Infrastructure as Code

In depth

Concept

Also known as: IaC

Describing infrastructure in code so it is version-controlled and repeatable.

Infrastructure as Code, explained

Written by EduVerse

Infrastructure as Code means you describe servers, networks, databases and other cloud resources in text files instead of clicking them together in a web console. A tool such as Terraform, Pulumi or AWS CloudFormation reads those files and creates or updates the real infrastructure to match.

Why teams use it

Settings made by hand are hard to repeat and easy to forget, so environments slowly drift apart. With IaC, changes go through Git and code review, you can see exactly what will change before it happens, and you can rebuild a whole environment from the same files.

An example from work

You need a new storage bucket for user uploads. Instead of creating it in the AWS console, you add a few lines to a .tf file and open a pull request. The pipeline runs terraform plan and shows “Plan: 1 to add, 0 to change, 0 to destroy” for the reviewer.

Our own explanation, not a quote from the book.

Where it fits

Provisioning servers, networks and services through code

Coverage in the book