What is Infrastructure as Code (IaC)?

Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is the managing and provisioning of infrastructure through code instead of manual processes.

With IaC, configuration files are created that contain your infrastructure specifications, which makes it easier to edit and distribute configurations. It also ensures that you provision the same environment every time. By codifying and documenting your configuration specifications, IaC aids configuration management and helps you avoid undocumented, ad hoc configuration changes.

Learn more about automating infrastructure workflows

Version control and automation

Version control is an important part of IaC, and your configuration files should be under source control like any other software source code file. Deploying your infrastructure as code also means you can divide your infrastructure into modular components that can then be combined in different ways through automation.

Automating infrastructure provisioning with IaC means developers don’t need to manually provision and manage servers, operating systems, storage, and other infrastructure components each time they develop or deploy an application. Codifying your infrastructure gives you a template to follow for provisioning. Though this can still be accomplished manually, an automation tool, such as Red Hat® Ansible® Automation Platform, can do it for you.

There are 2 approaches to IaC:

A declarative approach to IaC defines the desired state of the system, including the resources you need and any properties they should have, and an IaC tool will configure it for you. 

A declarative approach also keeps a list of the current state of your system objects, which makes taking down the infrastructure simpler to manage.

An imperative approach of IaC defines the specific commands needed to achieve the desired configuration. Those commands then need to be executed in the correct order. 

Many IaC tools use a declarative approach and automatically provision the desired infrastructure. If you make changes to the desired state, a declarative IaC tool applies those changes for you, whereas an imperative tool requires you to figure out how those changes should be applied.

IaC tools can operate in both approaches, but tend to have a bias to one approach over the other.

Read a guide to Infrastructure as Code

Provisioning infrastructure has historically been a time-consuming and costly manual process. As virtualization, containers, and cloud computing have become the norm, infrastructure management has moved away from physical hardware in datacenters. This practice provides many benefits, but also creates new challenges.

With cloud computing, the number of infrastructure components has grown; more applications are being released to production on a daily basis; and infrastructure must be spun up, scaled, and taken down frequently. Without an IaC practice in place, it is  increasingly difficult to manage the scale of modern infrastructure.

IaC can help you manage IT infrastructure needs while also improving consistency and reducing errors and manual configuration.

Benefits of adopting Infrastructure as Code:

• Reduces cost
• Increases speed of deployments
• Reduces errors
• Improves infrastructure consistency
• Eliminates configuration drift

Extending IaC strategy into Day 2 operations

Building on the strategic foundation of IaC, organizations are beginning to use these practices to automate IT processes at every stage of the operational lifecycle. 

Just as IaC standardizes the build, provisioning, and deployment of infrastructure, IT teams can adopt Ops as Code (OaC) to codify the management and maintenance of systems after they are deployed. This approach extends into Policy as Code (PaC) to automate governance, risk, and compliance processes for applications and solutions.

Using the experience gained from automating IaC, IT teams can use the same methods and tools to take a more efficient, adaptable approach to Day 2 operations.

Extend IaC into OaC and PaC

Server automation and configuration management tools accelerate and optimize the adoption of IaC. There are also solutions specifically for IaC. 

Popular IaC optimization tools and technologies include:

• Chef
• Puppet
• Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
• SaltStack
• Terraform
• AWS CloudFormation

Using an automation tool to implement IaC can also help you build more efficient, productive workflows and streamline the adoption of a NetOps methodology. Comprehensive platforms, like Ansible Automation Platform, will provision operating systems and network devices, deploy applications, and manage configuration across enterprise environments.

Learn some Ansible basics

Infrastructure as Code has become a cornerstone of modern IT operations and DevOps, with a wide array of real-world applications across various industries. Key use cases and examples include:

• Automated web application deployment: One of the most common and impactful uses of IaC is to define and provision all the necessary components for a web application, including virtual machines, databases, load balancers, firewalls, and networking configurations.
• Cloud deployment: You can use IaC to set up and manage their entire cloud environment across single or multiple clouds. With IaC, you codify cloud infrastructure to ensure precise resource allocation, security settings, and compliance. This lets you scale its cloud operations effortlessly while maintaining strict organizational standards.
• Continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines: IaC is integral to automating the software development lifecycle. In an IaC approach, you treat infrastructure changes like application code, in order to version-control, test, and automatically deploy as part of CI/CD pipelines. Developers can test code in environments identical to production, leading to quicker and more reliable deployments.
• Disaster recovery and high availability: IaC significantly enhances disaster recovery capabilities. When we define infrastructure as code stored in version control, we can quickly and consistently recreate entire environments in a different region or cloud in the event of a catastrophic failure. This reduces recovery time objectives (RTO) and downtime, ensuring business continuity.
• Hybrid and multicloud environments: In hybrid cloud and multicloud environments, IaC manages disparate infrastructures in a unified way. IaC tools let you define and manage resources consistently across different environments. This gives you flexibility and can reduce your costs.
• Security and compliance automation: IaC embeds security configurations and compliance rules directly into infrastructure definitions. Deployments, therefore, automatically apply security policies—like firewall rules, identity access and management (IAM) roles, and encryption settings—rather than relying on manual configuration. 

