Automation is a key goal across any computing environment. Infrastructure as code (IaC) is used for infrastructure automation to create environments. The most common use of IaC is in software development to build, test, and deploy applications.
Traditionally, system administrators used a combination of scripts and manual processes to set up infrastructure environments. The process was complex and time-consuming. Today, you can use IaC to automatically set up your environment within minutes and manage it more efficiently. We give some benefits next.
Easily duplicate an environment
The same environment can be deployed on a different system in another location using the same IaC, as long as the infrastructure resources are available.
For example, imagine a business’s regional branch has IaC to describe the whole branch’s enterprise environment, including servers, networking, and custom configurations. If the business opened another regional branch, they could use IaC to duplicate the exact same environment and quickly make the branch online and operational. IaC removes the repetitive manual steps and checklists that were needed in the past.
Reduce configuration errors
Manual configuration is error-prone due to human involvement. People make mistakes. Or there could be configuration drift due to changes in one setup (like a developer environment) that was missed in another setup (like a test environment).
In contrast, IaC reduces errors and streamlines error checking. If there are errors due to IaC code updates, you can quickly fix the situation by rolling the codebase to the last known stable configuration files. It’s also possible to roll back environments using previous versions of IaC configuration files for other reasons, such as the deployment of older application versions.
Iterate on best-practice environments
Source control allows software developers to easily build and branch on environments. For instance, imagine that an application grew to include an optional machine learning module. A developer could branch the application’s IaC to initiate, use, and stop a high-performance Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) Trn1 instance. They can set the deployment region as dependent on the region of the application deployment.