April 22, 2019 No comment. Infrastructure as Code (IaC) enables developers to provision IT environments with several lines of code. Iâd say, everyone. You can do this quickly and e⦠By implementing IaC, youâre able to have a disposable and immutable infrastructure. Whatâs awesome about IaC and DevOps is that you can tell them that you closed all doors and the only way to promote changes is through code. First thing first, best practices are quite important for managing infrastructure as code in a highly efficient way, so please consider following key recommendations for your infrastructure as code project. As the name suggests, infrastructure as code is the concept of managing your operations environment in the same way you do applications or other code for general release. Developers can play around with similar infrastructure-as-test or prod before pushing application code changes. This article explains the concepts behind Infrastructure as Code. The most obvious benefit of IaaS is reduced infrastructure costs. Itâs also possible to do static code analysis (linting) â that will help you prevent some obvious problems. Why a âSandbox Databaseâ is Important to Software Developers, Mindful Migration: Six Steps to Ensure Success, Pipeline Automation: The Keys to Unlocking the Right Outcome For Your CI/CD Process, Blue Sentry Launches Free Pre-Migration Cost Assessment Service. If you embrace end-to-end automation in your delivery pipeline, youâll be promoting changes from one environment to another. I didnât. You can apply some proven practices from the development world to Ops. In the past, you didnât have to worry about paying more money because you left-turned on a server for several hours. Join the DZone community and get the full member experience. Tracking your changes is also useful for compliance reasons. Automation removes the risk associated with human error, like manual misconfiguration; removing this can decrease downtime and increase reliability. One of the critical pieces of an IaC operating model is that little or no access to production is given to humans. Changes to production are made by machines running versioned code. If no humans are touching production, then the production change logs are 1) the versioning history of the infrastructure code, and 2) the machine logs of the machines on which the code was executed to provision the infrastructure. 3) centralized logs of api calls on the cloud platform When an auditor can quickly see the history of change, confidence rises and audits go much more quickly. security. I know. I use the phrase âdynamic infrastructureâ to refer to the ability to create and destroy servers programmatically; Chapter 2 is dedicated to this topic. Environment drift becomes an expensive business waste. I myself had to deal with this problem. Digital infrastructure organizations can help businesses deliver faster solutions with more self-service and an exceptional user experience. When the infrastructure is ready, you can also check that itâs properly configured by running some Serverspec tests. When I was developing the scripts to spin up instances and something went wrong, I had to pay for the fragment that instance ran. posted on Apr. How many of us have faced not having the same exact version of a dependency across all environments? ... Infrastructure as Code benefits. Thereâs a ton of information out there on how to install and configure helpful services, like an NGINX server. IaC is not just about provisioning; itâs also about configuration management. Is there a separation of duties in place? Instead of making a change to the current servers, youâre replacing them with a new version built from your file definition. Infrastructure as Code is the process of managing and provisioning resources in the cloud through Code files rather than interactive configuration tools. Why Infrastructure-as-Code? Adding Infrastructure as Code ultimately offers more stable environments at a rapid rate and at scale. All the dependencies that the container will need to run the application are defined in the Dockerfile. This means that security standards can be easily and consistently deployed across an enterprise without having to have a security gatekeeper review and approve every change. Infrastructure deployments done with IaC can be repeated with automated functions. This helps to increase the speed of deployments. This post will enumerate some key benefits that become possible once we embrace infrastructure as code practices. There, youâll place the exact same commands youâll run: say, for example, updating the packages repository and then installing a specific version of the package. If you decide to go with IaC, youâll be setting the foundation for a consistent and automated delivery pipeline for your applications. When pushing application code changes to any environment, one of the most common problems youâll encounter is that servers arenât configured properly. You no longer have to remember which buttons to click or which commands to run in order to get an environment up and running. Infrastructure as Code (or IaC) is an automated type of infrastructure management. Cost Savings. When you start implementing IaC, you might feel like itâs not for you. By codifying our infrastructure, we enable better testing and quality control, more efficient and predictable deployments, and decreased recovery times. Plus, it creates a consistent environment through code. Every part of your business â from the back-end operations to the customer experience â is affected by IT infrastructure. And thereâs one last important aspect: youâll provision and configure your infrastructure in the most elegant way possible through code. Nowadays, not only could you install and configure services but you could also do so for infrastructure. The Major Benefits Of Using Infrastructure As Code Are: Improved system performance : IaC assures risk prevention by providing timely awareness on concerning areas. The benefits of infrastructure as code include treating infrastructure like app code, using the same code for all environments, and knowing what changes. As more companies are making the switch to cloud-based services, spending in this area is expected to keep increasing even as traditional IT services slow a little. Infrastructure as Code can bring the management of your infrastructure to the next level and beyond. A single system becomes capable of running multiple structures to architect it in a fashion that aligns with the organization. The first thing youâre going to tell me is, âProduction environments are way different than development environments â and more expensive, also.