IaC is an important part of implementing DevOps practices and continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD). IaC reduces provisioning work for developers, who can instead execute a script to deploy infrastructure. That way, infrastructure doesn't delay application deployments and system administrators aren’t managing time-consuming manual processes. 

CI/CD relies on ongoing automation and continuous monitoring throughout the application life cycle, from integration and testing to delivery and deployment. For an environment to be automated, it needs to be consistent. Automating application deployments doesn’t work when the development team deploys applications or configures environments one way and the operations team deploys and configures them another way.

Aligning development and operations teams through a DevOps approach leads to fewer errors, manual deployments, and inconsistencies. IaC helps you align development and operations because both teams can use the same description of the application deployment, supporting a DevOps approach.

To maximize the implementation of IaC, use the same deployment process for every environment, including your production environment. Because IaC generates the same environment every time, it removes the need to maintain individual deployment environments. Avoiding unique configurations that can’t be reproduced automatically ensures the production environment will be consistent.

You can also apply DevOps best practices to infrastructure in IaC. Infrastructure can go through the same CI/CD pipeline as an application does during software development, applying the same testing and version control to the infrastructure code.

Like most technical adoptions that involve cultural change, a successful IaC implementation begins with a phased approach and clear objectives. Starting small with a noncritical component or environment lets teams learn and gain confidence before tackling more complex systems. Define clear business goals, like reducing costs or speeding deployment, so teams can measure success throughout implementation. 

Best practices for an IaC approach

A fundamental best practice when adopting an IaC approach is to treat infrastructure like application code. This means using best practices like:

• Using version control for everything. This will empower collaborative development, track changes, and ease rollbacks to previous stable states. Within version control, it’s best to use branching strategies (like feature branching), peer code reviews (via pull requests), and descriptive commit messages.
• Making infrastructure modular and reusable. Break infrastructure into its smallest, reusable components. This will reduce duplication, improve maintainability, and make it easier to understand and manage across different projects and environments.
• Automating testing. Integrate all IaC with the tests you would normally perform on application code into a CI/CD pipeline to ensure infrastructure changes are validated before deployment.
• Reducing configuration drift. Strive to build “immutable infrastructure” where possible: Iinstead of making changes to existing servers, provision new ones with any updated configuration and retire the old. This can significantly reduce configuration drift and make rollbacks easier.
• Defining clear roles, responsibilities, and approval workflows for changes to IaC. Implement PaC to automate governance, risk, and compliance processes for applications and solutions.

Challenges to IaC adoption

Adopting IaC can present common and unique challenges:

• Automating manual operations can be complex. IaC tools and concepts can present a learning curve to teams accustomed to manual operations. This may lead to resistance and slower adoption rates. The transition from manual console interactions to code requires a significant mindset shift.
• Security vulnerabilities. Hardcoded secret information, overly permissive IAM roles in templates, or vulnerabilities in base images can easily propagate across your infrastructure and introduce security risks.
• Lack of standardization. Without clear guidelines, teams might implement IaC in inconsistent ways, leading to fragmented practices, code duplication, and maintenance headaches. This often manifests as different naming conventions, module structures, or deployment patterns.
• Cultural resistance. Adopting any strategy as broad as IaC challenges an organization to overcome ingrained habits and foster a code-first mindset. It requires strong leadership buy-in, continuous communication of benefits, and a culture that embraces experimentation and learning.
• Debugging a complex pipeline. While IaC reduces errors, those that occur can be more challenging to debug than those that occur with manual processes, especially for teams new to IaC.
• Managing legacy infrastructure. Integrating IaC with existing legacy infrastructure can be complex and time consuming, as it often requires reverse engineering or gradual refactoring.

Creating an enterprise-wide approach to automation lets you automate not only IT processes, but also entire technologies, teams, and organizations. 

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform includes all the tools needed to implement enterprise-wide automation, including playbooks, a visual dashboard, an event-driven solution, and analytics. It also uses webhooks to automate IaC workflows and enable GitOps practices.

Ansible Playbooks, written in YAML, describe the desired state of your systems, which are usually kept in source control. Ansible Automation Platform does the work of getting your systems to the desired state, no matter their current state. 

Ansible Automation Platform makes your installations, upgrades and day-to-day management repeatable and reliable.

With an Ansible Automation Platform subscription, you can deploy new applications and services faster, manage IT infrastructure more efficiently, and see an increase in app development productivity. And you’ll get access to certified content from our robust partner ecosystem, hosted management services, and life cycle technical support so your teams can create, manage, and scale automation across your organization.

Learn more about Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

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