minimize the manual work and focus on high value tasks that can help your enterprise save money and improve productivity.
Now that you have discussed the top benefit of using IaC for your business, it’s time you understand another side of the coin. Before you implement IaC, you need to be aware of some challenges you might face with IaC. Tackle these challenges with finesse, and you’ll achieve your business goals effectively.
Challenges You Might Face With IaC
With the multiple benefits IaC offers, you need to be prepared for the downsides it can have. Let’s have a look.
Dependency on coding
As mentioned in the benefits, IaC helps you shift the power to the developers. You need to have coding experts in managing your IaC powered infrastructure. But if you don’t have a professional coder in place, you need to learn to code, and it can be a steeper mountain to climb.
You need to learn languages like YAML, Ruby, HashiCorp Configuration Languages(HCL), JSON, among others, to make optimum use of IaC. If you don’t have coding skill sets to manage IaC, then the lack of skills can hamper the benefits IaC has for your business.
Security processes
The legacy security best practices process and tools might not be ideal for your organization’s new ecosystem IaC provides. You need to check the operations of provisioned resources manually and if the correct application is using them. As manual checking is time consuming, it might take you multiple iterations to tune your legacy security tool to IaC.
The dynamic nature of IaC raises the need for you to take steps to ensure your legacy security processes and tools can match the latest and most advanced IaC.
IaC monitoring
If you have old monitoring tools in place, it will be difficult to track the provisioning where, how, and what in your infrastructure. You’ll also find it difficult to track the capacity and usage of the IaC using the traditional processes and old tools.
You need better monitoring tools for IaC to match the desired agility of your organization. Without having complete visibility and control over IaC, you’ll not be able to fulfill the desired outcomes, and it can result in disappointment.
But if you take actions towards resolving these hurdles and ensuring the best skills and tools for IaC integration, the correct application is using them, and you’ll fulfill your desired business goals.
Your team can integrate and manage cloud infrastructure from the click of a few buttons on a web app reducing the flaws and discrepancies in the traditional methods.
Infrastructure as Code tools
- Terraform is a tool that lets engineers automate provisioning of all aspects of their enterprise cloud-based and on-premises infrastructure.
- Puppet as another popular configuration management tool that helps engineers continuously deliver software. Using Puppet, you can define the desired end state of your infrastructure and exactly what you want it to do. Puppet automatically enforces the desired state and fixes any incorrect changes. Puppet integrates with the leading cloud providers like AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and VMware.
Why You Should Deploy Infrastructure as Code. Conclusion
Infrastructure as code enables companies of different sizes to:
- Manage and deploy their cloud and IT infrastructure with maximum efficiency and minimal errors.
- Leads to great cost reduction by removing the manual component.
- Reduces the risk through automation and results in enhanced security.
- Enables DevOps teams to test applications in production like environments early in the development cycle.
Despite a few challenges that might arise, you can figure out ways to bypass those challenges and create a better infrastructure for your business using IaC.
By deploying Infrastructure as code in your company iit will boost your company to achieve better digital success.Infrastructure as Code can simplify and accelerate your infrastructure provisioning process, help you avoid mistakes and comply with policies, keep your environments consistent, and save your company a lot of time and money.