â But when you define your IaC in a way that lets you control the resources you assign or how many replicas you want, itâs possible to have a small version of the infrastructure for development and a bigger one for production. In this blog article I will show you why you should apply it and what the benefits are. Unlike manual infrastructure setups that require hours or even days to configure, it takes minutes to deploy an IaC system. IaC serves as a form of documentation of the correct way to represent infrastructure, providing a transparent record of changes made to configurations. Youâre reducing the chance of misconfigurations in the application. You can spin up a set of servers in minutes by just running a command or making an API call. Benefits of Infrastructure as Code. A good example of this is Dockerfiles. Should a lead engineer leave the company, the institutional knowledge doesnât have to completely go with them. If itâs hard to do, do it more frequently so you can become better at it. But weâll never forget what we did wrong when we brought down a production application. The blog posts and articles that provide this information give a recipe of steps we need to follow, and those become our scripts. Developers can play around with similar infrastructure-as-test or prod before pushing application code changes. etc) can be applied to infrastructure services. So itâs time to give some formality to those valuable scripts you always use and start implementing IaC. By testing first, youâre minimizing the chances of introducing instability and differences into each environment. Mature code bases contain many unit and integration tests, to verify that the codeâs logic is correct. This leads to fewer errors and less overall downtime, thus improving the entire customer experience. Every change will be made in the infrastructure definition file. Hereâs where the term âinfrastructure as codeâ (IaC) enters the game. With all the options available and the possibility of committing to the wrong framework, it can be easy to continue with business as usual and ignore the benefits of IaC. Find out the real world business and cultural impact of implementing Infrastructure as Code with an interview with kCura. This paper describes the benefits of Infrastructure as Code, and how to leverage the capabilities of Amazon Web Services in this realm to support DevOps initiatives. Opinions expressed by DZone contributors are their own. According to Yankee Group research, the top five motivators for using IaaS are: cost savings on hardware and infrastructure; capacity management; disaster recovery/business continuity; cost savings on IT staffing and administration; and the ability to access new skills and capabilities. If youâd like to restrict whoâs pushing the changes, you can protect the master branch and limit the merge only to the Ops team, for example. And thereâs one last important aspect: youâll provision and configure your infrastructure in the most elegant way possible through code. When you implement IaC, gone are the days when you made manual changes to the server so the application worked. In order to take full advantage of this, you shouldnât allow yourself or your team to make any manual changes that werenât tested in a different environment first. The struggle at that moment is horrible; itâs sometimes traumatic. When you take this approach, several benefits come included. Because, as with your application code, youâll store this file in a version control system. Rather than manually making configuration changes or using one-off scripts to make infrastructure adjustments, the operations infrastructure is managed instead using the same rules and strictures that govern code developmentâparticularly when new serve⦠Imagine that! It gives you ways to safely empower application teams to define the infrastructure for their applications and to create consistent ⦠Of course, this presents an interesting challenge because you wouldn't put sensitive information like passwords there. We humans often forget things, especially when it only caused us a small amount of pain. One way engineers can take advantage of infrastructure as code benefits is to provision services without worrying about the platform on which those services will run. Maybe you just need to experiment with the newest version of a dependency of the server. Sound familiar? When you are working in IT you have to manage some infrastructure sooner or later. Who approved the changed? But the principles and practices of infrastructure as code can be applied to infrastructure whether it runs on cloud, virtualized systems, or even directly on physical hardware. IaaS offers countless benefits to businesses. Business Telegraph > security > The security benefits of using infrastructure as code â TechTarget. You wouldnât want to interrupt your team if you break something in the environment. Because security and other enterprise standards are established in the infrastructure code, developers have independence to move more rapidly. In addition, testing can occur in separate staging environments simultaneously. Simply put, infrastructure