Traditionally, setting up IT infrastructure has been a manual affair which sees an organisation’s IT team having to configure every virtual machine, operating system and application in addition to discrete pieces of hardware.
Configuration files used by Infrastructure as Code are similar to many programming scripts already used by developers
This has proved a major source of friction for most IT departments, with any new business application or attempt to scale an existing application requiring time for the infrastructure team to procure, install, and configure new infrastructure.
Over the past few years, however, organisations have embraced cloud-based infrastructure that draws heavily from virtualisation and containers. As opposed to a few large machines and a monolithic infrastructure to deploy, teams instead have a vast and dynamic constellation of components and devices to handle. This scope of provisioning means that doing it manually is no longer viable for many.
This has helped to popularise Infrastructure as Code, or Infrastructure as Code. Under Infrastructure as Code, teams use human readable configuration files that contain their infrastructure specifications. This makes it much easier to edit and distribute their configurations, while also helping ensure that their configurations are fully consistent, standardised and documented. This also allows teams to break down infrastructure into modular components whose deployment and integration can be automated.
Infrastructure as Code sees teams develop a script in a YAML or JSON which can be executed on demand
And it is through automation that Infrastructure as Code offers a major value-add, as it means that developers and IT teams will be freed from the task of manually provisioning and managing their servers, storage, OSes, and other components every time they need more resources and can focus on more valuable tasks.
In principle, the configuration files used by Infrastructure as Code are similar to many programming scripts that are already used by developers to automate IT processes. Infrastructure as Code sees teams develop a script in a YAML or JSON which can be executed on demand to manage the installation and configuration of new in-demand infrastructure.
This means that one of the major benefits of Infrastructure as Code is that it allows infrastructure to be subjected to the very same version control, CI CD pipeline, and automated testing that teams are already using for their applications. It also helps automate interactions between developers and operations teams, reducing both of their workloads and removing room for errors or inconsistencies.
From this, we can see that Infrastructure as Code perfectly complements the adoption of a DevOps culture. Infrastructure as Code can serve to break down a major silo between developers and IT admins through standardising processes between both and encouraging them to use the same practises and language when it comes to their infrastructure. And Infrastructure as Code also encourages the adoption of a CI/CD pipeline when it comes to managing those infrastructure scripts, which is a key practice that’s needed to make DevOps a success.
So, while much attention is rightly paid to Infrastructure as Code’s ability to boost a team’s raw productivity and performance, we should also remember Infrastructure as Code is also a powerful tool to help drive organisational and cultural change. If you want to either embrace or deepen your existing DevOps culture, you can’t go wrong by looking at how you deploy and configure your infrastructure and seeing if Infrastructure as Code may be a good fit for your needs.