as Code is the process of replacing the manual effort required to manage and provision resources with single lines of Code. Thatâs the beauty of IaC. As production environments are reduced to code and deployed on AWS, that code can be used to provision a new production environment in a different AWS region without having to pay for any standby failover environments. When your code is managed in version control you get benefits such as: you can apply the same code review processes as you would to regular code. Fail fast, fail often. IaC also offers the opportunity to introduce Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment techniques, further reducing the issues of human error and increasing speed. When you treat your infrastructure like your application code, you can be confident that the infrastructureâs file definition wonât get lost easily. You and your team will get used to having an automated way of making changes to servers. Auditors love to see that an organization keeps track of how a change went from one environment to another. Maybe thatâs one of the reasons we usually have a set of scripts and commands that take the risk of human error down a notch. If you have the code and the proper access, youâll be able to spin up a similar environment from production. Developer Increased speed and efficiency . Introducing Infrastructure as Code into a business can be quite daunting. Tom Lewis May 28, 2019 Amazon Web Services, Cloud Technology, Cloud Transformation, DevOps, In the past few years, cloud computing has completely changed how companies build, scale, and maintain workloads. IaC allows you to spin up an entire infrastructure architecture, not only running virtual servers, but also launching storage systems, network infrastructure, databases, and other cloud services, as well. When I said, âtreat infrastructure like application code,â I meant it. Not only can you deploy virtual servers, but you can also launch pre-configured databases, network infrastructure, storage systems, load balancers, and any other cloud service that you may need. Therefore, in a failover scenario the code can no longer successfully be used to deploy the existing production environment. Nor can it be used to deploy high-fidelity development, test and staging environments. Developing the skills, process discipline, and tools to change the code first and then apply the new code to production takes time. But, in the end, the benefits of infrastructure as code are certainly worth the effort. Also, it ensures compliance and safety of IT infrastructure along with the faster response to issue/requirements. But just keep doing it until you get it right because youâll eliminate the lack of knowledge about whatâs installed and how itâs configured. Environments then become similar. All the values that are different in each environment will be under version control. See the original article here. If you respect this rule when something goes wrong in the deployment and you donât know why, you can always check the history, revert, and rebuild. Similar to the cloud model, it allows organizations to define services via a declarative nature rather than an iterative one. The ability to quickly provision networking, storage, and compute resources has resulted in the highest developer productivity ever seen. The companies enjoying the highest productivity are simultaneously adopting cloud and DevOps practices facilitated by Infrastructure as Code (âIaCâ). IaC is made possible by the API-driven nature of cloud service provisioning and configuration, and is a critical part of unifying infrastructure operations and software engineering. But, many companies lack the familiarity and skillsets in IaC to be successful. The first step for any company in adopting an IaC operating model is to understand the business benefits of IaC so that the consensus exists to build the skills, establish the processes, and adopt the tools. Thanks to automation, engineers spend less time performing repetitive, manual work and more on higher-value tasks.  Another added advantage is that the spinning down of unused resources and environments can be automated, decreasing cloud computing costs and other maintenance expenses. Thatâs the reason you can even create unit tests for your infrastructure code. Published at DZone with permission of Christian Melendez, DZone MVB. As for what language youâll be working with, it can be any descriptive language. If something is broken by a recent change, you can always go back to a previous version and rebuild the environment. It helps teams avoid configuring an environment manually. As you do with code, you can deliver small changes frequently. You can apply some proven practices from the development world to Ops. Plus, itâs automated. And as if that werenât enough, you can also plan the changes your script will perform so you can preview how the infrastructure will look. Per Wikipedia: "Infrastructure as code (IaC) is the process of managing and provisioning computer data centers through machine-readable definition files, rather than physical hardware configuration or interactive configuration tools." The security benefits of using infrastructure as code â TechTarget. Anyone can make suggestions or apply fixes. [citation needed] Infrastructure automation enables speed through faster execution when configuring your infrastructure and aims at providing visibility to help other teams across the enterprise work quickly and more efficiently. Code forms the backbone of this approach, giving rise to the term infrastructure as code (IaC), which, in simple terms, means code that helps in provisioning systems out onto an IT platform. IaC means you have cookbooks to help you manage and provision infrastructure in a consistent manner. When you take this approach, several benefits come included. 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